Britten's Musical Language

by Philip Rupprecht

• ISBN13: 9780521631549
• ISBN10: 0521631548
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-02-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Blending insights from linguistic and social theories of speech, ritual and narrative with music-analytic and historical criticism,Britten's Musical Language offers fresh perspectives on the composer's fusion of verbal and musical utterance in opera and song. It provides close interpretative studies of the major scores (including Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, War Requiem, Curlew River and Death in Venice) and explores Britten's ability to fashion complex and mysterious symbolic dramas from the interplay of texted song and wordless discourse of motives and themes.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Britten's musical language	1	(31)
Utterance as speech event in Our Hunting Fathers	6	(8)
Beyond the voice: the song quotations in Lachrymae	14	(7)
The social utterance: divine speech and ritual in Noye's Fludde	21	(11)
Peter Grimes: the force of operatic utterance	32	(43)
Naming Grimes: speech as action in the Prologue	36	(6)
``The Borough is afraid'': choric utterance in Act 1	42	(6)
``God have mercy upon me'': Peter's self-sentencing	48	(4)
The chorus and hate speech	52	(10)
``Melancholy and incipient madness'': Peter's last scene	62	(13)
Motive and narrative in Billy Budd	75	(63)
Motive as mystery in the Prologue	76	(14)
Claggart's Act 1 presence	90	(6)
Motive and narrative in Act 2	96	(10)
Operatic ``point of view'': from Claggart's accusation to Billy's trial	106	(32)
The Turn of the Screw: innocent performance	138	(49)
The sound of the turn	141	(14)
Innocent ceremony: children's songs and the performance of interiority	155	(15)
Ghostly machines: the drama of themes	170	(9)
The corrupt imagination: on seeing and hearing ghosts	179	(8)
Rituals: the War Requiem and Curlew River	187	(58)
Liturgy and trope in the War Requiem	191	(6)
Liturgy as ritual: theoretic perspectives	197	(6)
Utterance and stylistic register in the ``Dies irae''	203	(6)
Tropes and irony: the ``Offertorium''	209	(6)
Ritual disintegration	215	(4)
Curlew River as ritual	219	(3)
Ritual gesture	222	(5)
Estrangement and presence	227	(10)
``A sign of God's grace'': acoustic mystery and the power of prayer	237	(8)
Subjectivity and perception in Death in Venice	245	(52)
``My mind beats on'': the conscious self in Scene 1	247	(5)
``The traveller's mind'': inner and outer experience on the water	252	(15)
``The charming Tadzio'': Aschenbach's sonic gaze	267	(7)
``One moment of reality'': the love vow as focal utterance	274	(8)
``Bliss of madness'': the shattered operatic self in Act 2	282	(7)
``I go now'': parting utterance	289	(8)
Notes	297	(40)
Bibliography	337	(15)
Index	352