Benjamin Britten has written solo and chamber works for the harp which extend harp technique and contribute to a twentieth century public awareness of the instrument. Unlike the majority of harp composers, Britten was internationally known and not a harpist himself. His works form a large part of all contemporary harp literature, yet his solo work and composition for harp and high voice are rarely played because of their difficulty. An examination of A Ceremony of Carols (1942), Suite for Harp (1969), and A Birthday Hansel (1975), will illustrate his contribution to harp performance and technique, and will serve as a valuable resource for harpists.

A little-known chamber work by Benjamin Britten is the dramatic cantata Phaedra, op.93, for mezzo-soprano and small orchestra. Among his chamber works, the solo cantata was a musical form used only once by Britten, thus making Phaedra unique among Britten's oeuvre. Britten chose a genre that flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the cantata - as a vehicle for the story of Phaedra. He employs clear allusions to Baroque music in Phaedra by the use of harpsichord and continuo in the recitatives, ornamentation, and word painting. The text for Britten's setting of Phaedra is a translation of Jean Racine's Phedre by the American poet Robert Lowell. From Lowell's complete play, Britten extracted Phaedra's key speeches that deal with her three confessions of incestuous love for her stepson, Hippolytus. These monologues are set in a series of recitatives and arias that make up the entirety of this chamber cantata. In order to gain complete understanding of Phaedra, this document will begin with an investigation into the historical background of Racine's Phedre and the conventions of French tragedy from which it arose. Lowell's translation method will then be explored in comparison to Racine's play. In turn, Britten's extractions from Lowell's translation will be examined. Further, the baroque elements of the cantata and the compositional ideas inherited by Britten from Henry Purcell will be included. Finally, there will be an inspection of the character of Phaedra and Britten's interpretation through orchestration and melodic choices. Investigation into the background of Phaedra's character through Racine's play and Lowell's translation along with Britten's dramatic interpretation through music is necessary for complete comprehension of her mental state and underlying thoughts in order to bring about an emotionally accurate portrayal of the role. Britten himself labeled Phaedra a "dramatic cantata." Therefore, the drama and its text-musical relationships must be uncovered.

This study examines the relationship between sonnet form and musical form in Benjamin Britten's sonnet cycles with a view toward identifying the musico-poetic form how the musical form interprets the poetry. Several issues come to the fore: 1) articulation of the large-scale divisions of the poetic form in the music; 2) potential of the musical setting to make connections between lines of the text ; 3) potential of the musical setting to follow or imitate the thought processes of the poem; and 4) placement of the departure and return.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on August 10, 2009). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Comparative Literature. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--UCLA, 2009. / Program notes in English; song texts in Korean with English translation. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xvii, 288 p. : music. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-281). Includes discography: p. 282.

The aim of my Diploma Thesis " Benjamin Britten - Noctural after John Dowland Op. 70 is to describe one of the most important pieces for solo guitar of the twentieth century. First, I deal with the personality of the composer of the piece and of the original. I also mention all of circumstances of this composition. I analyze the work from many perspectives - contextual, technical and interpretational. Then I present my own interpretation. At the end of the diploma thesis I deal with the first recording of the Noctural Op. 70.

Nocturnal op. 70 is one of the most important large-scale works written for guitar in the twentieth century. Brief biographical data and some background information on Nocturnal show how it exemplifies Britten's compositional approach. The focus of the analysis is on three structural aspects: the rhythmic, the intervallic, and the aspect of underlying pitch patterns. The rhythmic analysis discusses the distortion of rhythmic patterns by the use of compression, expansion, elisions, syncopation, and rhythmic dissonance. The pitch set analysis discusses the intervallic character of the work, identifying and correlating set types as they form networks of relationship. The reductive analysis discusses the underlying connections of focal pitches in the linear material of Nocturnal. The conclusion then correlates the results of the preceding analyses, discussing the large-scale unfolding of the form in Nocturnal.

A concentrated reading of Benjamin Britten's Nocturne through details of the composer's biography can lead to new perspectives on the composer's identity. The method employed broadens current understandings of Britten's personality and its relationship to the music. After creating a context for this kind of work within Britten scholarship, each chapter explores a specific aspect of Britten's identity through the individual songs of the Nocturne. Chapter 2 focuses on how Britten used genres in a pastoral style to create his own British identity. Chapter 3 concentrates on the complex relationship between Britten's homosexuality and his pacifism. Chapter 4 aims to achieve a deeper understanding of Britten's idealization of innocence. The various aspects of Britten's personality are related to one another in the Conclusion.