Benjamin Britten, the ““National Faith,”” and the Animation of History in 1950s England

2006 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
HEATHER WIEBE
Keyword(s):  
Benjamin Britten ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Religious Drama ◽  
Children's Opera ◽  
Festival Of Britain

ABSTRACT This article examines constructions of national Christian tradition in 1950s England, focusing on images of deadness and revivification in two products of the religious drama movement: the York Mystery and other plays presented at the 1951 Festival of Britain, and Benjamin Britten's 1958 children's opera Noye's Fludde.

The Handsome Sailor and the Man of Sorrows: Billy Budd and the Modernism of Benjamin Britten

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Allen J. Frantzen
Keyword(s):  
Benjamin Britten ◽  
Festival Of Britain ◽  
Billy Budd ◽  
English Society

Allen Frantzen's essay examines Benjamin Britten's “Billy Budd” (1951) in relation to the Festival of Britain, treating the opera as an example of a more conservative “mid-century modernism.” Frantzen analyzes in depth the changes Britten's librettists, E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, made to the novella by Melville, in order to conclude that Britten's opera offers an art that seeks to establish itself within English society and culture, but that nevertheless makes clear, both in its music and text, that change is on its way.

Queering Musical Biography in the Writings of Edward Prime-Stevenson and Rosa Newmarch

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-118
Author(s):  
Kristin M. Franseen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Benjamin Britten ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Symphonic Music ◽  
Biographical Knowledge

Beginning with the “open secret” of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears's relationship and continuing through debates over Handel's and Schubert's sexuality and analyses of Ethel Smyth's memoirs, biography has played a central role in the development of queer musicology. At the same time, life-writing's focus on extramusical details and engagement with difficult-to-substantiate anecdotes and rumors often seem suspect to scholars. In the case of early-twentieth-century music research, however, these very gaps and ambiguities paradoxically offered some authors and readers at the time rare spaces for approaching questions of sexuality in music. Issues of subjectivity in instrumental music aligned well with rumors about autobiographical confession within Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) for those who knew how to listen and read between the lines. This article considers the different ways in which the framing of biographical anecdotes and gossip in scholarship by music critic-turned-amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson and Tchaikovsky scholar Rosa Newmarch allowed for queer readings of symphonic music. It evaluates Prime-Stevenson's discussions of musical biography and interpretation in The Intersexes (1908/9) and Newmarch's Tchaikovsky: His Life and Works (1900), translation of Modest Tchaikovsky's biography, and article on the composer in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians to explore how they addressed potentially taboo topics, engaged with formal and informal sources of biographical knowledge (including one another's work), and found their scholarly voices in the absence of academic frameworks for addressing gender and sexuality. While their overt goals were quite different—Newmarch sought to dismiss “sensationalist” rumors about Tchaikovsky's death for a broad readership, while Prime-Stevenson used queer musical gossip as a primary source in his self-published history of homosexuality—both grappled with questions of what can and cannot be read into a composer's life and works and how to relate to possible queer meanings in symphonic music. The very aspects of biography that place it in a precarious position as scholarship ultimately reveal a great deal about the history of musicology and those who write it.

The Sultan Hernán Cortés

2020 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-84
Author(s):  
Nicole T. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
Religious Drama ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Hernan Cortes

In 1541, the Franciscan friar Motolinía sent to Spain an account of the Tlaxcalan people performing the religious drama The Conquest of Jerusalem in Tlaxcala, New Spain. Previous scholars have read his festival account to reflect only local political interests. I argue that it is a palimpsest, containing both the Tlaxcalans’ ambitious diplomatic strategy, expressed in their performance, and Motolinía’s efforts to steer Castile’s policies in the Americas and the greater Mediterranean.

