Benjamin Britten on Music Theory Print

A Birthday Hansel

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Songs#

The songs are: # “Birthday Song” # “My Early Walk” # “Wee Willie Gray” # “My Hoggie” # “Afton Water” # “The Winter” # “Leezie Lindsay” A complete performance takes about 18 minutes. Musicologist Peter Evans has analysed the cycle. It is through-composed, with the harp supplying transitions from the mood of one poem to the next. As befits a birthday gift, it does not attempt to point out morals nor to invite deep reflection. The songs do not explicitly utilise Scottish musical forms, but are flavoured by echoes of them. Although the texts are all by a single poet, the cycle does not have a sense of the cumulative illumination of the poet’s creative character as is found in other such cycles by Britten. It is “delightful but undemanding”.

A Boy Was Born

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History and versions#

Britten composed A Boy Was Born at age 19 as a student at the Royal College of Music. Variation structures particularly appealed to Britten: even before composing A Boy Was Born, he had started a set of variations for string orchestra which he was later to complete as the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. Later he was to compose a set of variations for his Piano Concerto, and his opera The Turn of the Screw is extensively based on the variation principle. This version was first performed on 22 November 1955 in London at the Grosvenor Chapel, by the Purcell Singers conducted by Imogen Holst. Britten himself conducted a recording with Michael Hartnett (treble), the Purcell Singers, boys’ voices of the English Opera Group, and the choir of All Saints. In 1957–58, Ralph Downes added an organ part. In 2013, celebrating Britten’s centenary, A Boy Was Born was performed by the BBC Singers and the Temple Church Choir at The Proms, conducted by David Hill. Festivals in Sheffield and Birmingham in 2013, in honour of the centenary of Britten’s birth, were named after the composition.

A Ceremony of Carols

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1. Procession “Hodie Christus natus est”#

“Hodie Christus natus est” is a Gregorian antiphon to the Magnificat at Second Vespers of Christmas. It is sung exclusively by the sopranos and is patterned on a traditional processional in Christian church service. It has no time signature and can be sung in flexible tempo. The last several measures can be repeated to allow the whole ensemble to take their places.

2. Wolcum Yole!#

The second movement is an upbeat and festive piece intended to welcome the important days of the coming period: Yule (25th), Saint Stephen’s Day (26th), St John’s Day (27th), Day of the Innocents (28th), Thomas Becket (29th), New Year, Twelfth Day, Candlemas (2nd Feb). The text is written in Middle English.

A Charm of Lullabies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The songs#

William Blake (17571827)“A Cradle Song” (Poems from the Notebook, 1794, verses 12 and 45 only) # Robert Burns (175996)“A Highland Balou” (Last Songs for the Scots Musical Museum, 1792. Published in Volume 5, 1839) # Robert Greene (155892)“Sephestia’s Lullaby” (from the prose-poem Menaphon, 1589, verses 1 and 3 only) # Thomas Randolph (160535)“A Charm” (from The Jealous Lovers, 1632, the two stanzas beginning “Quiet sleep”) # John Phillip ()“The Nurse’s Song” (from The Commodye of Pacient and Meeke Grissill, 1559, “Lullaby baby, thy nurse will tend thee”)#

External links#

Britten-Pears Foundation
Boosey & Hawkes

A Hymn of St Columba

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten composed A Hymn of St Columba on 29 December 1962. He wrote the work on a commission to commemorate the 1400th anniversary of a voyage by Columba from Ireland to the Scottish island of Iona, where he founded Iona Abbey and based his missionary work in the Highlands of Scotland. Britten set a hymn attributed to Columba, in three stanzas of five lines each. The first line, “Regis regum rectissimi”, freely translated as “King of kings and of lords most high”, is also the last line of all three stanzas. The text reflects the day of judgement, similar to the Dies irae sequence, first in anxiety and finally in an outlook for rest after earthly desires have ended. A Hymn of St Columba is dedicated to Derek Hill, who commissioned it, and was published by Boosey & Hawkes. It was premiered outdoors in Churchill, County Donegal, where Columba is said to have preached, but was not easily audible due to the strong wind. The work has been recorded several times.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first performed on 11 June 1960 at the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, UK, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival. Conducted by the composer, it was directed by the choreographer John Cranko. The work received wide critical approval following its early performances. Howard Taubman in his review of the Aldeburgh premiere wrote that the orchestral colors of the score conveyed a sense of “soaring illusion” that never wavered and concluded: Not every problem posed by Shakespeare has been solved, but Mr. Britten has accomplished so much that one may safely predict a wide vogue for his latest and happiest opera. A dissenting voice was Britten’s estranged collaborator W. H. Auden. In a letter to Stephen Spender after seeing the 1961 London production, Auden dismissed it as “Dreadful! Pure Kensington”. Dream was performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1961, produced by John Gielgud and conducted by Georg Solti. This production was revived six times to 1984. The English Music Theatre Company staged the opera at Snape Maltings in 1980, directed by Christopher Renshaw and designed by Robin Don; the production was revived at the Royal Opera House for one performance in 1986. Peter Hall directed a production in 1981 for Glyndebourne that by 2016 had been revived nine times. In 2005, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, produced a version directed by Olivia Fuchs at the Linbury Studio Theatre with the Tiffin Boys’ Choir. William Towers was Oberon, and Gillian Keith Tytania. English National Opera’s production of 2011, directed by Christopher Alden, set the opera in a mid-20th-century school, with Oberon (Iestyn Davies) and Tytania (Anna Christy) as teachers and Puck and the fairies as schoolboys. Oberon’s relationship with Puck (Jamie Manton) is given overtly sexual overtones, and Puck responds with alternate anger and despair to Oberon’s new-found interest in Tytania’s Changeling boy. The silent older man who stalks the action in the first two acts is revealed to be Theseus (Paul Whelan); reviewers have suggested that in this staging Theseus himself was once the object of Oberon’s attentions, and is either watching history repeating itself, or is in fact daydreaming the magical events of the opera prior to his marriage to Hippolyta.

Albert Herring

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

After having composed and staged The Rape of Lucretia, Britten decided he should attempt a comedy, preferably set in England. Crozier suggested adapting the Maupassant short story Le rosier de Madame Husson and transplanting it to the Suffolk landscape already familiar to Britten from his home in Snape. Britten composed Albert Herring at his home, The Old Mill at Snape, in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947. He scored the opera for the same instrumental forces he had used in his first chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia, intending it like the earlier opera for performance by the English Opera Group.

An American Overture

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Name#

Britten originally named the work Occasional Overture. He reused the title in 1946, for an unrelated orchestral work commissioned to inaugurate the BBC Third Programme. In order to distinguish them from each other, the earlier of the two was retitled An American Overture upon publication. Its designation as “Op. 27” was reused by Benjamin Britten for his Hymn to St. Cecilia composed in 1942.

From England to Escondido#

By the late 1930s, Britten had attained what his biographer Humphrey Carpenter later described as “a remarkable eminence” in English music. All of his major compositions, with the exception of Our Hunting Fathers, were widely performed and discussed. Steady demand for Britten’s work from film, radio, and the theatre, as well as the support of Ralph Hawkes, the co-founder of the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes, ensured the composer a secure income. “In general”, Carpenter said, " Britten enjoyed an esteem that must have been the envy of every other composer in the country". Nonetheless, personal and external matters motivated Britten to leave England and pursue his career in the United States. He later explained to the American composer Aaron Copland that “a thousand reasons—mostly ‘problems’” goaded his decision. The tenor Peter Pears, Britten’s life partner, told Tony Palmer in 1980 that the composer had become impatient with the pace of his career development in England. An offer from Paramount Studios in early 1939 to score an ultimately unrealized film based on the Knights of the Round Table, with Lewis Milestone as director, alerted the composer to the possibility of becoming wealthy in the American film industry. American music, in particular the works of Copland, was a further enticement to emigration. Another factor was Britten’s desire to escape the complications that resulted from his romantic relationships with Wulff Scherchen and Lennox Berkeley. Britten had also begun to live together with Pears. During this period their relationship was platonic; it soon developed into a lifelong romantic relationship. The increasing threat of war in Europe and their shared pacificism also contributed to their desire to leave England. At the time, Britten recalled in a 1960 interview, it seemed that the future of his career would be in the United States. " I felt Europe was more or less finished", he said. On April 29, 1939, Britten and Pears embarked on the RMS Ausonia and sailed to North America. After brief stays in Canada, Michigan, and New York, they finally settled temporarily in mid-1941 at the home of the piano duo Bartlett and Robertson in Escondido, California.

