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Paul Anthony GriffithsOBE (born 1947) is a British music critic, novelist andlibrettist. He is particularly noted for his writings onmodern classical music and for having written the libretti for two 20th-century operas,Tan Dun'sMarco Polo andElliott Carter'sWhat Next?.

Paul Griffiths was born on 24 November 1947 in the Welsh town ofBridgend to Fred and Jeanne Griffiths. He received his BA and MSc in biochemistry fromUniversity of Oxford, and from 1971 worked as a freelance music critic. He joined the editorial staff ofThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1973 and in 1982 became thechief music critic forThe Times, a post which he held for ten years. From 1992 to 1996, he was a music critic forThe New Yorker, and from 1997 to 2005, forThe New York Times. A collection of his musical criticism for these and other periodicals was published in 2005 asThe Substance of Things Heard: Writings about Music (Eastman Studies in Music, 31).

In 1978, he also began writing reference books andmonographs on classical music and composers starting withModern Music: A Concise History fromDebussy toBoulez andBoulez (Volume 16 ofOxford Studies of Composers). Although the majority of these publications have dealt with 20th-century composers and their music, he has also written more general works on classical music, includingThe String Quartet: A History (1985),The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (2005), andA Concise History of Western Music (2006). The last of these has been translated into seven languages.

Griffiths has been a guest lecturer at institutions including the University of Southern California,IRCAM, Oxford University, Harvard University, Cornell University (Messenger Lectures, 2008) and the City University of New York Graduate Center (Old Lecture, 2013), and has served on juries for international competitions, among them thePremio Paolo Borciani and the ARD Musikwettbewerb. He was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, when he also won a Deems Taylor Award for his notes for Miller Theatre.

In 1989, Griffiths published his first novel,Myself and Marco Polo: A Novel of Changes, which went on to win the 1990Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best first novel in the Europe and South Asia region.^[1] The novel is a fictional version ofMarco Polo's memoirs which he dictated toRustichello da Pisa, his fellow inmate in theGenoese prison where he had been incarcerated upon his return from China. (Rustichello is the "myself" of the title.) Two years later, he published his second novel,The Lay of Sir Tristram, a retelling of theTristan and Iseult legend interjected with the narrator's own love story and his meditations on the legend's fluctuating influence and interpretation over time.^[2] Griffiths's third novel,let me tell you (2008), uses aconstrained writing technique similar to those employed by the avant-gardeOulipo group. Inlet me tell you,Ophelia tells her story in a first-person narrative devised by Griffiths using only the 481-word vocabulary given to her in Shakespeare'sHamlet.^[3] Griffiths uses the same 481-word constraint in the 2023 sequellet me go on.^[4]

Griffiths's first excursion as an operalibrettist wasThe Jewel Box which used music fromMozart's unfinished operasLo sposo deluso andL'oca del Cairo as well as several arias and ensembles that he had written for insertion into operas by other composers. The storyline is an imagined reconstruction of a pantomime in which Mozart andAloysia Weber are said to have taken part in 1783.The Jewel Box premiered in 1991 inNottingham performed byOpera North and conducted byElgar Howarth. It was subsequently performed in the United States bySkylight Opera Theatre (1993),Wolf Trap Opera (1994),Chicago Opera Theater (1996), andNew Jersey State Opera (1996). It was revived byBampton Classical Opera in 2006 for the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. His second work of this type,Aeneas in Hell, was set to songs and dance music fromPurcell's theatre scores and was devised as a "prequel" to the composer's 1689 opera,Dido and Aeneas. It premiered in 1995 at theUniversity of Maryland's Ulrich Recital Hall conducted by Kenneth Slowik.^[5]

Griffiths's libretto forTan Dun'sMarco Polo was his first for an opera by a living composer. In the late 1980s, Tan Dun was commissioned by theEdinburgh International Festival to compose an original opera. As he recounted in a 1997 interview:

I first tried to write the libretto myself, about something from myself, and wasn't getting anywhere. Then someone, in 1990, said why not read Paul Griffiths's novelMyself and Marco Polo? I read it and phoned him at his home near Oxford. And he agreed to write a libretto.^[6]

