Paul Banks – författare

Facsimile of the composition draft of Peter Grimes, showing Britten's compositional method; companion volume containing essays on its history and significance.Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten's first opera, established his stature as a composer, marked a turning point in the fortunes of English opera, and conquered operatic stages around the world. Though its setting and music reflect Britten's greatlove for his native East Anglia, the inspiration for the work was a chance encounter with the poetry of George Crabbe while Britten and the tenor Peter Pears (who eventually created the title role) were stayingin California in 1941; they made a number of draft scenarios while they waited for a passage to England, and after their return Montagu Slater was asked to write the libretto. The full score was completed by February 1945.The single document that reveals most about the work's creative history is the composition draft in which the composer wrestled with text and music, gradually fashioning the opera into its final version. The colour facsimile of this fascinating manuscript is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its first production. It is accompanied by a commentary volume containing a series of essays on the work's history and its contemporary significance by leading Britten scholars, together with a brief note on the work by PETER PEARS(apparently never before published) and an account of the first production by the late ERIC CROZIER, who directed it. The volume is illustrated with colour reproductions of some of the original costume designs by Kenneth Green, his portrait of BenjaminBritten, and contemporary black and white photographs.

Historic accounts and new material illuminate the creation, early history and artistic intentions of Britten's first opera.The premiere of Peter Grimes on 7 June 1945 announced the emergence of the first great composer of opera in English since Purcell. Surviving documents offer evidence of the complex interaction of differing ideas about the possible shape and content of the new work, most notably the composition draft, which these essays are particularly concerned to illuminate. They juxtapose historic material with fresh studies: three items written by members of theteam involved in the 1945 production are set alongside specially-commissioned articles, with the three-fold intention of presenting the views of some of the creators of the opera, outlining the work's early history, and offeringcontemporary perspectives on its historical context and its message.Professor PAUL BANKS is Research Development Fellow at the Royal College of Music.Contributors: PAUL BANKS, PHILIP BRETT, BENJAMIN BRITTEN, ERIC CROZIER, DONALDMITCHELL, PETER PEARS, PHILIP REED, ROSAMUND STRODE. Packed away in its pages is a very large amount of new information. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A fitting tribute to the opera's enduring international stature, and undoubtedly [a] significant achievement in Britten studies. MUSIC AND LETTERS

Without an understanding of the conflicts of Mahler's youth one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years.Available again for a new generation of Mahlerians, Donald Mitchell's famous study of the composer's early life and music was greeted as a major advance on its first appearance in 1958. Revised and updated in the early 1980s, thispaperback edition includes a new introduction by the author to bring this classic work once again to the forefront of Mahler studies.From his birth in Bohemia, then part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, to a surveyof his early works, many now lost, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years forms an indispensable prelude to the period of the great compositions. The conflicts which came to mark Mahler's music and personality had their beginningsin his childhood and youth. Without understanding the territorial, social and familial conflicts of this time one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years.DONALD MITCHELL was born in 1925. Two composers have been central to his writings on music, Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten. His three studies of Mahler, The Early Years (1958), The Wunderhorn Years (1975), and Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death (1985), are among the enduring monuments of postwar Mahler literature. He was founder Professor of Music at the University of Sussex (1971-76), was visiting Professor atKing's College, London, and is currently a visiting Professor at the Universities of Sussex and York.