Beware! Three Early Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Songs#

The songs are: # “Beware” # “O that I had ne’er been Married” # “Epitaph: The Clerk” A complete performance takes about 3 minutes.

Billy Budd (opera)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

E. M. Forster had an interest in the novella, which he discussed in his Clark lectures at Cambridge University. Forster had admired Britten’s music since 1937 when he attended a performance of the play The Ascent of F6 (for which Britten wrote incidental music). Forster met Britten in October 1942, when he heard Peter Pears and Britten perform Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo at the National Gallery. In 1948, Britten and Forster discussed whether Forster might write an opera libretto. They agreed on Billy Budd as a work to be adapted into an opera, with a formal meeting in January 1949 to discuss the project. Forster worked with Eric Crozier, a regular Britten collaborator, to write the libretto. Scholar Hanna Rochlitz has studied the adaptation and collaboration in detail. While Britten was composing the music, the Italian composer Giorgio Federico Ghedini premiered his one-act operatic setting of Billy Budd at the 1949 Venice International Festival. This disturbed Britten, but Ghedini’s opera gained little notice. Britten originally intended the title role for Geraint Evans, who prepared it but withdrew because it lay too high for his voice. Britten chose Theodor Uppman to replace him, and Evans sang a different role, that of Mr Flint.

Britten's Purcell realizations

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In 1945, there was a commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Purcell’s death, raising interest in the composer. Britten began that year to arrange songs, duets and a trio by Purcell, writing out—or “realizing”—Purcell’s figured bass as an accompaniment for piano, sometimes taking great liberty with the original composition. He chose songs, arias and duets by Purcell, or attributed to him, from Harmonia Sacra, Orpheus Britannicus, The Queen’s Epicedium, Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen. The Britten-Pears Foundation acquired a manuscript of one of the realizations in 2019, a version of The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation which Britten wrote for a concert at Wigmore Hall in 1945. The text, by Nahum Tate, is of Mary’s distress when she discovers that her 12-year-old son is missing. It was sung by Margaret Ritchie, to whom the setting is dedicated. Boosey & Hawkes published 45 of Britten’s settings in a volume titled The Purcell Collection – Realizations by Benjamin Britten.

Britten's War Requiem (1963 recording)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Britten had mixed feelings about recorded music. He felt that the gramophone had made it too easy to listen casually, with insufficient attention, to great music: He nonetheless wrote, “I value very highly the authentic recordings of my works and wish to keep my contract with the Decca Company (which is most sympathetic to the idea) very close indeed … these major recordings are to be encouraged in every way”. Britten recorded mainly for Decca, making his first disc for the company in 1943. As a pianist he made 17 records for Decca between then and 1963, and as a conductor he had recorded his own and other composers’ music, including his ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas (1957), three operas – The Turn of the Screw (1955), The Little Sweep (1956) and Peter Grimes (1958), concert works – Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1944) and Nocturne (1959), and works on a religious theme – St Nicholas (1955) and A Boy Was Born (1957). Britten wrote the music with the soloists in this recording in mind. He did not originally intend to have a female soloist, but hearing Galina Vishnevskaya sing at Aldeburgh inspired him to include one. Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang in the first performance; Vishnevskaya was unable to perform owing to visa restrictions imposed by the Soviet Union because the piece was seen as “too political” (Heather Harper stood in for her at short notice). Vishnevskaya was, however, permitted to perform in the recording sessions, and Britten’s intended line-up of a singer from each of Russia, Germany and Britain was achieved. The recording also featured the London Symphony Orchestra, the Melos Ensemble, The Bach Choir and the Highgate School Choir. It was produced by Culshaw; the engineers were Kenneth Wilkinson and Michael Maeles. In his memoirs, Culshaw reports that Vishnevskaya threw a tantrum on the first day of recording, as she believed – not having performed the work before – she was being insulted by being placed with the choir instead of at the front with the male soloists. By the following day she had relented and was thoroughly cooperative.

Cantata academica

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History and text#

The cantata, completed in March 1959, was written for the 500th anniversary of the University of Basel on 1 July the following year. The Latin text, which was compiled by , is based on the charter of the university, as well as older orations praising Basel. Britten wrote out the text for the work on the pages of his old preparatory-school German exercise book. He later used the same book to plan his War Requiem. The work was premiered at the University of Basel on 1 July 1960, conducted by Paul Sacher; the performers were Agnes Giebel, Elsa Cavelti, Peter Pears, Heinz Rehfuss, the Basler Kammerchor, the Sterk’scher Privatchor, and the Basler Kammerorchester. The British premiere was given by the Cambridge University Musical Society in November, a few months after Britten received an honorary doctorate from the University.

Cantata misericordium

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History and text#

This cantata was composed in 1963 for the centenary of the Red Cross. The Latin text by Patrick Wilkinson recounts the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. It was performed again at The Proms later that month, conducted by Britten himself.

Composition#

Cantata misericordium is scored for solo tenor and baritone, SATB choir, string quartet, string orchestra, piano, harp, and timpani. The work is in a single movement with “a highly unified structure built up out of short interlinked sections”. Its tonality is largely F-sharp major, but with a D in the bass.

Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.”

Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and history#

Britten composed his five Canticles over an extended period of almost 30 years, between 1947 and 1975. They have in common to be written for voices, all including a tenor with Peter Pears in mind, and all setting religious but not biblical texts. The first such work was possibly titled Canticle because it set a paraphrase of verses from the Song of Songs, sometimes referred to as the Canticles. In the works, Britten followed the model of Purcell’s Divine Hymns, and wrote works that can be seen as miniature cantatas, and as song cycles. Canticle II: “Abraham and Isaac”. Op. 51, was written in 1952 for Peter Pears, Kathleen Ferrier and Britten to be performed as a fundraiser for the English Opera Group. The text is based on the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac as depicted in the Chester Mystery Plays. Britten set Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac in 1952 for an alto or countertenor, a tenor and piano. All canticles followed opera compositions, the second written after the world premiere of Billy Budd, which is focused on an innocent young man who is “effectively sacrificed”. Canticle II was premiered on 20 January 1952 in Nottingham, England, by Ferrier, Pears and Britten as the pianist. It was published in 1952 by Boosey & Hawkes, dedicated to the two singers. Britten reused part of the music for his War Requiem.

Canticle III: Still falls the rain

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition and premiere#

Britten composed Canticle III, Still falls the rain: The raids 1940. Night and dawn, to give its full title, in 1954 for a memorial concert for the pianist Noel Mewton-Wood. The concert was given at Wigmore Hall in January 1955. Canticle III was premiered by Peter Pears (tenor), Dennis Brain (French horn) and the composer on piano.

Source poem#

The poem on which Canticle III is based is by Edith Sitwell and was first published in 1941. It was written after the raids on London in 1940. The poem is dark, and full of the disillusions of World War II. It speaks of the failure of man, and of the yet unconditional love of God.

Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and history#

Britten composed his five Canticles over an extended period of almost 30 years, between 1947 and 1975. They have in common to be written for voices, all including a tenor with Peter Pears in mind, and all setting religious but not biblical texts. The first such work was possibly titled Canticle because it set a paraphrase of verses from the Song of Songs, sometimes referred to as the Canticles. In the works, Britten followed the model of Purcell’s Divine Hymns, and wrote works that can be seen as miniature cantatas, and as song cycles. After completing the third Canticle in 1954, Britten turned to the religious text “The Bitter Withy” in 1962, but abandoned the project. He turned to “Journey of the Magi” after a hiatus of 17 years after the third, writing Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi in January 1971 for a countertenor, a tenor, a baritone and piano. All canticles followed opera compositions, the fourth written five months after Owen Wingrave. It was premiered on 6 June 1971 at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, England, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, performed by countertenor James Bowman, Pears as the tenor, and baritone John Shirley-Quirk, with Britten as the pianist. It was published in 1972 by Faber Music. The three singers in the premiere, to whom Britten dedicated Canticle IV, would perform major roles in the world premiere of his last opera, Death in Venice, in 1973.

Canticle V: The Death of Saint Narcissus

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and history#

Britten composed his five Canticles between 1947 He dedicated the setting to the memory of his friend William Plomer, the librettist of the three church parables and Gloriana, who had died in 1973. Britten was not able to play the piano after the surgery and therefore wrote the music for tenor and harp, to be performed by Pears and Osian Ellis. Canticle V was premiered by Pears and Ellis on 15 January 1975 at Schloss Elmau in Germany. It was published in 1976 by Faber Music.

