#benjamin britten

[chantssecrets]

EM Forster with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears in 1949

[uwmspeccoll]

Wood Engraving Wednesday

John Craig

Here are a few wood engravings of landscapes by the English wood engraver and illustrator John Craig from his 1997 book Britten's Aldeburgh printed in Risbury, England at the Whittington Press in an edition of 440 copies signed by the artist. The book, which textually and graphically follows the walking routes of English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) in his coastal Suffolk hometown of Aldeburgh, includes 81 wood engravings and three 2-color linocuts. Britten is known to have composed works on his regular walks in the Aldeburgh vicinity.

John Craig himself is from an illustrious artistic family. His sister Helen Craig is a noted English children's book illustrator and writer. Both are the children of film art designer and illustrator Edward Carrick (born Edward Anthony Craig), whose parents were the theater maker and wood engraver Edward Gordon Craig, the son of famous English actress Ellen Terry and architect Edward Godwin, and violinist Elena Meo, the daughter of Italian-British artist Gaetano Meo.

Our copy of Britten's Aldeburgh is a donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick.

View more posts with wood engravings!

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

okay nico muhly you win the opera internet today

[rhapsodieorientale]

It always weirds me out to some extent when I see people say “Shostakovich was pro LGBTQ+ because he was friends with Britten!” It’s very “he’s not homophobic because he has gay friends” idk

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson)

25/06/2025

[bussyplease]

I made this a while ago on paint at midnight in a fever like state and needed to post it here

[caviarsonoro]

Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (Remastered 2015).

The first time I listened to Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, I was overcome by an overwhelming emotion, as quiet as it was absolute. I felt a purity that was difficult to name, as if the music had enveloped me in an intimate space, suspended outside of time. In that moment, I understood that this was not merely a composition, but a form of sonic prayer that spoke directly to the soul, with a nakedness that transcended language.

This work by Arvo Pärt, in its 2015 remastered version performed by the Staatsorchester Stuttgart under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies, begins and ends with a single toll of a bell. That sound, deep and suspended, does more than mark the opening and closing: it contains the spiritual architecture of the entire piece and wraps it in an atmosphere of transcendence.

The initial bell is not a mere effect or incidental gesture. It is a sonic ritual. A low, suspended tone that stops time. Its slow, mournful vibration introduces a space of active silence, almost liturgical. Pärt is not seeking to move us through accumulation, but through purification. The toll marks the threshold between the everyday and the spiritual. And it does so with an austerity that moves more deeply than any orchestral climax. I remember clearly the first time I heard this piece: I was left frozen. Not only by its beauty, but by the sensation of absolute suspension, as if sound and silence had merged into a single substance.

From that first strike, the string texture unfolds in a descending canon in D minor. It develops with the implacable logic of time, yet breathes with the cadence of a prayer. The compositional technique based on parallel resonances—one of the most refined hallmarks of Pärt’s mature language—reveals itself here with moving clarity. Each note seems to contain a world; each silence, an echo of the invisible.

In the final cadence of the strings, where harmony seems to dissolve slowly, there is a gesture of farewell devoid of drama. The return of the bell, at the exact moment when everything seems to fade, is not merely a formal closure. It is a response without words. As if the music, on the verge of extinction, returned to its origin to remind us that every resonance, even the most fleeting, leaves a trace in the air and in memory.

[leonardbirdstein]

The end of La Mer genuinely makes me want to be able to see the sea the same way Debussy did.

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I get Britten's view (the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes) as it feels very British and lines up with my own experiences, but I DESPERATELY wish to experience the sea as Debussy did.

Reminds me of that painting that someone said awakens the sea monster in them (I can't remember who painted it goddamnit)