Facsimile of the composition draft of Peter Grimes, showing Britten's compositional method; companion volume containing essays on its history and significance.

The premiere of Peter Grimes on 7 June 1945 announced the emergence of the first great composer of opera in English since Purcell. Surviving documents offer evidence of the complex interaction of differing ideas about the possible shape and content of the new work, most notably the composition draft, which these essays are particularly concerned to illuminate. They juxtapose historic material with fresh studies: three items written by members of the team involved in the 1945 production are set alongside specially-commissioned articles, with the three-fold intention of presenting the views of...

Available again for a new generation of Mahlerians, Donald Mitchell's famous study of the composer's early life and music was greeted as a major advance on its first appearance in 1958. Revised and updated in the early 1980s, this paperback edition includes a new introduction by the author to bring this classic work once again to the forefront of Mahler studies. From his birth in Bohemia, then part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, to a survey of his early works, many now lost, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years forms an indispensable prelude to the period of the great compositions. The...

This volume is based on a selection of papers presented during a study course devoted to Gloriana held at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in 1991. Glorianahas been a source of controversy since its premiere as part of the Coronation celebrations in 1953. It was planned as a national opera of broad appeal by its authors, Benjamin Britten and William Plomer, but, despite wide coverage in the media, the opera failed to establish itself in the repertoire until a new production in 1966 revealed it to be a powerful and stageworthy work. In recent years it has attracted an...