Book Review
Aug. 23rd, 2013 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariBenjamin Britten: A Life for Music
by Neil Powell
This new biography of Britten is well-written and provides a lot of information on his life. The great strength of this book is Powell's clear, engaging writing and how much his liking for Britten and his music comes through. Powell provides a very positive and admiring view of Britten, but thankfully avoids either over-idealizing the man or awkwardly trying to turn human flaws into "great man" virtues in the manner of Einstein's biography of Mozart. However, since Powell is not a musicologist, the focus is firmly on the events and trajectory of Britten's life, not on his compositional developments or on analysis of his music. This lack is my only serious criticism of the book, since I often find it illuminating to have the biographical and musicological threads intertwined. I especially would have liked some more in-depth analytical discussion of how some of the major events ad experiences of Britten's life may have affected his music, especially his experiences seeing Belsen after the war, which Britten himself said affected every thing he wrote afterwards. Nonetheless, this was a solid biography, full of good writing and interesting observations.
by Neil Powell
This new biography of Britten is well-written and provides a lot of information on his life. The great strength of this book is Powell's clear, engaging writing and how much his liking for Britten and his music comes through. Powell provides a very positive and admiring view of Britten, but thankfully avoids either over-idealizing the man or awkwardly trying to turn human flaws into "great man" virtues in the manner of Einstein's biography of Mozart. However, since Powell is not a musicologist, the focus is firmly on the events and trajectory of Britten's life, not on his compositional developments or on analysis of his music. This lack is my only serious criticism of the book, since I often find it illuminating to have the biographical and musicological threads intertwined. I especially would have liked some more in-depth analytical discussion of how some of the major events ad experiences of Britten's life may have affected his music, especially his experiences seeing Belsen after the war, which Britten himself said affected every thing he wrote afterwards. Nonetheless, this was a solid biography, full of good writing and interesting observations.
