Britten Experienced is a response to two recent studies of the composer, and offers alternative critical readings of some of his major works. The author frames his proposals with episodes of musicological autobiography that attempt to illustrate how artistic taste and values may be formed against stereotypes of 'brow'.

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 Figures
1. Introduction; the roots of my musical taste and Chowrimootoo's worry -00
'Noyes Fludde' from the pews -00
2. Secondary-school Britten; 'The Turn of the Screw'-00
Music A-level and 'War Requiem' -00
3. Encountering Britten as a music student at York in the late 1960s -00
Essay: Grimes and the Sentimental -00
4. Graduation; Britten and Pears return to York -00
Essay: Billy Budd. Confronting the Highbrow Critique of Opera -00
5. Singing at Aldeburgh; musical scholarship -00
Opera in the '70s, and 'Death in Venice' -00
6. A trip to East Berlin and the start of a career -00
Teaching opera. Britten's Death. Mahler and Donald Mitchell -00
7. Essay: Travels. Towards Musical Meaning (The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and
Strings). -00
Leeds. 'The open secret'. Philip Brett and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. -00
8. Essay: Modernism and Musicology -00
Select Bibliography -00
Index
Acknowledgements