Canticles (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Canticles#

Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his, Op. 40. was written in 1947 for the memorial concert for Dick Sheppard, former vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The lyrics are from “A Divine Rapture” by Francis Quarles, based on the Song of Solomon in the Bible. It is scored for high voice and piano.
Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac. Op. 51, was written in 1952 for Peter Pears, Kathleen Ferrier and Britten to perform as a fundraiser for the English Opera Group. The text is based on the Abraham and Isaac story as depicted in the Chester Mystery Plays.
Canticle III: “Still falls the rain”, Op. 55, was written for voice, horn, and piano in 1954 in memory of Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood. The text is based on the 1941 Edith Sitwell poem of the same title.
Canticle IV: “The Journey of the Magi”, Op. 86, was written in 1971 for countertenor, tenor, baritone and piano, with text based on the T. S. Eliot poem “Journey of the Magi”.
Canticle V: The Death of Saint Narcissus, Op. 89, was written in 1974 in memory of William Plomer. It was written for performance by Peter Pears and harpist Osian Ellis.

External links#

*Britten: Five Canticles, Hyperion Records

Cello Sonata (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

On 21 September 1960, a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London introduced Britten to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The programme included the British premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, performed by Rostropovich, alongside Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The two composers shared a ceremonial audience box. Shostakovich later confided to Rostropovich: After the performance, Rostropovich, already established as an obsessive commissioner of new works, pleaded with Britten to write him a piece for cello. The composer consented, and a year later produced the Cello Sonata, Op. 65. This became Britten’s first of five major works written for Rostropovich over the course of the next decade – the others being the Cello Symphony and the three suites for solo cello. Britten’s correspondence with Rostropovich reveals the composer’s humility in the face of Rostropovich’s reputation: he confesses “I may have made some mistakes” and quips that “the pizzicato movement will amuse you; I hope it is possible!” In the scherzo-pizzicato, one can immediately detect an indebtedness, in its timbre and counterpoint, to the Balinese gamelan tradition. The final Moto perpetuo movement uses the DSCH motif (the musical transformation of Shostakovich’s name) as a tribute to the composer who inspired Britten to write for cello. The first performance took place at the Aldeburgh Festival on 7 July 1961.

Cello suites (Britten)

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Cello Suite No. 1, Op. 72#

Britten wrote the First Suite at the end of 1964. The premiere was at the Aldeburgh Festival on 27 June 1965. The suite is in nine movements, played without pause: The score was published in 1966.

Cello Suite No. 2, Op. 80#

The Second Suite dates from the summer of 1967. Rostropovich gave the premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival, Snape Maltings, on 17 June 1968. The score was published in 1969. The movements are as follows:

Children's Crusade (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Benjamin Britten composed several works for performance by children. He wrote Children’s Crusade in October and November 1968, setting a narrative poem by Bertolt Brecht entitled Kinderkreuzzug 1939, translated by Hans Keller. The composer stated that he had been interested in setting the text for some time, and suggested it as appropriate when he was approached to compose a work for the 50th anniversary of the Save the Children Fund. Children’s Crusade was performed, in an English version, by members of the Wandsworth School Choir, conducted by Russell Burgess, at St Paul’s Cathedral in London on 19 May 1969, as part of a commemorative service. The same year, the performance was repeated as part of the Proms, in a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 31 August, with Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”. It was published by Faber Music in 1970, dedicated to Hans Werner Henze. The first performers recorded the work in 1970 for a collection of Britten Rarities, with the Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir, among the soloists Adrian Thompson, pianists Ian Cobb and John Clegg, organist Jonathan Smith and six percussionists. The first performance of the German version took place in Braunschweig in 1980 by the children of the Braunschweiger Jugendchor (Brunswick Youth Choir), conducted by Manfred Ehrhorn, followed by the first recording in German a year later. It was reissued in 2012. In 2002 and 2003, the work was recorded, with other music by Britten for children, by the Choristers of Christ Church Cathedral and Worcester College Chapel Choristers, Christian Wilson (piano), John Madden (percussion and chamber organ) and the Oxfordshire Youth Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Stephen Darlington. A 2015 recording by the Mädchenchor Hannover conducted by Gudrun Schröfel combined the work with Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols.

Corpus Christi Carol

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Britten setting#

Benjamin Britten used the text in the fifth variation of A Boy was Born (Choral Variations For Mixed Voices), Opus 3, in 1933. The text was combined with Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter”. The solo version of the Christi Carol was arranged for and dedicated to John Hahessy (John Elwes). He recorded the song in 1961 with Benjamin Britten himself at the piano. The song was included in a record with a group of other Britten songs taken from a set of children’s songs entitled “Friday Afternoons”, also the title of the disc, which were composed for his brother who was a school teacher. Recordings of the Britten setting (or adaptations of it) include: * Janet Baker recorded Britten’s arrangement for high voice on her 1967 album “A Pageant of English Song: 1597-1961” with pianist Gerald Moore. * Singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, inspired by Baker’s version, included his interpretation on his debut 1994 album, Grace. About his version Buckley said, “The ‘Carol’ is a fairytale about a falcon who takes the beloved of the singer to an orchard. The singer goes looking for her and arrives at a chamber where his beloved lies next to a bleeding knight and a tomb with Christ’s body in it.” * Jeff Beck performs his (in turn) Buckley-inspired interpretation on his 2010 album, Emotion & Commotion. In the album liner notes, the English guitarist states: “When I heard Jeff Buckley’s album, the simplicity and the beauty of the way he sounded amazed me.” * Ian Read’s English neo-folk band Fire + Ice, on their 1992 album Gilded by the Sun. * New London Children’s Choir’s 2008 album, Pigs Could Fly. * The Chapel choir of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on their 2009 album, Ave Virgo. * New Zealand soprano Hayley Westenra on her 2009 album Winter Magic. * Libera’s 2011 album, The Christmas Album. * “Of Kings and Angels” by Mediaeval Baebes. * The Choirboys’ 2005 album, The Choirboys. * Voces8’s 2014 album, Eventide.

Curlew River

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Synopsis#

The story is told through four main characters: the Abbot (who acts as a narrator), the Madwoman, the Ferryman, and the Traveller, performed by monks. The all male cast is in the style of Noh theatre and suits the Anglicisation of the opera as a mystery play performed by monks. A chorus is provided by eight Pilgrims. Curlew River opens, as do the other two Church Parables, with a processional, to the hymn Te lucis ante terminum (To Thee before the close of day), in which monks/performers plus musicians, process in and take their places. At a cue from the organ, the Abbot, who acts as a narrator, introduces the “mystery” to be presented. The monks who depict the principal players don their costumes to stately instrumental accompaniment after which the play commences. The Ferryman sings of a commemoration that will be held that day at a shrine across the river. A Traveller approaches, wishing to cross the Curlew River. The Ferryman delays his departure and then they hear the cries of the approaching Madwoman. She is deranged out of grief for her son, who inexplicably disappeared a year ago. The Ferryman is initially reluctant to carry the Madwoman, but the other characters take pity on her and persuade him to give her passage. As they cross the river, the Ferryman tells the story of the shrine: it is the burial place of a boy who arrived the year before with a cruel master who had kidnapped him from his home near the Black Mountains. The boy was sick, and his master abandoned him by the river. Despite being cared for by the locals, the boy died. The Ferryman recounts the boy’s words: : I know I am dying… Please bury me here, by the path to this chapel. Then, if travellers from my dear country pass this way, their shadows will fall on my grave, and plant a yew tree in memory of me. The river people believe that the boy’s grave is sacred, that: : …some special grace is there, to heal the sick in body and in soul As the Ferryman tells his story, it becomes clear that the boy he describes is the disappeared child of the Madwoman. Grief-stricken, she joins the rest of the cast in praying at the boy’s graveside. At the climactic moment when all the men are chanting together, the voice of the boy (a treble) is heard echoing them, and his spirit appears above the tomb to reassure his mother: : Go your way in peace, mother. The dead shall rise again, And in that blessed day, We shall meet in heav’n At this point, the Madwoman achieves reconcilliation and her madness lifts. Britten depicts the moment with the Madwoman letting out a joyful, melismatic “Amen”, the final note of which resolves onto a long-delayed unison with the full cast – a signal of return and acceptance. Here the robing ceremony music returns and the players shed their costumes to resume normal dress. The Abbot spells out the moral of the drama and bids the audience farewell. The cast recess to the same plainsong with which the work began.

