Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Paul Kildea and Mark Milhofer

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source: GreshamCollege      2013年3月1日
A series of lectures and performances in which conductor Paul Kildea, author of a major new biography of composer Benjamin Britten, explores the life and music of this colossal twentieth-century artist. Kildea is joined by tenor Mark Milhofer.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lectures are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
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1 1:00:31 Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Early, 1913-1945 - Paul Kildea and Mark Milhofer
On the day Penguin publishes Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, the first major biography of Britten in twenty years, author Paul Kildea traces the emergence of the greatest English musician of the last century.
In this illustrated lecture Kildea explores the influences on Britten in his first decades -- conservative and progressive, social and musical, political and sexual -- and how this middle-class boy, who grew up writing music in an early-nineteenth-century manner and playing Beethoven sonatas and works by Wagner and Brahms, became the composer of Peter Grimes, a work that changed the face of English music.
This is the first in a series of three lectures in which conductor Paul Kildea, author of a major new biography of composer Benjamin Britten, explores the life and music of this colossal twentieth-century artist.
2 1:01:43 Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Middle, 1945-1970 - Dr Paul Kildea
The success of Peter Grimes caught Britten by surprise. It gave him enormous capital, but for the most part he chose to spend it outside London, away from the emerging music institutions the new Labour government was determined would establish the sort of cultural infrastructure Britain's recent enemy, Germany, took for granted. Britten felt more comfortable participating first-hand in the Continental traditions Britain was now emulating, distrustful of the architects and executors of this new national culture. In this illustrated lecture Kildea explores the stylistic and philosophical changes in Britten's music in this 'middle period', the obsessions and vision that kept him an outsider no matter the determination of many to bring him into the club, and how he retreated both personally and stylistically in the 1960s, suspicious of the fame the War Requiem had brought him. Kildea covers the composition of Billy Budd, the jealousies and stupidities governing the debacle of Gloriana, and the creation of one of the greatest festivals and concert halls in the world.
3 56:31 Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Late, 1971-1976 - Paul Kildea and Mark Milhofer
'In the history of art late works are the catastrophes,' proposed Theodor Adorno.  In this illustrated lecture Paul Kildea, author of the first major biography of Benjamin Britten in twenty years, disputes the narrative of decline that has engulfed Britten's music since the early 1970s.
The 'catastrophe' in Britten's music was not its quality, but how little traction it has had in the past forty years. Kildea unpicks Britten's precarious health and shows how it made him more determined than ever to write down the music that was on his mind. He discusses key late works -- including Death in Venice, Phaedre, the String Quartet No. 3 -- and how Britten saw them as a way of finishing old business and charting new territory. In this lecture, as in the previous two, Kildea looks at the personal and emotional insecurities that helped shape the twentieth century's consummate musician.
This is the third in a series of three lectures in which conductor Paul Kildea, author of a major new biography of composer Benjamin Britten, explores the life and music of this colossal twentieth-century artist.