A Life in the Twentieth Century

Benjamin Britten

Paul Kildea's Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century is the definitive biography of Britain's greatest modern composer - now in paperback 
 
Benjamin Britten was Britain's greatest twentieth-century composer, who broke decisively with figures such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams and recreated English music in a fresh, modern, European form. Paul Kildea's biography has been acclaimed as the definitive account of Britten's extraordinary life, exploring his deeply held and controversial pacifism; his complex forty-year relationship with Peter Pears; and his creation of an artistic community in Aldeburgh. Above all, however, this book helps us understand the relationship of Britten's music to his life, and takes us as far into its unique alchemy as we are ever likely to go. 
 
PAUL KILDEA is a writer and conductor who has performed many of the Britten works he writes about, in opera houses and concert halls from Sydney to Hamburg. His previous books include Selling Britten (2002) and (as editor) Britten on Music (2003). He was Head of Music at the Aldeburgh Festival between 1999 and 2002 and subsequently Artistic Director of the Wigmore Hall in London, and lives in Berlin. 
 
'Must now rank as the standard work' Financial Times 
 
'Indispensable ... This is a masterly, highly readable account and the most comprehensive to date of the life and work of one of the 20th century's great musical figures' Barry Millington, Evening Standard 
 
'[A] wise, cautious, challenging book ... Kildea's verbal explorations of the music are done with level-headed sensitivity leavened by a quirky lightness of touch' Alexandra Harris, New Statesman

Indispensable ... This is a masterly, highly readable account and the most comprehensive to date of the life and work of one of the 20th century's great musical figures

[A] wise, cautious, challenging book ... Kildea's verbal explorations of the music are done with level-headed sensitivity leavened by a quirky lightness of touch

Paul Kildea holds an honours degree in piano performance and a masters degree in musicology from The University of Melbourne - where he is now an Honorary Principal Fellow and where in 2016 he was Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow - and a doctorate from Oxford University. His books include Selling Britten and Britten on Music. In January 2013 Penguin published Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century to enormous critical acclaim; it is now widely recognized as the best book on its subject, the Financial Times calling it 'unquestionably the music book of the year.' In June 2018 Penguin published Chopin's Piano: A Journey Through Romanticism, which is currently being developed as a feature film. In October 2019 he succeeded Carl Vine as Artistic Director of Musica Viva, Australia.

Paul Kildea

A wonderful book about music, musicians, cultural similarities and differences, the blood and gore of revolutionary times and the compensations of high art. Kildea writes with elegance and wit, and displays the kind of scholarship that does not come from simply mugging up on a few books. ... A book that will, amongst other things, send the reader back with fresh ears to the delightful, tormented Pole, and hear the music he composed on a borrowed piano in a monastery cell in Mallorca one terrible winter

Chopin's Piano takes the motif of this piano - "Out of date before it was completed"; its maker Juan Bauza unknown and possibly an amateur - and uses it to tie together various narrative strands in an original, constantly interesting format. As it does it tells the story of Chopin's work, the development of piano making, and how music became inextricably linked to atrocities in the 20th century.

An episodic, picaresque tale, woven confidently - at times even pacily - by Kildea. He writes knowledgeably and approachably about music and sympathetically about his cast of characters. It is the story of an obsession, but it manages not to feel obsessional. ... I enjoyed it very much.

A Journey through Romanticism

Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted up to the monastery in the mountains where he and Sand lodged. Kildea traces the history of the Preludes, their pianists, their interpretations, and the history of the Mallorquin piano itself, to find an unexpected path through the history of romantic music - via Wanda Landowska in Berlin in 1913, Paris in 1940-41 when the Nazis seized the piano, down to the end of romantic music. It is an astonishing narrative and detective story, an unclassifiable and thrilling book, which explores in an original way the changing meaning of music through time.

Paul Kildea

Praise for Chopin's Piano

A wonderful book about music, musicians, cultural similarities and differences, the blood and gore of revolutionary times and the compensations of high art. Kildea writes with elegance and wit, and displays the kind ...

Chopin's Piano takes the motif of this piano - "Out of date before it was completed"; its maker Juan Bauza unknown and possibly an amateur - and uses it to tie together various narrative strands in an origina ...

An episodic, picaresque tale, woven confidently - at times even pacily - by Kildea. He writes knowledgeably and approachably about music and sympathetically about his cast of characters. It is the story of an obsess ...

A wonderful book about music, musicians, cultural similarities and differences, the blood and gore of revolutionary times and the compensations of high art. Kildea writes with elegance and wit, and displays the kind ...

Chopin's Piano takes the motif of this piano - "Out of date before it was completed"; its maker Juan Bauza unknown and possibly an amateur - and uses it to tie together various narrative strands in an origina ...

An episodic, picaresque tale, woven confidently - at times even pacily - by Kildea. He writes knowledgeably and approachably about music and sympathetically about his cast of characters. It is the story of an obsess ...

A wonderful book about music, musicians, cultural similarities and differences, the blood and gore of revolutionary times and the compensations of high art. Kildea writes with elegance and wit, and displays the kind ...

Chopin's Piano takes the motif of this piano - "Out of date before it was completed"; its maker Juan Bauza unknown and possibly an amateur - and uses it to tie together various narrative strands in an origina ...

An episodic, picaresque tale, woven confidently - at times even pacily - by Kildea. He writes knowledgeably and approachably about music and sympathetically about his cast of characters. It is the story of an obsess ...

Books by Paul Kildea

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