Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his

Background and history#

Britten composed his five Canticles over an extended period of almost 30 years, between 1947 and 1975. Britten set My beloved is mine and I am his for high voice and piano. On 1 November 1947, Pears and Britten performed the world premiere of the Canticle at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, as part of a memorial concert for Sheppard It was published by Boosey & Hawkes for high voice and piano. The duration is given as 7 minutes. Peter Pears wrote in 1952 that he regarded the Canticle as “Britten’s finest piece of vocal music to date”. In 2017, the Canticle was featured in a Queer Talk exhibition, as “a work which bravely expresses same-sex love at a time when it was very dangerous to do so.”

Text and music#

The text for Canticle I was taken from A Divine Rapture by Quarles, a paraphrase of sections from the Song of Songs from the Old Testament. It arrives several times at the refrain line “I my best beloved’s am – so he is mine”. As already the original biblical poetry, it is “full of beautiful, sensuous imagery”. The piano writing evokes images like waves at a shore, paired with “expressive and sometimes highly melismatic freedom of vocal writing”. Composed for Britten’s partner Peter Pears, and performed by the two men in the first performance, it carries further meaning beyond an allegory of love of God and the Soul. Britten’s biographer David Matthews described it as one of the composer’s most serene works, which “ends in a mood of untroubled happiness that would soon become rare in Britten’s music”.

Performances and recordings#

Canticle I was performed, together with the other Canticles, in a concert at Wigmore Hall in London in 2012 by Mark Padmore and pianist Julius Drake. It was performed at the Proms in Britten’s centenary year 2013, by James Gilchrist and pianist Imogen Cooper. Canticle I was recorded in 1985 in a collection of vocal music by Britten, sung by Anthony Rolfe Johnson with pianist Graham Johnson. It was recorded, in a collection of all five canticles, by Naxos Records in 2005, Canticle I with tenor Philip Langridge and pianist Steuart Bedford. The five canticles were recorded again in 2012, with musicians around tenor Ben Johnson.

External links#

• Canticle I: “My beloved is mine and I am his” oxfordlieder.co
• Listening to Britten – Canticle I: My Beloved is Mine, Op.40 goodmorningbritten.wordpress.com 28 October 2013