Other composers might have turned this drunken scene all boisterous, but Britten writes music of lulling ambiguity.
The orchestra sounded confident in the Shostakovich, an audacious, sassy, brilliant work completed before the composer had turned 20.
Paul Bowles, an American composer turned writer, has lived in Morocco for more than 40 years and has not written a novel since 1966.
When composers turn plays into operas they usually have to make some changes in the drama to make it suitable to be sung.
In a search for musical authority the composer has turned to the gaming tables, constructing systems for play.
Certainly it is not surprising that two such thoroughly American composers should turn to the most American of poets for vocal texts.
Why should these two composers independently turn to the poet's nightmarish images of hideous physical decay and death?
Some composers, Prokofiev and Shostakovich included, turned to film music.
At the same time, non-Jewish composers were also turning to klezmer for a prolific source of fascinating thematic material.
American composers have turned travel agents for other reasons.