David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Release history#

David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was released on 2 May 1978 on the RCA Red Seal label. The Bowie-narrated Peter and the Wolf appeared on side A, and a music-only recording of the English composer Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945) appeared on side B, At the 21st Annual Grammy Awards in 1979, Peter and the Wolf was nominated for Best Recording for Children, losing the award to The Muppet Show, the first soundtrack album to the television show of the same name. The original 1978 US LP was pressed on green vinyl and included liner notes written by Mary Campbell. The album was also issued on 8-track and was later reissued on Compact disc and MP3. The 1994 reissue replaced the Nutcracker Suite with an Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra recording of Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals. Another reissue of the original LP by RCA/Music On Vinyl followed on 23 October 2014.

Death in Venice (opera)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

Britten had been contemplating the novella for many years and began work in September 1970 with approaches to Piper and to Golo Mann, son of the author. Because of agreements between Warner Brothers and the estate of Thomas Mann for the production of Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film, Britten was advised not to see the movie when it was released. According to Colin Graham, director of the first production of the opera, some colleagues of the composer who did see the film found the relationship between Tadzio and Aschenbach “too sentimental and salacious”. This contributed to the decision that Tadzio and his family and friends would be portrayed by non-speaking dancers. Ian Bostridge has noted themes in the work of “formalism in art and the perilous dignity of the acclaimed artist”.

Diversions for Piano Left Hand and Orchestra

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten wrote the work for Paul Wittgenstein, the Viennese-born pianist who lost his right arm in World War I. Britten met Wittgenstein in New York in July 1940 and sketched the piece in August at Owl’s Head, Maine. Although Wittgenstein complained about the orchestration, Britten initially declined to make any changes but later agreed to a few small alterations. Forever after, he felt bitter about them, and after 1950 he revised the score “to create an official version that would stop Paul playing it by rendering his version obsolete.” Wittgenstein retained the performing rights for a good number of years, which kept other pianists from performing the work. Wittgenstein played the premiere of Diversions with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Ormandy on 16 January 1942. The Philadelphia reviewers commented more on Wittgenstein and his work as a one-armed pianist than on the composition itself. The Philadelphia Record did describe the score as “ingeniously written”, while Musical America commented on the presence of both “pleasurable and dull moments” in the work. Wittgenstein gave the British premiere of the revised work in October 1950, with the (then) Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra under Trevor Harvey. Britten then made further revisions and in 1954 made his own first recording, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with soloist Julius Katchen.

Fanfare (ballet)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The ballet starts with a majordomo on stage reading Britten’s explanatory text from the score, then proceeds to an ensemble performance with dancers representing different instruments, including three women as a piccolo and two flutes, a woman as the oboe, a man and a woman as the clarinets, two men as the bassoons, a man and a woman as the violas, two men as trumpets, four men as a tuba and three trombones and three men as the percussion instruments. There are no major solos in the ballet.

Fanfare for St Edmundsbury

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Technical#

The fanfare is scored for three trumpets. The parts are notated for modern trumpets in C; however, they are actually written using only the notes of three different harmonic series based on F, C and D and could thus be performed on three natural trumpets in those three keys. The natural trumpets were not specified by the composer; indeed it may have been a bit early in the rediscovery of natural trumpet playing for it to be safe to do so. This technique had been used by the classical composers in horn section writing, to enable lines to be played outside the natural scale (e.g. 2 horns in C and 2 horns in D or E). Some of the first experimentation of this technique is demonstrated by F.G.A. Dauvernè from around 1850. Dauvernè was Arban’s teacher (the father of modern-day trumpeting) and wrote one of the last methods for the dying art of natural trumpet playing, including some of the first exercises for the cornet and valved trumpet. Nevertheless, the scoring is sometimes taken as signal enough to justify playing it on natural trumpets, on which it works well. This multitonal use of natural instruments is an interesting trick which might have caused some surprise at the height of the natural trumpet’s power in the Baroque era, when three playing together would almost always have been in the same key. Performance of the fanfare on modern valved instruments remains the norm and does not lessen the effect: the parts still feel like natural trumpet lines. Britten commented, “The trumpeters should be placed as far apart as possible, even when the Fanfare is played indoors.”

Festival Te Deum (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The Te Deum is one of the standard canticles of Anglican Morning Prayer. Benjamin Britten set it in 1934 (his Te Deum in C). He wrote the Festival Te Deum, scored for treble solo, four-part choir (SATB) and organ, on 8–9 November 1944. It takes about five minutes to perform. The work was commissioned for the centenary of St Mark’s Church, Swindon, an Anglo-Catholic church with a strong choral tradition. It was first performed there during a service on 24 April 1945 by the choir of St Mark’s with choristers from three other Swindon churches (St John’s, St Saviour’s, and St Luke’s). The soloist was Peter Titcombe, the organist was G.W. Curnow, and the conductor was J.J. Gale.

Five Flower Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten composed the music as a contribution to commemorate the 25th wedding anniversary of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, who were both botanists, philanthropists, and fond of flowers. Leonard Elmhirst was an agronomist who developed depressed rural regions such as in India and Devon county. Dorothy Elmhirst was a wealthy American, supporting education and women’s rights. They had gardens at their estate, Dartington Hall. Britten wrote the part songs in the tradition of Edward Elgar, Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. He scored the works for a four-part unaccompanied choir. He took into account that a student choir would perform the premiere on 23 July 1950 in the open air. The first performance was conducted at Dartington Hall by Imogen Holst. It was published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Friday Afternoons

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Not long after graduating from the Royal College of Music, Britten started composing his collection of mostly unison songs (the last song, “Old Abram Brown”, being in canon) to texts he selected from Walter de la Mare’s anthology Come Hither. Britten noted in his diary on 2 November 1933 (just over a month before his twentieth birthday) that he had composed that afternoon “a song, for R.H.M.B. & Clive House, very light & bad – ‘I mun be married a Sunday’”. “Ee-Oh!” followed on 19 December. There was no further mention in Britten’s diary of composing school songs until May 1934, when he spent time with Robert at Clive House and helped by coaching pupils in cricket and taking singing classes. He then resumed work on his songs, including “A New Year Carol”, a setting of the traditional “Levy-Dew”. The title of the collection was originally Twelve Songs for Schools, but at the suggestion of Robert Britten was changed to Friday Afternoons, since class singing was held at Clive House at that time in the week.

Gloriana

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

The opera premiered on 8 June 1953 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, six days after the coronation of Elizabeth II. The performance was attended by Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and the rest of the royal family, as well as other foreign guests in London for the coronation such as Queen Sālote Tupou III of Tonga, Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha of Norway and Jawaharlal Nehru. On 22 November 1963, the composer’s 50th birthday, Bryan Fairfax conducted a concert performance, which was the opera’s first performance in any form since its inaugural production in 1953. When the production toured in 1953 to Bulawayo and 1954 to Manchester and Birmingham, Joan Sutherland sang the role of Penelope. The second staging of Gloriana was undertaken by Sadler’s Wells Opera in 1966 with Sylvia Fisher in the title role, directed by Colin Graham. In 1973, at The Proms in London, a concert version under conductor Charles Mackerras was performed and recorded, based on Sadlers’ Wells Opera’s revival of the Colin Graham production, with Ava June and David Hillman as Elizabeth and Essex. Another eleven years were to pass before a recording appeared, that of 1984 under Mark Elder by the English National Opera (formerly Sadlers’ Wells Opera). with Sarah Walker and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson as Elizabeth and Essex, and the production also toured to the United States in New York, New Orleans and Texas. Other productions of the opera in Britain have been undertaken by Welsh National Opera in 1992 and by Opera North in 1994. At Opera North the production was directed by Phyllida Lloyd with Josephine Barstow and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, conducted by Paul Daniel, the production was extensively toured, revived and was recorded in 1999. Central City Opera (in Colorado) presented the North American premiere production of the opera in 2001, starring Joyce Castle as Elizabeth I. The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis mounted the work in 2005, with Christine Brewer as Elizabeth I. The Royal Opera House in London presented a performance in June–July 2013 to celebrate both the 60th anniversary of the opera, and the centenary of Britten’s birth. The performance starred Susan Bullock, Toby Spence, Patricia Bardon and Mark Stone.

Hymn to St Cecilia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

References#

Britten, Benjamin. Hymn to St. Cecilia. Op. 27. New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 1942.
Carpenter, Humphrey. Benjamin Britten, A Biography. New York: C. Scribner and Sons, 1992.
Rosamond McGuiness, Tony Trowles. “Ode (ii): Odes for St. Cecilia’s Day”, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 10 December 2004), grovemusic.com (subscription access).

