Oliver Michael

Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was the greatest English composer of his time, and the first of his generation to enjoy a wide international reputation. With the great success of Peter Grimes (1945), he effectively re-invented English opera and was a pioneer of music for film and radio. His monumental War Requiem reached a wider audience than any other choral work of the century. He had an international reputation as a pianist and conductor and founded a major arts festival in Aldeburgh, the small East Coast town in which he made his home. For much of his life, however, British critics dismissed his music as merely 'clever', and some of his major works had disastrous premieres.In his twenties he considered emigrating to the USA, and lived there for over two years, but homesickness for the county of Suffolk drew him back and inspired some of his finest music. A pacifist and a homosexual, he was the subject of much malicious gossip, yet his sexuality and his political and social convictions directly or indirectly inspired much of his art. For the greater part of his creative life he lived with and enjoyed a uniquely creative partnership with the tenor Peter Pears, for whom most of his songs and principal roles in all his operas were written. In this masterly biography, the author creates a portrait of a great artist and discusses the contradictions of his quintessential Englishness and his world stature, his outsider status and his membership of the establishment, his artistic adventurousness and his constant regard for musical forms and traditions.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is regarded as the inventor of modern music. His phenomenal achievements are comparable to those of his close friend and contemporary Pablo Picasso. This comprehensive biography traces the influences that informed his style and sets all of his major works into context, devoting particular attention to the composer s childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia. It charts his discovery by Diaghilev and traces his ensuing collaborations with choreographers, dancers, painters, designers, and writers. Above all the book concentrates on Stravinsky s creativity, describing how his musical mind worked and relating this to his complex and fascinating personality.Igor Stravinsky is part of Phaidon s successful 20th Century Composers series, which presents authoritative and engaging biographies of the great creative musicians of our time, augmented by striking visual material and essential reference information. This edition of the book features a whimsical new cover by Jean-Jacques Sempé, the world-renowned illustrator and cartoonist.