Benedict Mason, born on 23 February 1954, is a British

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. Mason was educated at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

(1971–75) and took a degree in film-making at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

(1975–78). He did not turn to composition until his early 30s, but his first acknowledged work, ''Hinterstoisser Traverse'' (1986), attracted attention from the European new music scene. His early works are decidedly

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

in inclination, with considerable use of stylistic irony (some commentators have noted in these works a similarity to the music of

Mauricio Kagel Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer. Biography Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled from Russia in the 1920s . He studied music, his ...

). Mason then developed an interest in

polyrhythm Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music (cross-rhyth ...

ic music, and in works such as his Double Concerto one can hear a strong stylistic affinity to the later works of

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...

. More recent works have concentrated on the spatial dimension of music, such as in his Music for European Concert Halls series, and sometimes have come very close to installation art. Mason has composed in many genres, and his

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

''Playing Away'', with a

libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...

Howard Brenton Howard John Brenton FRSL (born 13 December 1942) is an English playwright and screenwriter. While little-known in the United States, he is celebrated in his home country and often ranked alongside contemporaries such as Edward Bond, Caryl Chur ...

, was commissioned by the

Munich Biennale The Munich Biennale (german: Münchener Biennale) is a contemporary opera and music theatre festival in the city of Munich. The full German name is ''Internationales Festival für neues Musiktheater'', literally: International Festival for New Musi ...

and premièred there in 1994 by

Opera North Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and ...

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Article
by

Volker Straebel Volker Straebel (born 1969) is a German musicologist and composer and performer of experimental music. Life Straebel grew up in Berlin (West) where he was born. He studied musicology, philosophy and library science at the Technische Universität ...

on Mason's music
Interview (2004)
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Article by Bernhard König on Mason's Chaplin Operas
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mason, Benedict 1954 births 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers English classical composers Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Alumni of the Royal College of Art Living people English male classical composers 20th-century English composers 21st-century English composers Ernst von Siemens Composers' Prize winners 20th-century British male musicians 21st-century British male musicians

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