External links#

Hymn to St Cecilia Britten Thematic Catalogue

Hymn to St Peter

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The period between 1954 and 1963 proved one of Britten’s most productive. However, 1955 was not a year dominated by composition. Britten spent much of the year performing, including tours with Peter Pears in Belgium and Switzerland and English Opera in Germany and Italy, and recording Saint Nicholas, The Little Sweep and The Turn of the Screw. Some of these were also time for relaxation, for example, skiing in Switzerland, and during these times Britten came up with ideas that formed the basis for his subsequent music. The exact date of composition of the Hymn to St Peter is unknown, but a letter dated 2 March 1955 from BBC Birmingham confirms it was being written at the time. Britten gave the work the opus number 56a. Opus number 56b is given to an Antiphon written the following year which is treated as an independent composition. The piece was the last to be composed by Britten before he first travelled to Asia. Hymn to St Peter was first performed at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, as part of the church’s quincentenary celebrations on 20 November 1955. It was subsequently recorded by The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers along with the Missa Brevis and other pieces by Britten. Like many of Britten’s compositions including the Festival Te Deum and shorter works, the piece was frequently performed with child singers. This use of children to perform complex works helped create a generation educated in English operatic works. His style also popularised a more natural “playground” children’s voice in opera.

Jubilate Deo (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , attended the premiere of Britten’s Gloriana, an opera about the reign of Elizabeth I, composed for the festivities surrounding the coronation of Elizabeth II that year. The royal couple dined with the composer after the performance. Later, perhaps in 1958, Philip requested that Britten compose a setting of Psalm 100 () for St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. The psalm is a regular part of Anglican morning prayer. Britten completed the music in Aldeburgh in February 1961, using the version of Psalm 100 found in the Book of Common Prayer. He set it in C major for four-part choir (SATB) and organ. It was written as a companion piece to his earlier 1934 Te Deum in C, and was published in 1961 by Chester Music. Although commissioned for St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the Jubilate was first performed in Leeds Parish Church (subsequently Leeds Minster) in 1961. It has since been performed and recorded often, and was performed for Philip’s 80th and 90th birthdays. At his request, the piece was included in his funeral service in the chapel on 17 April 2021, where it was performed by a small choir of four singers, with Luke Bond as the organist.

Les Illuminations (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten began writing the cycle in Suffolk in March 1939 and completed it a few months later in the United States. It was the first of his song cycles to gain widespread popularity. Nevertheless the work can be, and more often is, sung by a tenor: Britten conducted the piece with Peter Pears as soloist within two years of the premiere.

Structure#

The work takes about 21 minutes in performance.

Levy-Dew

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Lyric#

As with any traditional folk song, there are a number of variations. What is now regarded as the standard version is attested from 1849 onwards. Substantially the same wording was included by Walter de la Mare in Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1931), an anthology of verse for children. De la Mare’s version runs: Benjamin Britten set the De la Mare version of the song to music as “A New Year Carol” in 1934.

Matinées musicales

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In 1935 Benjamin Britten had composed the music for a five-minute short film by Lotte Reininger, called The Tocher. Using themes from works by Rossini composed a little over a century earlier, Britten wrote a score for boys’ voices, woodwind, piano and percussion. He later reworked the music for a full orchestra and added two more movements based on Rossini. The expanded suite, titled Soirées musicales, was premiered in 1937 and was used by the choreographer Antony Tudor for a new ballet, Soirée musicale, the following year. In 1941 Lincoln Kirstein wanted a new ballet for a South American tour by the American Ballet. Britten composed another suite after Rossini called Matinées musicales, joined it to the Soirées musicales music and added the overture to La Cenerentola as a finale. The resulting ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, was called Divertimento. The premiere of Soirées musicales had taken place close to home (London); the first performance of the music of Matinées musicales took place on 27 June 1941 in the Theatro Municipal (Rio de Janeiro), under the ballet orchestra’s conductor, Emanuel Balaban.

Missa Brevis (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Liturgy#

Britten’s Missa Brevis contains only four movements, omitting the Credo, hence the name brevis, short. The omission is notable because Mass at Westminster Cathedral would have included this movement. The piece rather seems predisposed towards the liturgy of the Church of England or the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, which often omit the sung Credo. In the Sanctus, Britten writes an optional transition between the first Hosanna and the Benedictus. This serves two functions: 1) it allows the sections to be elided seamlessly if the work is performed non-liturgically, and 2) it allows the section to be easily cut altogether for certain liturgical purposes, e.g. in the United States, the Benedictus was not officially approved by canon law and many Episcopal churches omitted it.

Mont Juic (suite)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Berkeley and Britten both attended the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in Barcelona, Spain in 1936. Berkeley had been living abroad for some years and had never previously met Britten. They soon became close friends. Another friend of Berkeley’s, Peter Burra, was also present, and he also became a friend of Britten’s. At the Festival, Britten accompanied the violinist Antonio Brosa in the first performance of his Suite for violin and piano, Op. 6. The highlight of the Festival, which Britten, Berkeley and Burra all attended, was the posthumous world premiere of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, “To the memory of an angel”, which was performed on Sunday 19 April, with the soloist Louis Krasner, under the conductor Hermann Scherchen. The next day, the trio visited Montjuïc, the hill that dominates the Barcelona landscape. On the Wednesday, 22 April, where they heard various Catalan folk tunes. Later that day Berkeley and Britten jotted down some of the melodies in a Barcelona café.

Music for a Time of War

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Program#

Music for a Time of War contains four 20th-century classical compositions based on the theme of war. Kalmar stated that the program was not inspired by current events and that not every composition was written specifically because of war. He also warned that audiences should not attend the performances anticipating an optimistic conclusion: The program began with Charles Ives The Unanswered Question, originally the first of Two Contemplations, composed in 1906 (along with its counterpart Central Park in the Dark). Theodore Bloomfield, who served as music director of the Oregon Symphony from 1955 to 1959, conducted its world premiere at the Juilliard School in New York in 1946. The second composition was The Wound-Dresser, American minimalist composer John Adams’ portrayal of Walt Whitman’s experience as a medic during the American Civil War. The program continued with Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem (1940), commissioned by the Japanese government to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire. The performance ended with Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 4, composed during 1931–1934.

Nocturne (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The piece sets eight sections of poetry to music, each accompanied by strings and (with the exception of the first) by an obbligato instrument: # Shelley – “On a Poet’s Lips I Slept” from Prometheus Unbound # Tennyson – “The Kraken”, with bassoon # Coleridge – “Encinctured with a twine of leaves” from The Wanderings of Cain , with harp # Middleton – “Midnight Bell” from Blurt, Master Constable, with French horn # Wordsworth – “But that night when on my bed I lay” from The Prelude (1805), with timpani # Owen – “The Kind Ghosts”, with cor anglais # Keats – “Sleep and Poetry”, with flute and clarinet # Shakespeare – Sonnet XLIII, with all the obbligato instruments

Noye's Fludde

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chester mystery plays#

English mystery or “miracle” plays were dramatised Bible stories, by ancient tradition performed on Church feast days in town squares and market places by members of the town’s craft guilds. They covered the full range of the narrative and metaphor in the Christian Bible, from the fall of Lucifer to the Last Judgement. From the many play cycles that originated in the late Middle Ages, the Chester cycle is one of four that have survived into the 21st century. The texts, by an unidentified writer, were revised during the late 15th century into a format similar to that of contemporary French passion plays, The story of Noah and the flood, the third play in the Chester cycle, was originally performed by the city’s Guild of the Drawers of Dee, otherwise known as the water-carriers. A feature of this play, observed by the historian Rosemary Woolf, is the depiction of Noah’s wife, and by implication women generally, as disobedient, obdurate and finally abusive, in contrast to the “grave and obedient” Noah and his patient sons. By the latter part of the 16th-century Reformation, the Church had grown less tolerant of mystery plays. A performance in Chester in 1575 is the last recorded from the city until the 20th century, when the Chester cycle was revived under the supervision of Christopher Ede, as part of the city’s Festival of Britain celebrations in June 1951.

Our Hunting Fathers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

In the mid-1930s Britten was employed by the GPO Film Unit, composing music for documentary films. Also working for the unit was the poet and critic W. H. Auden, with whom Britten collaborated on the films Coal Face (1935) and Night Mail (1936). Auden was something of a mentor to the young Britten, encouraging him to widen his aesthetic, intellectual and political horizons. Britten received a commission to compose a work involving orchestra for the 1936 Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Music Festival. Auden assembled the text for an orchestral song cycle, writing some of it and adapting other sections from existing poems. The work, described as a “symphonic cycle for high voice and orchestra”, was composed between May and July 1936 and titled Our Hunting Fathers. According to Sophie Wyss, the “members of the orchestra were not used to that kind of music and played about disgracefully. When the reference to rats came in the score they ran around pretending they were chasing rats on the floor!” Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was present, reproved the orchestra, with the result, Wyss recalls, that the players “pulled themselves together” in time for the next rehearsal held in Norwich on 21 September.

