Neil Powell (2) (1948–)

Powell wants us to believe that Benjamin Britten was a good man. I will happily say that he wrote a great deal of beautiful and technically excellent music, which I have enjoyed hearing and singing. Factors that complicate a full life judgment are his ambiguous relationships with young boys, and his constant co-opting and twisting of poetry and texts from the religious soul of England, and infusing them with meaning and subtext far afield from what they ought to mean. (Imagine a lightly show more edited performance of Britten's Billy Budd by the Westboro Baptist Church to gain a sense of the impropriety.) Powell presents a Britten who repeatedly gives religious people what they want, both through his music and through his outward piety, but the core is hollow; he offers up homosexuality in the clothes of Christianity.

This book tilts toward hagiography, and certainly presents a sympathetic Britten throughout. Powell occasionally wanders into special pleading, assuring us on no apparent grounds whatsoever that any negative judgments of Britten's life and work are misguided. Just trust him.

Frequently, Powell tries to edit Britten: "He surely...", "He would have...". It is as if he believes that wants to usher into a place of privileged access to his subject's mind and way of thinking, but instead of demonstrating such from Britten's writing or life, we are stuck trusting Powell. A sad biographer's shortcut.

Auden features so largely that one gets the impression that Powell wishes he were writing the poet's biography instead. Surely Auden had a profound impact on Britten; surely one could have written a duography if one wanted.

A negative consequence of Britten's homosexuality (which Powell interestingly mirrors at times in his own authorial attitude) is his failure to understand or appreciate family life and its importance to those he worked with. Several relationships strained or broke because Britten's colleagues had their priorities in life straighter that Britten was able to comprehend. Powell gives a great deal of credit to Britten's mother for his musicality, but he manifests an annoyance with her for requiring of Britten love and care in her later years. If only she had been out of the way, Britten could have got more music done!

Powell's own musical abilities far outstrip my own, but when he prefaces things with a statement of his own limitations at reading complicated music, it profoundly weakens any musical judgments offered later.

The closing personal reminiscences of the author are perfect for prefacing a reading at the bookstore; they sit uncomfortably in the main text of the book. The biographer has given way to the fan before the book ended, and this is for the worse.

The subject and his story are truly fascinating, but they deserve a more professional telling, because Benjamin Britten was a good musician. show less

Neil Powell's biography "Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music" weaves together the personal and professional lives of one of the 20th centuries greatest composers. Dedicated to and influenced by his East Anglian home, we see how his music grew and changed as he saw more of the world and pulled in sounds from new cultures, while maintaining his ties to home. The effect of Britten's muse and de facto husband, singer Peter Pears, on his music is also thoroughly explored. The result is an engaging show more story and fascinating analysis that even readers who aren't very familiar with Britten's music (such as myself) can enjoy; it's now hard for me to resist the temptation to buy the newly-release box set of Britten's complete works. show less

Arguably one of the premier composers of 20th century classical music, Benjamin Britten spent a full, frenetic life alternately travelling the world performing his music and searching for the private comfort of a home on the North Sea coast to take the time he needed to create that music.

Neil Powell’s wonderful biography melts like butter and flows in a very linear path, using the letters, diaries and reminiscences of friends and colleagues to illustrate a life built around the work that show more lives on, as relevant today as ever. If you want a quick look into the life of England’s most valued composer, this is it.

He was a very private person — if you were gay in postwar Britain you had to be — and he put all of his public voice into the music he created and his love for the Suffolk countryside that he grew up in. Britten benefitted early in his life from an association with the composer and teacher Frank Bridge. That early association grounded him and emphasized the importance of attention to the technical craft of composing.

Details of the creation of the operas Peter Grimes and Death in Venice and the constant world travels of Britten and his life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, make this a high-speed journey — from his early work with W.H.Auden on BBC film scores to the final song cycles created in his last year. A pacifist, one of his most powerful works was 1962’s War Requiem. Despite using Christian themes and texts in many of his works, he is often thought of as an agnostic.

One of Britten’s lasting legacies was the creation in 1948, with Pears and the producer Eric Crozier, of the annual Aldeburgh Festival. In 2013 the festival is in the midst of preparations for the Britten centennial celebrations. show less

A frustrating, occasionally elitist, intermittently brilliant biography that ultimately fails to quite succeed in any of its chosen fields.

Is that harsh? Perhaps. I don't really agree with negative reviews since, as a working writer myself, I think that the job, the chance, and the salary come before individual judgment on the internet. But here I am, determined to have my say anyhow.

Powell is clearly a Britten acolyte, and a dedicated one at that. His work is carefully researched and shows show more a true love of the source material. Benjamin Britten deserves to be studied and discussed, and I applaud this latest edition. Unfortunately... well, it's a bit irritating, isn't it?

Where to start? Powell's writing style, perhaps. I don't know anything about the man - whether he be 25 or 105 - but his language comes across as tiresomely academic at times. This is a Britten biography, but Powell also expects you to be more than conversant with the poets Britten set, including Auden, Crabbe, and Rimbaud. Moreso, he expects you to understand the details of Auden's life, to be familiar with Crabbe's manifesto, and to speak French well enough that you can grasp the subtleties of Rimbaud's texts. There is no elucidation here, no translation (even in footnotes), and, worse, a lot of use of that dreaded phrase "of course", to show the reader that the author is more knowledgeable than you are. ("Of course, the final movement of this symphony is far more than that..." -- um, is it? Shouldn't your book be showing us that, Mr. Powell, rather than assuming we know it already?)