All is of God

10.1558/32682 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Jon Paul Sydnor
Keyword(s):  
Christian Tradition

This essay elaborates a constructive, comparative, nondual theodicy for the Christian tradition based on the Hindu Vai??ava tradition. According to the Indologist Henrich Zimmer, in Vai??avism everything is an emanation of Vi??u, therefore everything is of Vi??u. All apparent opposites are inherently divine and implicitly complementary. Good and bad, joy and suffering, pain and pleasure are not conflicting dualities; they are interdependent qualities that increase one another’s being. The Hindu myth of Samudra Manthan, or the Churning of the Ocean, exemplifies Vai??ava nondualism. In that story, gods and demons—seeming opposites—cooperate in order to extract the nectar of immortality from an ocean of milk. If “opposites” are interdependent, hence complementary, then they are not “opposites” but mutually amplifying contrasts. Given this phenomenology, and applying it to the Christian tradition, a benevolent God who desires full vitality for her creatures would have to create pain, suffering, darkness, and death in order to intensify their correlates. Love would demand their creation, because love would want abundant life for all. In this aesthetic theodicy, the interplay of all contrasts results from the love of a life-giving God.

“O EVANGELHO DE PAULO”: EM QUE CONSISTE? ANÁLISE A PARTIR DO PENSAMENTO DE JAMES D.G. DUNN

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (25) ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
Vicente Artuso ◽  
Adriano Lazarini Souza dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Good News ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
New Covenant ◽  
Pauline Theology ◽  
New Perspective

O presente artigo tem por objetivo analisar o teologúmeno concentrado na expressão “Evangelho de Paulo” e suas notas características dentro da Teologia Paulina. James D.G. Dunn, famoso exegeta escocês, traz o tema para o centro do debate e o coloca como a dimensão capital da vocação e missão do apóstolo Paulo. Neste ensaio procuraremos, ao modo de uma montagem de painéis, explicitar alguns dos principais aspectos da mensagem paulina sintetizadas na palavra “Evangelho de Paulo” e suas expressões correlatas. Para tal finalidade, utilizaremos o método expositivo-descritivo, apresentando: 1) Origem e significado do termo εὐαγγέλιον no Primeiro e Segundo Testamentos; 2) Análise temática do termo εὐαγγέλιον no Corpus Paulinum sob a ótica de James Dunn; 3) Relação do εὐαγγέλιον  paulino com os Sinóticos a partir das contribuições do exegeta Johan Konings. “THE GOSPEL OF PAULO”: ANALYSIS FROM THE THOUGHT OF JAMES D.G. DUNNAbstractThe article aims to explain some aspects of the "Gospel of Paul" axiom as presented in the works of James Dunn. His research highlights aspects of Paul’s Gospel inherited from Scripture and the Gospel of Christ. The break with Judaism occurs with the resurrection of Christ. In fact, the death and resurrection of Christ inaugurates a new covenant, new life, spiritual life. The study shows James Dunn's contribution in highlighting the tension between new and old, between the historical-salvific and apocalyptic perspective in Pauline theology. Contributions are not opposed. The apocalyptic genre is common in the Jewish and Christian tradition. Thus in Paul's new perspective, the opposition between Judaism and Christianity, faith and works is not accentuated. The Gospel of Paul is good news that eliminates antagonisms and includes differences.Keywords: Perspective. Paul. Gospel. Jesus. Judaism.

Unbinding Jewish Philosophical Theology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Biblical Text

The voluminous corpus of the rabbinic genre known as midrash and aggadah involves not just law (halakhah), but also a prolific repository of unrefined philosophical theology. The aggadic and midrashic style encompasses narrative, allegory, and a deeply intimate exegetical engagement with every syllable of the biblical text. It may not correspond neatly to the kinds of systematic treatises, largely identified with the Christian tradition, through which theology is traditionally delivered. The philosophy and theology that inhere in the midrashic genre are, at the very least, of equal profundity and complexity. One needs only to be attuned to its manner and style of communication, consisting of an unrelenting intricate weave of ciphers and cross-references to its biblical antecedents, to hear a literal barrage of philosophical theology.

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