Owen Wingrave

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

Britten originally intended the work for both television and the stage, although after the stage premiere on 10 May 1973 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, it has rarely been seen in either medium. The US premiere of the opera was at the Santa Fe Opera in 1973, with Colin Graham directing the production. It was seen at Glyndebourne in 1997, following performances by Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1995. A new production by The Royal Opera opened in April 2007 in the Linbury Studio Theatre, with a reduced orchestration by David Matthews. It was performed in May 2009 at the Chicago Opera Theater as well as the Wiener Kammeroper in Vienna directed by Nicola Raab with English baritone Andrew Ashwin in the title role. A new production was presented in January 2010 by Opera Frankfurt and directed by Walter Sutcliffe. Opera Trionfo (Netherlands) presented the opera in 2013 directed by Floris Visser and conducted by Ed Spanjaard and a planned reprise in 2014. Visser also directed the opera at Theater Osnabrück in Germany; this production premiered on 16 January 2016 under the baton of Daniel Inbal. In September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Grange Park Opera produced a video version of the opera as part of its 2020 “Interim Season”, directed by Stephen Medcalf, with the setting moved from the Edwardian period to the 1950s.

Paul Bunyan (operetta)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Synopsis#

:Place: In and around the American forest :Time: Early- to mid- twentieth century

Prologue#

In the forest The old trees like life to be slow (“Since the birth of the earth”), but are challenged by four young trees and three wild geese. The geese explain that the old trees will have to leave when a Man arrives: Paul Bunyan will be born at the next blue moon. To the horror of the old trees, the moon turns blue (“It isn’t very often the conservatives are wrong”). First ballad interlude The Narrator recounts the birth and growth of Paul, who gained 346 pounds every week, became as tall as the Empire State Building and had a stride of 3.7 miles (“The cold wind blew through the crooked thorn”). One night, he awoke to find that his forehead was being licked by Babe the Blue Cow. The two of them leave for the South, where Paul sets up a camp.

Peter Grimes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

US: 1941–1943#

In the early years of the Second World War, Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears were living in the US. Britten’s compositions from his years there include the song cycle Les Illuminations (1940), the Sinfonia da Requiem (1940) and his operetta, Paul Bunyan (1941). In 1941 Britten came across a transcript in the BBC’s magazine The Listener of a talk by E.M.Forster about the 18th-century Suffolk poet George Crabbe. It began, “To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England”. Britten was filled with nostalgic feelings about his native Suffolk. Pears found a copy of Crabbe’s works in a second-hand bookshop and Britten read the poem The Borough, which contained the tragic story of the Aldeburgh fisherman Peter Grimes. He said later, “In a flash I realised two things: that I must write an opera, and where I belonged”. He and Pears began sketching an operatic scenario drawing on The Borough. In Crabbe’s poem, Ellen Orford’s tale is completely separate from Grimes’s and they are not mentioned as meeting each other. The Rector, Swallow, and the proprietress of the Boar inn, “Auntie”, and her nieces derive from other sections of The Borough, but other characters in the opera, including Balstrode, Boles and Ned Keene, are not in Crabbe’s original. While Britten and Pears were waiting for a passage back to England, the conductor Serge Koussevitzky asked the composer why he had not written an opera. Britten explained that doing so would necessitate putting all other work aside, which he could not afford to do. Koussevitzky arranged for the commissioning of the opera by the musical foundation he had recently set up. The fee was $1,000, and the opera was to be dedicated to the memory of Koussevitzky’s wife, who had recently died. Britten approached his friend the writer Christopher Isherwood, inviting him to write the libretto. Pleading pressure of work and some reservations about the effectiveness of the subject, Isherwood declined.

Phantasy Quartet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten composed Phantasy Quartet at age 18 as a student at the Royal College of Music, after his first work to which he assigned an Opus number, the Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra. He dedicated it to the oboist Léon Goossens, who played the first performance in a BBC broadcast on 6 August 1933, with members of the International String Quartet. The same players performed the concert premiere in London on 21 November that year. On 5 April 1934, it was performed in Florence for the International Society of Contemporary Music, as the first piece to win the composer international recognition.

Piano Concerto (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The piece was written in 1938 and then revised in 1945, including the replacement of the third movement. This was Britten’s first work for piano and orchestra, which he premiered as the soloist at a Promenade Concert in 1938. Dedicated to the composer Lennox Berkeley, the concerto is a bravura work that has gained more international attention in recent years. Britten described the piece as “simple and in direct form”. The revised version premiered at the Cheltenham Festival on July 2, 1946. The London premiere was performed soon after at the Proms in Royal Albert Hall with Noel Mewton-Wood as the soloist performing with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Basil Cameron. With Britten’s agreement, a theme from the revised version was used by his colleague William Walton as the basis of a 1969 orchestral work, Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten. The best-known recording of the concerto is by the English Chamber Orchestra with Sviatoslav Richter as the soloist and Britten conducting, from a 1970 performance at the Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, near Britten’s own home. Boosey & Hawkes published the score of the concerto and estimated that it is 33 minutes in length.

Plymouth Town

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The English composer Benjamin Britten was asked to write the Prelude and Fugue for St Matthew’s Church, Northampton. It was first performed there on St Matthew’s Day (21 September) 1946, three days after it was composed. There is a story that he wrote it in bed one morning before breakfast. The Prelude and Fugue was one of two pieces based on themes by other composers that Britten wrote in 1946; the other was the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which was based on a piece by Henry Purcell.

Reflection (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and history#

Britten was a competent player of both viola and piano, and his composition teacher Frank Bridge was also a professional violist. Britten composed Reflection as a work in a single movement on 1 October 1930. It was published by Faber & Faber. Reflction was performed as part of a BBC broadcast by Philip Dukes and Sophia Rahman on 28 November 1995, and first performed on stage on 24 October 1996 at the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, by Nobuko Imai and Ellen Corver. The duration is given as 4 minutes.

Rejoice in the Lamb

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Before writing Rejoice in the Lamb, Britten had established himself as a musical interpreter of traditional texts, as demonstrated with A Ceremony of Carols (1942) and his song cycle Les Illuminations (1939). In 1942, soon after returning to England from the United States, Britten was commissioned to write a choral piece for the 50th anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew’s Church, Northampton, which took place the following year. The request for a composition came from the priest Walter Hussey, who was known as a great admirer of art and music and believed that the church should be a patron of art as it was during the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods. Hussey intended for the 50th anniversary of the consecration to also be a celebration of the arts. As well as commissioning the cantata, Hussey commissioned artworks from Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. He approached Britten after listening to, and admiring, his Sinfonia da Requiem (1940). Hussey was also impressed the selection of music Britten chose for a ‘personal choice’ programme on the BBC, which featured Hussey’s favourite choral anthem – Mozart’s Ave verum corpus (1791). Whilst Britten was visiting the US with Peter Pears, the poet W. H. Auden introduced him to the 1939 W. F. Stead edition of Jubilate Agno – a poem by the 18th century poet Christopher Smart. Britten chose to set music to this poem for his cantata, inspired by the far-reaching ways in which Smart depicted and manifested God. The music critic Edward Sackville-West aided Britten’s selection of the text to use in his setting of the poem. After reviewing Rejoice in the Lamb, Hussey sent Britten a questionnaire with clarification questions about the text used within the piece, such as “3. On p.28 the first two rhimes of the Shawm should be ‘Lawn fawn’? ‘sound bound’ belong to the trumpet. (Note. The Shawm is the predecessor of the oboe!)” Hussey also produced an article on Rejoice in the Lamb in anticipation of the celebrations of St Matthew’s Church. The first performance of Rejoice in the Lamb took place on 21 September 1943 as part of the anniversary celebration of St Matthew’s Church, performed by the choir of St Matthew’s under direction of Charles Barker. It was first broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 31 October 1943, performed by the same choir and conducted by Britten.

Saint Nicolas (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Benjamin Britten wrote the cantata Saint Nicolas, Op. 42, from December 1947 to May 1948 Britten’s dedication reads: “This Cantata was written for performance at the centenary celebrations of Lancing College, Sussex, on 24 July 1948”.

