The editors magisterially debunk Valentine Cunningham’s notion that Miles’ recital of Latin nouns in The Turn of the Screw is a sort of phallic Polari code and ponder Flanders and Swann’s parodic account of Britten’s career. We also learn that Britten had a lady stalker, and that he wanted Callas to play Queen Elizabeth in Gloriana. But perhaps the most haunting vignette is a footnoted extract from Imogen Holst’s diary, recording how Britten had told her that if Pears ‘found the right girl to marry he supposed he’d have “to lump it” ’ — not a revelation of Pears’ bisexuality, but a sobering reference to the fear spread by the anti-homosexual campaign of 1953 instigated by the Home Secretary David Maxwell- Fyffe.
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Greg
July 30th, 2008 10:24amIs this saying that Britten knew and probably was capable of being pyschic and communicating psychic"ness" Where the mind goes? Everyones' mind will go? ''''''''''''''in a performance or hearing?
anyone that wonders about this composer and: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner, ...... contact me. I want to discuss music with people.
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JohnA
June 13th, 2008 12:21amBut what explains the diminution of psychic energy in the music, from the demonic 'Sinfonia da Requiem', Piano Concerto, and other flashes of fire in the earlier works, up to and including Grimes and even the Ceremony of Carols, to the rather staid and affected operas (MN Dream, Albert Herring, Death in V) and the sheer torpor of the Parables and school pieces and later songs? Too much loyalty, no one to give the boot up b treatment.
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