Product Description: The sixth and final volume of correspondence covers the composer's last decade. The genesis, composition and premieres of major stage works such as Owen Wingrave, commissioned by BBC Television, and Death in Venice are fully documented, as are the church parables, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son...read more

Product Description: The fifth volume of the annotated selected letters of Benjamin Britten - edited by Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke - covers the years 1958-65, during which he wrote two major operatic works, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the ground-breaking Curlew River, and his pacifist choral masterpiece, War Requiem...read more

Product Description: Mervyn Cooke provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to the major trends in film scoring from the silent era to the present day, focussing not only on dominant Hollywood practices but also offering an international perspective by including case studies of the national cinemas of the UK, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union...read more

Product Description: Celebrating the extraordinary diversity of operatic achievements in the twentieth century, this Companion brings together the work of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Beginning with a survey of operatic legacies, the volume analyzes regional styles and aesthetic trends, and features essays on opera and film, popular operetta and the musical, avant-garde music theatre and minimalism, market forces, changing styles and production trends...read more

Product Description: The vibrant world of jazz may be viewed from many angles, from social and cultural history to music analysis, from economics to ethnography. It is challenging and exciting territory. This volume of nineteen specially commissioned essays offers informed and accessible guidance to the challenge, taking the reader through a series of five basic subject areas--locating jazz historically and geographically; defining jazz as musical and cultural practice; jazz in performance; the uses of jazz for audiences, markets, education and for other art forms; and the study of jazz...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: For anyone wanting to get to grips with Britten's music and his eclectic compositional style - crucial reading. MUSIC AND LETTERS Fascinating and persuasive blend of documentary and critical study. MUSICAL TIMES Benjamin Britten's interest in the musical traditions of the Far East had a far-reaching influence on his compositional style; this book is the first to investigate the highly original cross-cultural synthesis he was able to achieve through the use of material borrowed from Balinese, Japanese and Indian music...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This is a comprehensive guide to Britten's work, aimed both at the nonspecialist and the music student. It sheds light on both the composer's stylistic and personal development, offering new interpretations of his operatic works and discussing his characteristic working methods...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This guide covers the whole history of jazz, from its early balancing of African and European influences, through the formative years in New Orleans and Chicago, the rise of the big bands in New York, to be-bop, the post-war proliferation of styles from a new generation - hard bop, West Coast, cool, free jazz, modal jazz, fusion and crossover - and today's acceptance of jazz as a music that uniquely defies conventional categories like "high" and "low"...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: A year-by-year history of people and events telling the story of jazz and the personalities which have formed this music style. Beginning at the turn of the century, the text charts the history of jazz from its African roots and the southern US to the myriad urban styles heard around the world today...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The book examines from various viewpoints Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 to celebrate the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and uniting the famous anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass. Britten's and Owen's pacifist beliefs are compared, and the chronology of the compositional process unraveled from documentary and manuscript sources...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville's nautical allegory, is one of Britten's most challenging operas. This comprehensive guide considers the work from both literary and musical viewpoints. Melville's novella is discussed, as is the interpretation given to the novella by the librettists E...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)