I. Introduction#

Saint Nicolas opens with an introduction in which the mixed choir, representing a contemporary people, calls to Nicolas to speak to them across the ages. They sing, “Our eyes are blinded by the holiness you bear”, and they wish to hear the true story of Nicolas, the man. After being implored to “Strip off his glory”, Nicolas responds in a flourish, speaking to the choir, “Across the tremendous bridge of sixteen hundred years…” The first movement ends with a choral prayer. The choral introduction is centred on the pitch class E, prominent as a pedal tone for much of the first movement. Harmonic tension is achieved by brief chromatic meanderings that return to the central pitch; this technique is effective by providing harmonic and melodic interest while remaining accessible to young and/or amateur singers. Nicolas’ response to the chorus departs from the emphasis on E, travelling through many different keys, though generally using diatonic melodies. Nicolas ends his solo on pitch class A, which becomes the new pedal tone for the choral prayer.

Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and first performance#

Britten and his partner, Peter Pears, returned to Britain in April 1942 after three years in the United States. A few weeks later Britten was commissioned by the BBC to write incidental music for a documentary series on life in England to be broadcast to the US. The score was played by the RAF Orchestra, in which Dennis Brain was first horn. Britten was struck by Brain’s skill and needed little persuasion to write a concert piece for him. Brain may have been expecting a concerto, There, while also working on his opera Peter Grimes, he composed most of the Serenade. In April 1943 he wrote to a friend, “I’ve practically completed a new work (6 Nocturnes) for Peter and a lovely young horn player Dennis Brain, & Strings … It is not important stuff, but quite pleasant, I think”. The Serenade contains Britten’s first settings of English poems since On This Island in 1937. In selecting them Britten had advice from Edward Sackville-West, to whom he dedicated the work. Sackville-West wrote of the Serenade: Britten acknowledged the help Brain had given him with the horn part: The first performance was given at the Wigmore Hall in London on 15 October 1943 with Pears and Brain as soloists, and Walter Goehr conducting his eponymous string orchestra. It was well received: The Times called it “one of the most remarkable, and on any estimation most successful, of modern English compositions. … Britten’s imagination seems to be most readily kindled by words, which strike an equivalent musical image out of him with the utmost spontaneity”. The Musical Times thought it a “very likeable and uncommon piece”, but was inclined to Britten’s own view of the importance of the work, and thought the solo horn prologue and epilogue “unnecessary”. Britten was pleased by the reception of the piece: he wrote to an American friend, “We had a lovely show, with wonderful enthusiasm and lovely notices”.

Simple Symphony

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

1st violins
2nd violins
Violas
Cellos
Double basses

Borrowed themes#

The symphony has four movements, each quoting themes from two earlier works by Britten: :I. Boisterous Bourrée ::– Suite No. 1 in E for piano (18 October 1925), second movement (Bourrée: Allegro vivace) ::– Song (Song) (1923) A Country Dance (‘Now the King is home again’), text from Tennyson’s The Foresters, for voice and piano. :II. Playful Pizzicato ::– Scherzo (piano) (1924) Sonata for piano in B flat major, op. 5, Scherzo and Trio (Molto vivace) ::– Song (1924) The Road Song of the “Bandar-Log” (‘Here we go in a flung festoon’, text by Rudyard Kipling), for voice and piano. :III. Sentimental Sarabande ::– Suite No. 3 (for piano) (1925) Suite No. 3, in F minor, for piano, op. 25, Prelude (Allegro di molto) ::– Waltz for piano (1923) Waltz in B major for piano , (Tempo di valse) :IV. Frolicsome Finale ::– Piano Sonata No. 9 (1926) Piano Sonata No. 9, in C minor, op. 38, Finale ::– Song (1925) The entire piece lasts about 20 minutes. The pizzicato in the second movement makes it popular with mandolin players. Prominent in this popular theme are eight notes which sound familiar as echoing the opening of “Barwick Green”, the theme music to the long-running BBC Radio 4 programme, “The Archers”, written in 1924 by Arthur Wood. The third movement samples a traditional Swedish melody heard also in the popular Christian hymn “How Great Thou Art”.

Sinfonia da Requiem

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In the early autumn (northern hemisphere) of 1939, Britten was approached through the British Council to write an orchestral work for a special festivity of an unspecified great power. Britten agreed in principle to this request, provided that he would not be expected to furnish a piece that was in any way jingoistic. Britten subsequently learned that the requester was Japan, whose government had requested works by composers from several countries to celebrate the 2600th anniversary of the ruling dynasty. At this point, Japan was engaged fully in its invasion of mainland China but had not yet entered World War II formally or become allied with Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. It had also developed a firm acquaintance with Western classical music. Performing groups trained by Western musicians were numerous. Other Western composers who received commissions included Richard Strauss, who was directed to participate by Joseph Goebbels of the Nazi German government, and French composer Jacques Ibert. Along with the Western composers invited, several Japanese composers participated in the anniversary celebrations. With the help of poet and fellow expatriate W.H. Auden, Britten replied in writing, “in as dignified a manner as possible”, that his supplying a Christian work was no surprise, as he was a Christian and came from a Christian nation. He denied the alleged glumness of the Sinfonia and any intent of an insult, and said that the delay in receiving the contract had eliminated the possibility of composing a celebratory work within the deadline. Britten submitted this letter to the British consulate, which approved it and forwarded it to Tokyo. This was the last, he wrote, that he heard of the matter. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, relations between Britain and Japan were severed. Although the piece was rejected, the Japanese did not request the return of the commissioning fee. Instead, Viscount Konoye announced that Britten’s score had arrived too late for inclusion in the celebration.

Sinfonietta (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The work was originally scored for five winds and five strings: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, two violins, viola, cello and double bass. In February 1936, Britten revised the score for a small chamber orchestra with two horns and a small string section, which was only performed once during his lifetime. This version is available on hire from Boosey and Hawkes.

Movements#

A typical performance takes about 15 minutes. The movements are headed: The first movement is in sonata form. The writer, publisher and friend of Britten’s Erwin Stein suggested that the work as a whole is modelled on the Chamber Symphony No. 1 of 1906 by Arnold Schoenberg. In 1937, before Britten departed for America, his friend W. H. Auden inscribed his poem “It’s Farewell to the Drawing-room’s Civilised Cry” on the fly-leaf of a miniature score of the Sinfonietta. Britten was touched by the gesture.

Six Metamorphoses after Ovid

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Britten wrote Six Metamorphoses in the summer of 1951 as a means of relaxation during the composition of his opera, Billy Budd. 1951 was a productive year for the composer, and the opera took up most of his time. Most likely, Britten began composition after the 1 May premiere of an edition of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, which the composer had prepared in collaboration with Imogen Holst. Nevertheless, Britten’s musical diary entry from 28–29 March contains sketches of what would eventually be the opening of the “Niobe” movement, suggesting that Britten had been thinking about the composition for a while before its premiere. George Caird argues that the classical influences that inspired Six Metamorphoses were a broad influence on the composer, whose importance was comparable to that of Christian religion. Britten visited similar subject matter throughout his career, including Young Apollo (1939), The Rape of Lucretia (1946), and Phaedra (1975). Caird partially attributes the composer’s interest in classical mythology to his lifelong companion, Peter Pears, in addition to literary figures such as W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, and Hermann Melville, the latter having written the namesake novella that Britten adapted in Billy Budd. Caird specifically observes a fascination with the Apollo, who is referenced in Billy Budd and appears in both the “Phaeton” and “Niobe” myths of Six Metamorphoses. Sotos Djiovanis posits a broader thematic connection between the protagonist of Billy Budd and the characters of Six Metamorphoses, both of whom are subjected to the violence and influence of more powerful beings. Six Metamorphoses is the last of four pieces featuring solo oboe that Britten wrote throughout his career. His previous entries in the genre include Phantasy Quartet, Op. 2 (1932), Two Insect Pieces (1935), and Temporal Variations (1936). Of these, Six Metamorphoses is the only piece written for unaccompanied oboe, and at the time it was his only work written for a solo instrument other than piano. According to Sheri Lee Mattson, the piece likely influenced Britten’s later compositions for solo cello.

