A book written by Dr. Vicki Stroeher, a professor of music history at Marshall University, was awarded the 2018 C. B. Oldman Prize. Stroeher’s book, My Beloved Man, earned the recognition as “an outstanding work of music bibliography, music reference or music librarianship.” The prize was awarded by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and it was announced April 7, during the IAML’s annual study weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The volume details the complete surviving correspondence between famous British composer Benjamin Britten and his life partner and recital partner, tenor Peter Pears. The men, together from 1937 until Britten’s death in 1976, lived with an appearance of separation and communicated in secret to avoid persecution for their relationship.
It was the first book to feature their complete correspondence, and writing it involved four trips to England over the course of four years, when Stroeher visited the Britten-Pears Foundation in Aldeburgh, England to transcribe 365 letters between the couple, with the help of Nicholas Clark and Jude Brimmer of the foundation.
Stroeher became interested in Britten’s life during her undergraduate years when her chorus sang his works. She was recently featured in a video sponsored by the Britten-Pears Foundation Archives. The archives began a new video series in January in which different works by Britten are featured. While visiting the archives in November 2017, Stroeher filmed a short segment on Britten’s operetta, Paul Bunyan, which appeared on the Britten-Pears Foundation YouTube channel during the week of Feb. 26.
Stroeher also talks about Paul Bunyan in a longer video that will be shown during the Britten-Pears Foundation annual exhibit, which will run through December 2018, and wrote an essay, “Britten’s American Opera” for the exhibition program book.
In the past, Stroeher has presented on Britten in Nottingham at the 2012 North American British Music Studies Association Conference; at the “Literary Britten” conference at Girton College, Cambridge University in September 2011; and the “Britten in Context” conference at Liverpool Hope University in 2010. She was a co-organizer of “Benjamin Britten at 100: An American Centenary Celebration,” held on the campus of Illinois State University in October of 2013.
My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears can be purchased online at Amazon.com.
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Photo: Dr. Vicki Stroeher, professor of music at Marshall University (right), presented a copy of her book, My Beloved Man, to Marshall President Dr. Jerome Gilbert when the book was published in 2016.