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1 results

  • Chapter 34 - English and British National Identity in the Arts

  • from Part V - British Sociocultural, Religious, and Political Life
  • Edited by Vicki P Stroeher, Marshall University, West Virginia, Justin Vickers, Illinois State University
  • Book:
    Benjamin Britten in Context
    Published online:
    31 March 2022
    Print publication:
    21 April 2022, pp 303-310

  • Summary

    Throughout much of his career, Benjamin Britten was acclaimed both as the most significant English composer in centuries and as an artist whose music embodied an innate Englishness.  Notwithstanding the subject matter and sources of many of his works, Britten himself resisted association with what were often vague – and frequently contradictory – assumptions about the very definition of that Englishness. While Britten accepted commissions from major national institutions throughout his career, he was also openly suspicious of prevailing attempts to align contemporary creative expression with a proudly English or British identity. This essay explores the origins of those attempts in the nineteenth century and traces some of their most prominent, influential manifestations in the institutions and artistic practices of the twentieth century.