Marco Polo finally received its world premiere in 1996, not in Edinburgh as originally planned, but inMunich at theMunich Biennale. Although Griffiths's libretto was not directly related to or based on his novel, the first line of the opera, "I have not told one half of what I saw", was the novel's final statement.^[6]

Griffiths's next commission as a librettist was forElliott Carter's only opera,What Next?. The work premiered in 1999 at Berlin'sStaatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted byDaniel Barenboim who also conducted its US premiere in a concert performance by theChicago Symphony Orchestra the following year.^[7]

In addition to his original libretti, Griffiths has produced modern English translations of those forStravinsky'sHistoire du soldat, Mozart'sDie Zauberflöte, andPuccini'sLa bohème.

Griffiths has also written original texts for non-operatic settings, includingThe General, which premiered inMontreal on 16 January 2007, withKent Nagano conducting theMontreal Symphony Orchestra.The General, a concert piece for symphony orchestra, narrator,soprano and chorus, had been commissioned by Nagano as a tribute to the Canadian GeneralRoméo Dallaire. Griffiths's narrative texts, inspired by Dallaire's attempts to stop theRwandan genocide, are interwoven with the music fromBeethoven's completeEgmont score, other theatre music andOpferlied (Song of Sacrifice).^[8]

Other musical collaborations have come out of his novellet me tell you, includingthere is still time, subtitled "scenes for speaking voice and cello", with spoken narration accompanying music by the cellist-composerFrances-Marie Uitti. The work was recorded in 2003 byECM Records with Griffiths himself as the narrator.^[9]

More directly connected to the novel is a concert work byHans Abrahamsen, also titledlet me tell you and composed forBarbara Hannigan with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, who gave the first performance on 20 December 2013,Andris Nelsons conducting.

Griffiths was appointedOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to music, literature, and composition.^[10]

Music history and criticism

• Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez, Thames and Hudson, 1978ISBN 978-0-50-020164-0 (Revised&Subsequent version, 1994,ISBN 978-0-50-020278-4)
• Modern Music: The avant garde since 1945, Braziller, 1981 (revised and expanded asModern Music and After: Directions since 1945, Oxford University Press, 1995ISBN 0-19-816511-0; third edition, Oxford University Press, 2010ISBN 978-0-19-974050-5
• A Guide to Electronic Music, Thames and Hudson, 1981.ISBN 0-500-27203-4
• The String Quartet: A History, Thames and Hudson, 1985.ISBN 0-500-27383-9
• —— (1985).New Sounds, New Personalities: British Composers of the 1980s. London:Faber and Faber.ISBN 978-0-571-10061-3.
• The Penguin Companion to Classical Music, Penguin Group, 2005.ISBN 0-14-051559-3
• The Substance of Things Heard: writings about music, Volume 31 ofEastman Studies in Music, University of Rochester Press, 2005.ISBN 1-58046-206-5
• A Concise History of Western Music, Cambridge University Press, 2006.ISBN 0-521-84294-8
• La musica del novecento, Einaudi, 2014.ISBN 978-8-806-21330-5

Monographs on 20th-century composers

• Boulez (Volume 16 ofOxford Studies of Composers), Oxford University Press, 1978
• Cage (Volume 18 ofOxford Studies of Composers), Oxford University Press, 1981
• Peter Maxwell Davies (Contemporary Composers series), Robson Books, 1982.ISBN 0-86051-138-3
• Second Viennese School:Schoenberg,Webern,Berg (with Oliver Neighbour and George Perle for theNew Grove Composer Biographies series) Norton, 1983.ISBN 0-393-31587-8
• György Ligeti (Contemporary Composers series), Robson Books, 1983.ISBN 0-87663-442-0
• Bartók (Master Musicians series), J.M. Dent & Sons, 1988
• Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time, Faber & Faber, 2008.ISBN 0-571-24732-6
• Stravinsky (Master Musicians series), J.M. Dent & Sons, 1992.ISBN 0-460-04614-4
• The Sea on Fire:Jean Barraqué (Volume 25 ofEastman Studies in Music), University of Rochester Press, 2003.ISBN 1-58046-141-7,

