Britten Experienced: Modernism, Musicology and Sentiment

Peter Franklin argues that for the Humanities to be really humane, writers must confront not only their own methods and aims, but also their practitioners, be they art historians, literary scholars, even musicologists. Who writes the books we read about music that excites us? What part might the strange academic discipline of 'musicology' play in them? Is 'classical music' all about class? Such questions underpin this unconventional book. Franklin is a musicologist, who was educated in a world where the composer was a living object of both criticism and praise, whose music reflected values, worries and dramas that were not just about 'music'. Two books on Benjamin Britten have provoked Franklin to respond by interrogating their shared discipline, accepting that, like theirs, his own story conditioned when and how he experienced Britten - a story which he unfolds in and around discussions of specific works. He recalls his own encounters with the composer: as a schoolboy, as a student and opera-goer, and then as a teacher who had just one fleeting personal meeting with him but was irrevocably shaped by his music. The book will be of interest not only to those studying Britten, but also new forms of musicology, history telling and autobiography.