Benjamin Britten: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

Benjamin Britten: A Biography Reviews

• 
  Sara

  Purging bookshelves leads to more reading. I was ready to get rid of this biography until I read a bit and got totally sucked in. Britten said in 1946 when he was still rather young, "If I had been born in 1813 rather than 1913 I should have been a romantic, primarily concerned to express my personality in music." Carpenter's biography shows that even as a twentieth century composer, this is what he did. Carpenter tells the whole story about Britten, his personal charm, his incredible facility as a composer (it is not farfetched to compare him to Mozart), his fulfilling yet complicated relationship to his partner Peter Pears (which began when homosexuality was illegal in England), his struggle with the full expression of his own sexuality which worked itself out largely by means of composition, his habit of using people and discarding them with no notice even though he cared for people quite a lot. It's an extraordinary achievement that Carpenter manages all this while still illuminating Britten's works. His analyses, both psychological and musical, ring true to me and make me want to go back and listen again to great works like The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice - as well as to discover some others that I don't know - like his last string quartet, #3. A moving and well-written book, but a reader who does not know Britten's work at all might find it too dense. It stays on my shelf!
• 
  Scott

  This was a really fantastic biography. It took me a while to get through (nearly 600 pages, not including the appendices), but it really was a page-turner. Britten was absolutely fascinating and totally remarkable - definitely a musical idol of mine. There are some uncomfortable subjects covered here, but they are done so with frankness and elegance, which allows them to be discussed without attacking Britten (or anyone else). If you're at all interested in Benjamin Britten and/or his music I would highly recommend this.
• 
  Lee Miller

  Enlightening, insightful, entertaining, and fundamental for anyone interested in twentieth-century music.