Librettos

• The Jewel Box, or, A Mirror Remade – premiered 1991 (published by Chatto & Windus,ISBN 0-7011-3853-X)
• Aeneas in Hell – premiered 1994 (unpublished)
• Marco Polo – premiered 1996 (published byG. Schirmer,ISBN 0-634-00238-4)
• What Next? – premiered 1999 (published byBoosey & Hawkes)
• Gulliver (unpublished)

Novels and short stories

• Myself and Marco Polo: A Novel of Changes,Chatto & Windus, 1989.ISBN 0-7011-3571-9
• The Lay of Sir Tristram, Chatto & Windus, 1991.ISBN 0-7011-3570-0
• "Leda" inOvid Metamorphosed (Philip Terry ed.), Chatto & Windus, 2000.ISBN 0-09-928177-5
• let me tell you, Reality Street Editions, 2008.ISBN 1-874400-43-1
• The Tilted Cup: Noh Stories, Sylph Editions, 2013.ISBN 978-1-909631-02-1
  • Translated into French by Emilie Syssau:Pavillon lunaire: contes nô, Éditions de la Différence, 2014.ISBN 978-2-7291-2132-7
• Mr. Beethoven, Henningham Family Press, 2020.ISBN 978-1-999797-49-2. New York Review Books, 2021.ISBN 978-1-681375-80-9
• The Tomb Guardians, Henningham Family Press, 2021.ISBN 978-1-916218-61-1
• let me go on, Henningham Family Press, 2023ISBN 978-1916218673
• let me tell you/let me go on, New York Review Books, 2025.ISBN 978-1681379258

• CBC News,"Montreal Symphony premieres Dallaire tribute", 18 January 2007. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
• Cummings, Paul (ed.),"Griffths, Paul",International Who's Who in Classical Music, Europa Publications, 2003, p. 299.ISBN 978-1-85743-174-2.
• Grimbert, Joan T.,Tristan and Isolde: A casebook, Routledge, 2002.ISBN 0-415-93910-0
• Kennedy, Michael and Bourne, Joyce (eds),"Griffths, Paul",The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, 5th edition, Oxford University Press, 2007.ISBN 978-0-19-920383-3. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
• Kerner, Leighton,"Mind voyager"^{[dead link]},The Village Voice, 11 November 1997. Accessed via subscription 30 August 2009.
• Kimberley, Nick,"North by East-West",The Independent, 15 November 1998. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
• McLellan, Joseph,"Aeneas in Hell: The Sequel",The Washington Post, 20 November 1995. Accessed via subscription 30 August 2009.
• Rich, Alan,"Dark Elegies",LA Weekly, 30 June 2005. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
• Tommasini, Anthony,"6 Characters in Search of a Dimension, in Different Operatic Tempos",The New York Times, 10 December 2007. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
• Tonkin, Boyd,"Singing in the chains: a tongue-tied heroine",The Independent, 16 January 2009. Retrieved 30 August 2009.

• Official web site
• Twitter
• Selected writings by Paul Griffiths forThe New York Times
  • "How Music Spins a Web Of Meaning" (1 February 1998)
  • "Of the Mind And Artists Who Lose It" (26 July 1998)
  • "Iannis Xenakis, Composer Who Built Music on Mathematics" (5 February 2001)
  • "Facing Challenges of Greatness and Mortality" (18 February 2001)
  • "A Hymn To England's Divinity" (4 March 2001)
  • "To Listen, Perchance To Sleep" (14 April 2002)
  • "Luciano Berio, Composer of Mind and Heart" (28 May 2003)
  • "Gyorgy Ligeti, Central-European Composer of Bleakness and Humor", (6 June 2006)

• 1947 births
• Living people
• 20th-century British novelists
• 21st-century British novelists
• Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford
• British male novelists
• British music critics
• British opera librettists
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Officers of the Order of the British Empire
• Opera in Wales
• People from Bridgend
• Pupils of Darius Milhaud
• The New Yorker critics
• The Times journalists
• Welsh male novelists
• Bartók scholars
• Boulez scholars
• Cage scholars
• Ligeti scholars
• Messiaen scholars
• Nono scholars

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