Peter Franklin, a professor of music at the University of Oxford until 2014, is an Emeritus Fellow of St Catherine’s College. He has taught on both sides of the Atlantic and has written a number of books and articles on Mahler, Schreker and other composers of the period c. 1880–1933.

• Title and Foreword (concluding with ‘A note on the text’).List of Figures1. Introduction; the roots of my musical taste and Chowrimootoo’s worry -00‘Noyes Fludde’ from the pews -002. Secondary-school Britten; ‘The Turn of the Screw’-00Music A-level and ‘War Requiem’ -003. Encountering Britten as a music student at York in the late 1960s -00Essay: Grimes and the Sentimental -004. Graduation; Britten and Pears return to York -00Essay: Billy Budd. Confronting the Highbrow Critique of Opera -005. Singing at Aldeburgh; musical scholarship -00Opera in the ’70s, and ‘Death in Venice’ -006. A trip to East Berlin and the start of a career -00Teaching opera. Britten’s Death. Mahler and Donald Mitchell -007. Essay: Travels. Towards Musical Meaning (The Serenade for Tenor, Horn andStrings). -00Leeds. ‘The open secret’. Philip Brett and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. -008. Essay: Modernism and Musicology -00Select Bibliography -00IndexAcknowledgements