Paul Anthony Griffiths OBE (born 1947) is a British music critic, novelist and librettist.
He is particularly noted for his writings on modern classical music and for having written the libretti for two 20th-century operas, Tan Dun's Marco Polo and Elliott Carter's What Next?.
He received his BA and MSc in biochemistry from University of Oxford, and from 1971 worked as a freelance music critic.
[1] The novel is a fictional version of Marco Polo's memoirs which he dictated to Rustichello da Pisa, his fellow inmate in the Genoese prison where he had been incarcerated upon his return from China.
[2] Griffiths's third novel, let me tell you (2008), uses a constrained writing technique similar to those employed by the avant-garde Oulipo group.
In the late 1980s, Tan Dun was commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival to compose an original opera.
[7] In addition to his original libretti, Griffiths has produced modern English translations of those for Stravinsky's Histoire du soldat, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and Puccini's La bohème.
[9] More directly connected to the novel is a concert work by Hans Abrahamsen, also titled let me tell you and composed for Barbara Hannigan with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, who gave the first performance on 20 December 2013, Andris Nelsons conducting.
Griffiths was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to music, literature, and composition.