Soirées musicales

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

In 1935 the young English composer Benjamin Britten started to work for the GPO Film Unit, mainly writing incidental music for promotional documentaries. One of his early works for the unit was the music for a five-minute short film called The Tocher. Using three melodies by the 19th-century composer Gioachino Rossini, Britten arranged a score for boys’ voices, flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, clarinet, piano and percussion. He published the three movements as Rossini Suite in 1935. Two years later, in 1937, Britten reworked the music for a full orchestra and added two more movements based on Rossini: a “tirolese” (in the style of a Tyrolean peasant dance) called “La Pastorella dell’Alpi” (The Shepherdess of the Alps) from the Soirées musicales collection, and a tarantella, “La Charité” (Kindness), from Rossini’s Trois choeurs religieux. In 1938 the dancer and choreographer Antony Tudor created a ballet called Soirée musicale (singular) using Britten’s suite. It was presented at the London Palladium on 26 November, was given around the country, and, in 1939, on early television, and remained in the Ballet Rambert’s repertoire into the 1960s. In 1941 Lincoln Kirstein wanted a new ballet for a South American tour by the American Ballet. Britten composed another suite after Rossini called Matinées musicales, joined it to the Soirées musicales music and added the overture to La Cenerentola as a finale. The resulting ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, was called Divertimento. In 1955 a new ballet, Soirée, by Zachary Solov was given at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, using the music of Britten’s Soirées musicales.

Songs and Proverbs of William Blake

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Songs#

The cycle is through-composed, without breaks, but divides into the following sections: # “Proverb 1” # “London” # “Proverb 2” # “The Chimney Sweeper” # “Proverb 3” # “A Poison Tree” # “Proverb 4” # “The Tyger” # “Proverb 5” # “The Fly” # “Proverb 6” # “Ah! Sun-flower” # “Proverb 7” # “Every Night and Every Morn” “Proverb 7” and “Every Night and Every Morn” are from Auguries of Innocence; the other proverbs are from Proverbs of Hell, and the other poems are from Songs of Experience.

Spring Symphony

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten composed Spring Symphony on a commission by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. He wrote it for soprano, alto and tenor soloists, mixed choir, boys’ choir (often performed by children’s choir instead) and orchestra. when the composer was age 35. At the premiere, the soloists were soprano Jo Vincent, contralto Kathleen Ferrier, and tenor Peter Pears, The American premiere was by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in August 1950.

String Quartet in D major (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The quartet was completed during Britten’s second year of study at the Royal College of Music. Britten showed the score to his mentor Frank Bridge, who called its counterpoint “too vocal”. John Ireland, his official teacher, disagreed. It was played through privately by the Stratton Quartet in 1932. Britten was “v. pleased” with the result, “it sounds more or less as I intended it”. In 1974, the composer revised it for publication, at the urging of Donald Mitchell. The revisions seem to have been fairly small.

String Quartet No. 1 (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The quartet was commissioned by arts patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, while Britten was living in America. At the time, he and Peter Pears were staying as guests of the English piano duo Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson in Escondido near San Diego, California. It was the last important work of his American period. Britten remarked that three months to write it was “Short notice & a bit of a sweat, but I’ll do it as the cash will be useful!” The fee was $400 (roughly equivalent to $6700 in 2017). He had already intended to write a piece for the Griller Quartet, and they gave the UK premiere in 1943. The premiere recording was by the Galimir Quartet in 1951. In 1979, musicologist Peter Evans wrote that the quartet both had and had not secured a place in the repertory. It has been recorded by several distinguished quartets (see Recordings, below).

String Quartet No. 2 (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The quartet is in three movements: The first movement is in a kind of sonata form, unusual in that the first and second subjects (themes) give rise to a third subject, all involving the interval of a tenth. The second movement has been described as “night music”, but is very different in character to that of the night music of Béla Bartók. All four instruments play with mutes. The third movement is longer than the other two movements combined. Its title “Chacony” refers back to Purcell, who used that name for the musical form more often called chaconne or passacaglia. It consists of a theme (a nine-bar unit) and 21 variations, divided into four sections by solo cadenzas for the cello, viola and first violin. In a programme note for the premiere, Britten wrote: “The sections may be said to review the theme from (a) harmonic, (b) rhythmic, (c) melodic, and (d) formal aspects”. A typical performance takes about 2832 minutes.

String Quartet No. 3 (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Musical structure#

The quartet is in five movements: All five movements are in ternary (A-B-A) form. The quartet is in arch form, with a slow lyrical central movement enclosed by two scherzos themselves enclosed by two slow outer movements. English musicologist Peter Evans has remarked that that structure invites comparison with Bartók’s fourth and fifth string quartets; only to dismiss that comparison almost as soon as made. In “Duets”, Britten explores all six possible relationships between the four instruments in a quartet. The “Recitative” which begins the last movement includes five musical quotations from Britten’s 1973 opera Death in Venice (his last). The concluding “Passacaglia” (one of Britten’s favorite musical forms) is based on a musical motif from that opera. Its title, La Serenissima (English: the most serene), derives from the historic status of the former Republic of Venice as a sovereign republic, and is sometimes still applied to the modern city of Venice. A typical performance takes about 25 minutesalthough according to musicologist Roger Parker, Britten’s markings are so precise that the timing of each movement is specified almost to the second.

Te Deum in C (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History and versions#

Britten dedicated the work: “Written for Maurice Vinden and the Choir of St Mark’s, N. Audley St, London”. It was first performed in concert at the medieval church of St Michael, Cornhill, London, on 13 November 1935 by the St Michael’s Singers and organist George Thalben-Ball, with soprano May Bartlett, conducted by Harold Darke. The work was among Britten’s first compositions to be published, by Oxford University Press. Commissioned by the BBC, Britten orchestrated the work between 14 and 20 January 1936, for harp or piano and string orchestra. This version was first performed in concert at the Mercury Theatre, London, on 27 January 1936 in the Lemare concert series, by the Choir of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn, conducted by Reginald Goodall. Britten played the viola in the unnamed orchestra. In 1961, Britten composed Jubilate Deo, also in C major, as a companion piece.

Tema "Sacher"

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Benjamin Britten’s health declined rapidly in his final years, the result of a stroke he experienced during an unsuccessful surgical operation on his heart in 1973 and progressive heart failure. The latter left him exhausted and severely restricted his ability to compose. Britten reported to fellow composer Oliver Knussen on January 21, 1976, that his physical condition only permitted “an occasional tiny bit of writing”. Britten’s remaining compositions after he completed the opera Death in Venice in 1973, according to Ian Tait, the composer’s general practitioner, were “more in response to the expectations of others—more not to let them down, than because of any overwhelming passion in himself”. On December 13, 1975, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich asked Britten to participate in a collaborative musical project that would commemorate the seventieth birthday of the Swiss conductor and music patron Paul Sacher. The cellist wanted a theme and variations for solo cello, to which various other composers would also contribute. He proposed that Britten compose the work’s theme based on the Sacher hexachord, the dedicatee’s musical monogram. The composer immediately accepted and began work on the Tema “Sacher”. He completed it on January 5, 1976. In spite of Rostropovich’s original idea, the other participating composers chose to compose works according to their personal preferences. The Tema “Sacher” was the last of Britten’s cello works composed for Rostropovich.

The Building of the House

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Text#

The optional text is taken from Psalm 127, adapted by Imogen Holst from The Whole Book of Psalms (set in English). It is set using the chorale melody “Vater unser im Himmelreich”. In performance the chorale can be sung by a choir or played on the organ.

History#

The piece was written for the inauguration of the Snape Maltings concert hall, which took place in June 1967. This has been described as the first performance, although it was played at the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London which took place earlier the same year. Constantin Silvestri introduced the work to Bournemouth, conducting the BSO in a performance on November 23, 1967.

The Burning Fiery Furnace

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Synopsis#

The Burning Fiery Furnace tells the story of Nebuchadnezzar (the historical Nebuchadnezzar II) and the three Israelites, Ananias, Misael and Asarias (corresponding Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego), who were thrown into a furnace for their refusal to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold. However, God saves them from death, as the voice of an angel joins the Israelites in a ‘Benedicite’.

Original recording#

Britten himself, along with Viola Tunnard, supervised the first commercial recording of this work, for Decca/London, with the following participants: * Nebuchadnezzar: Peter Pears * The Astrologer: Bryan Drake * Ananias (Shadrach): John Shirley-Quirk * Misael (Meshach): Robert Tear * Asarias (Abednego): Stafford Dean * The Herald: Peter Leeming * Chorus of Courtiers: Graham Allum, Peter Bedford, Carl Duggan, David Hartley, John McKenzie, Clive Molloy, Malcolm Rivers * The Acolytes: Robert Alder, Paull Boucher, James Newby, Stephen Price, Christopher Taylor The instrumentalists were Richard Adeney (flute), Neill Sanders (horn), Roger Brenner (trombone), Cecil Aronowitz (viola), Keith Marjoram (double bass), Osian Ellis (harp), James Blades (percussion) and Philip Ledger (organ). * