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Libra Esoterica

Britten's Unquiet Pasts

by Heather Wiebe

  • First published:
  • 21st century
  • Language: English

Examining the intersections between musical culture and a British project of reconstruction from the 1940s to the early 1960s, this study asks how gestures toward the past negotiated issues of recovery and renewal. In the wake of the Second World War, music became a privileged site for re-enchanting notions of history and community, but musical recourse to the past also raised issues of mourning and loss. How was sound figured as a historical object and as a locus of memory and magic? Wiebe addresses this question using a wide range of sources, from planning documents to journalism, public ceremonial and literature. Its central focus, however, is a set of works by Benjamin Britten that engaged both with the distant musical past and with key episodes of postwar reconstruction, including the Festival of Britain, the Coronation of Elizabeth II and the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral.

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Ritual magic and grimoires.

  • Ritual magic and grimoires

    Controlled discovery queries from openalex matched “ceremonial magic”. Retained metadata contains “Magic” in the description and “Magic” in the subject metadata.

    • ceremonial magic· via OpenAlex
    • Magic· in description
    • Magic· in subject

Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.

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Editions

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OpenAlex scholarly book record

2012-10-04Cambridge University Press; Cambridge University Press eBooksEnglishUnknown

Subjects

23 subject headings

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Cataloged from

Catalog id
openalex:W2265060461
Edition coverage
Openalex source record
Retrieved