If this is a biography, it's a gratingly one-sided example. Truth be told, it's more of a hagiography. Powell isn't a prude; he'll happily discuss sexual intimacy. He's also level-headed enough to acknowledge that Britten's relationships with teenage boys were neither salacious nor completely pure, grounded as they were in his own psychological concerns. Still, wherever possible, the author finds a way to absolve Britten of anything approaching psychological complexity. Dealing with a rather harsh letter Auden wrote to the composer, in which he accused him of - among other things - deliberately surrounding himself by devotees to avoid any objective treatment of his career, Powell bends over backwards to defend Britten against Auden's comments, even as he himself acknowledges they were true! It all feels a little too awkwardly defensive, like this book was being written primarily for the Britten Estate, and he didn't want to tread on any toes. Not, mind you, that I'm expecting some kind of tabloid journalism piece, but I'd like at least the veneer of objectivity.

At times, Powell's reliances on sources can become tiresome. While the early years of Britten's life are primarily known to us through the composer's own diaries, I still felt as if the extensive quoting at some times came close to lazy writing. The fact of the matter is, this is the 21st century. Many people reading this biography will be of an age young enough to not necessarily understand the complexities of 1920s schoolboy slang, whereas Powell clearly expects that we will. Little moments like this stand out. If the book wants to be a biography of Britten, it fails from both an objective standpoint and an explanatory one. If the book wants to be an annotated study of his every movement and private thought, it gets a little closer to the mark, but the book is not advertised or presented as such.

Well, what about the subtitle, "A Life for Music"? A little clearer, perhaps, but not by much. Simply put, unless you have heard most pieces Britten wrote in his 50-year career, you're out of luck. Powell rarely provides more than a one-sentence description of a work, even for the early pieces, and he'll often refer off-the-cuff to an individual song or movement from a work. It reminds me a little of Joan Sutherland's heartwarming but repetitive biography ("February 16th, another Norma. February 19th, rehearsal for Esclarmonde. February 21st, Esclarmonde."). On occasion, Powell - gasp! - is even willing to be dismissive of a piece of music, but even then doesn't go into detail. Despite his introductory comments, Powell is very well-versed in music, and he provides thoughts on British music of the early 20th century on a regular basis, but again he will refer to composers and their works without giving any kind of explanation. Essentially, if you get yourself a Complete Works of Britten, along with books on the history of music and numerous other recordings of other composers, you'll be set with the knowledge to parse this text. Well, you may say, perhaps this book is intended as a musicological study. If so, unfortunately it also fails. Powell doesn't provide enough information for newcomers to the works, but nor does he provide much cogent discussion of individual works to appeal to those who already know them. Altogether, it is deeply unsatisfying.

There are moments of delight. Rhetorical flashes. Insights into the young Britten's character that benefit from the fact that Powell is trying to see through the eyes of someone from the era. An academic's ability to read between the lines of personal correspondence. Yet, I can't shake the feeling that this book is one big disappointment. Lacking in even a cursory introduction to musicology, philosophy, or languages, the book forges on assuming its reader is an Oxford don in his 50s, with access to an academic library and a working knowledge of not just every Britten work, but all the popular recordings. The worship of Britten is so intense that at one point, Powell goes openly defensive using the phrase "anyone who ever met Britten or [Peter] Pears knows..."! However, by keeping the study at a surface level, Powell is rarely able to articulate the place of Britten's music in a larger cultural web, beyond quoting the inadequately conservative major newspaper reviews. The result is a book that appeals neither to the anorak nor the newcomer. I class myself somewhere in between - I'm conversant in most of Britten's operas, and have a passionate love of the works of other early 20th century British composers such as Vaughan Williams - and I sometimes found myself struggling, or at least bemused on the part of readers with less of a tertiary education.

Powell's failure to articulate reaches its apex in his attempts to uncover the unspoken moments of Britten's life. While I mentioned above that he brings insight, I should clarify that this is mostly in cases where the event is a known quantity, and Powell is primarily clearing up queries. In cases of hypothesised events, Powell is either drawing his conclusions from thin air, or is just poor at explaining them to the lay-reader. Interpreting examples of the teenage Britten's (wonderfully erudite) diaries, he will cite a specific sentence as near-proof of an infatuation, when the sentence reads as simply that: a sentence. I have no doubt Powell is closer to the era than I, and he may well be finding hidden meanings I cannot. However, he ploughs on with his volley of "of course"s and "clearly"s, never stopping to explain his findings. (This is even more frustrating when the visionary Powell sees evidence in photographs of, for instance, Peter Pears' discontent while living at Crabbe Street... but includes the photograph in the book, where it looks to all eyes like a perfectly friendly group shot.) I'll stand up for his overall motivation, absolutely. Powell is not looking for the "naughty", and he shows a proper hesitance in ever reaching outright conclusions, but few of his opinions ever feel definitive.

(In a moment of defense, it should be noted that Powell does grapple with the biases both for and against Britten that emerged in his mid- and later-life.)

This is not the definitive Britten biography, not by far. It's a helpful guide to the composer's movements throughout his life, and not an unworthy read. But, ultimately, this is a disappointment. The target audience - being neither music-lovers nor musicologists - must surely be opera house gift shops and other biographers who need a handy collection of Britten quotes. I guess I will start the search for a better book on the subject, and in the meantime continue my exploration of the composer's complete works. If nothing else, at least this book helps whet the appetite for all the works the reader may not be familiar with. show less