Martha C. Nussbaum - "The Tenderness of Silent Minds" - Anne W. Robertson

Martha C. Nussbaum will discuss The Tenderness of Silent Minds: Benjamin Britten and his War Requiem. She will be joined in conversation by Anne W. Robertson. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op

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About the Book

The human body is the primary instrument of war, yet those waging war often confront soldiers' bodies in a detached or merely intellectual way. In The Tenderness of Silent Minds, Martha C. Nussbaum, a leading thinker on emotion, morality, and justice, conducts a pioneering study of Benjamin Britten's musical representations of the tender male body amidst the brutality of war, and their ability to transform consciousness by evoking potent, non-personal emotions.

Offering a reading of Britten's views about the value and beauty of the body that situates these in the context of his thirty-nine year partnership with his lover, the singer Peter Pears, and also surveying pacifist themes in works written both before and after War Requiem, Nussbaum presents a compelling framework for critically assessing Britten's oeuvre. Nussbaum engages with a remarkably wide range of Britten's works, examining his treatment of aggression and its roots in his collaborations with the poet W.H. Auden, offering readings of the value placed on the body in early partnerships with Britten's beloved and singer Peter Pears, and surveying pacifist themes in Britten's earlier works. The analysis throughout is enriched with perspectives from Britten's personal letters and thoughtful study of the social and political backdrop of fear and homophobic disgust in mid-twentieth century Britain.

According to Nussbaum's interpretation, War Requiem confronts listeners with the reality of bodily experience in war, eliciting compassion by its depiction of beauty, vulnerability, and eroticism. Issuing a stern warning, it points the way to hope for postwar reconciliation. Nussbaum's careful analysis of Britten's score and its settings of both the Requiem Mass and Owen's poems, their historic performance at Coventry, and its philosophical commitments, unveils a message of human love in a hostile world that resonates as powerfully today as in post-war Britain.

About the Author

Martha C Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Law School and Philosophy Department of the University of Chicago. She is the winner of the Kyoto Prize, the Berggruen Prize, the Holberg Prize, and the Balzan Prize. Her most recent book before the one featured in this event is Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (2023).

About the Interlocutor

Anne W. Robertson, Claire Dux Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Music, The University of Chicago. She writes on subjects ranging from the plainchant of the early church to the Latin and vernacular polyphony of the late middle ages. In her work, liturgical and secular music, and often the interactions of the two, mirror theological and courtly ideas and shape the development of medieval spirituality and personal devotion, architecture, institutional identity, and politics.