Britten's Unquiet Pasts

Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-521-19467-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 175 mm x 250 mm, Gewicht: 617 g

Reihe: Music Since 1900

Examining the intersections between musical culture and a British project of reconstruction from the 1940s to the early 1960s, this study asks how gestures toward the past negotiated issues of recovery and renewal. In the wake of the Second World War, music became a privileged site for re-enchanting notions of history and community, but musical recourse to the past also raised issues of mourning and loss. How was sound figured as a historical object and as a locus of memory and magic? Wiebe addresses this question using a wide range of sources, from planning documents to journalism, public ceremonial and literature. Its central focus, however, is a set of works by Benjamin Britten that engaged both with the distant musical past and with key episodes of postwar reconstruction, including the Festival of Britain, the Coronation of Elizabeth II and the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wiebe, Heather

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Geschichte der Musik Geschichte der Musik: Klassische Musik des 20./21. Jahrhunderts
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musikveranstaltungen und -organisationen, Aufführungspraxis

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Music and cultural renewal; 2. 'Today on Earth the Angels Sing': carols in wartime; 3. Realizing Purcell; 4. Gloriana and the 'new Elizabethans'; 5. Noye's Fludde and the rituals of lost faith; 6. Ghosts in the ruins: the War Requiem at Coventry.

Über Autor(innen)

Wiebe, Heather
Heather Wiebe is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia. A member of the editorial board of The Opera Quarterly, she has published widely on twentieth-century music, British musical culture and opera.