The Makapansgat Valley is located in Limpopo Province, South Africa (Figure 7.1), and is the northernmost of the South African australopithecine fossil sites. Hominin fossils were first recovered there in 1947, but the history and significance of the valley dates to the nineteenth century. The name of the site and valley derives from the Historic, or Gwasa, Cave at the head of the valley, which was the location of a siege in 1854 (Naidoo, 1987; Esterhuysen et al., 2008) on local Ndebele tribespeople by a Boer Commando in retaliation for two massacres – themselves retaliation for raids for ivory and slave labor by the Boer on Ndebele villages. The chief was Mokopane, and the cave became known as “Makapan’s Cave” or -gat in Afrikaans.

An immense labour was involved before a composer’s music could reach its public. The journey from first thoughts to first night relied on the collaboration of many individuals operating in interlocking disciplines, and none were more important to that endeavour than music publishers and agents with the firm. In Britten’s case, the most important firms are Boosey & Hawkes and Faber & Faber. This chapter portrays those who worked closely with Britten as his publishers, who supported him and championed his music, including Ralph Hawkes, Erwin Stein, Hans W. Heinsheimer, Ernst Roth, Leslie Boosey, Anthony Gishford, and Donald Mitchell. Many of these individuals formed extremely close relationships with Britten, but equally, their associations were sometimes complex or fraught.

This chapter considers the professional and amateur orchestral and choral organisations that intersected with Britten and formed the corpus of British musical life in London and regional centres, including such London-based ensembles as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the BBC Singers, and choral ensembles such as the John Alldis Choir, the Purcell Singers (formed to serve the Aldeburgh Festival), and the Huddersfield Choral Society, among others.

This chapter explores Britten’s relationship with the critical press and various writers on music. The composer’s antipathy to critics is widely acknowledged, and his relationship with members of that circle could be contentious at times. In his article ‘Variations on a Critical Theme’, published in Opera in 1952, Britten addressed many of the concerns he had about music criticism in Britain and posited some remedies, but he only created further animosity in some quarters. Nevertheless, several music writers gained his confidence and respect, including Henry Boys, Donald Mitchell, and Hans Keller. Mitchell and Keller, in particular, attempted to elevate discourse about music in England and gave special attention to the works of Britten in their periodical Music Survey and in Boosey & Hawkes’s publication, Tempo, among other Britten-centred endeavours. The chapter focuses upon proponents and adversaries alike, including such disparate personalities as Eric Blom, Boys, Norman Demuth, Peter Evans, Frank S. Howes, Keller, Colin Mason, Mitchell, Eric Roseberry, Erwin Stein, Eric Walter White, and Virgil Thomson.

Britten was famously skeptical where words about music were concerned. Unlike his near contemporary Michael Tippett, he found that words about his own music or that of other composers did not come easily to him, and he was a reluctant writer and speaker about music, especially in later life. There are, of course, notable exceptions, not the least of which is his On Receiving the First Aspen Award. But from the outset, music was – and was to remain – his chief mode of expression, his means of communication with the world; it was through music, writing or performing it, that he articulated his ideas. Words about music were not really for him. That was the position Britten was content to be understood by the world at large. The truth, however, is rather more nuanced.

When he was a young composer in London during the 1930s, Britten's general antipathy about the value of writing about music were certainly fuelled by the attitude of certain music critics toward his work. Not all were hostile by any means; but among some there was a distinct view that this brilliantly gifted young man needed taking down a peg or two. The description of his music as being “clever” began to take form as a mantra to be chanted at the appearance of each new work. The thin-skinned, hypersensitive Britten was bruised by their words; as a consequence he mistrusted most critics and critical writing thereafter. In his view, there were very few critics whose opinions of his music were worth a great deal. They were a necessary evil, one at best to be tolerated.

Ironically, at the same time as he was receiving a mixed press for his music in 1930s, Britten was giving full critical vent to his own thoughts about music, old and new, in his diaries and letters. His diaries, more so than his letters, are full of immediate, unguarded responses to the wide range of music he heard in the concert hall, and on the radio and gramophone recordings – and he listened more than most. Performers were praised or dismissed; composers, likewise; early musical enthusiasms developed into lifelong passions (Mozart, Mahler) or eventually dismissed (Brahms, Beethoven).

In this chapter, we argue that the learning sciences are poised for a “decade of synergy.” We focus on several key traditions of theory and research with the potential for mutually influencing one another in ways that can transform how we think about the science of learning, as well as how future educators and scientists are trained.

The three major strands of research that we focus on are: (1) implicit learning and the brain, (2) informal learning, and (3) designs for formal learning and beyond. As Figure 2.1A illustrates, these three areas have mainly operated independently, with researchers attempting to apply their thinking and findings directly to education, and with the links between theory and well-grounded implications for practice often proving tenuous at best.

The goal of integrating insights from these strands in order to create a transformative theory of learning is illustrated in Figure 2.1B. Successful efforts to understand and advance human learning require a simultaneous emphasis on informal and formal learning environments, and on the implicit ways in which people learn in whatever situations they find themselves.

We explore examples of research from each of these three strands. We then suggest ways that the learning sciences might draw on these traditions for creating a more robust understanding of learning, which can inform the design of learning environments that allow all students to succeed in the fast changing world of the twenty-first century (e.g., Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Vaill, 1996).

During the 1930s under the visionary leadership of John Grierson, the film units of two government agencies, the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) and the General Post Office (GPO), produced documentary films of interest and quality – and occasionally of innovation. While the EMB's earliest films had been ‘silents’, the acquisition of sound-recording equipment by the GPO Film Unit led to some deliberate experimentation in the sound film, and striking results were achieved. Pett and Pott and The Song of Ceylon, both with music by Walter Leigh, are possibly the most fascinating examples of the GPO Film Unit's earliest consciously experimental sound films and evidently provided useful role-models for the youthful Britten when he arrived as a new member of Grierson's team in May 1935.

Although Britten was first engaged to write a through-composed twenty-minute score for The King's Stamp, a documentary tracing the history and production of postage stamps, he was soon seconded to a more challenging and controversial project: a social documentary examining the conditions prevailing at the time in the mining industry. While The King's Stamp possessed some experimental qualities, it can hardly be claimed they extend to its soundtrack or musical score – whatever their respective merits overall. Britten's next film score, however, shows a remarkable grasp of many experimental techniques; having demonstrated to his colleagues at the Unit what he could achieve in conventional circumstances, Britten was now chosen for Coal Face, from the outset a highly experimental production.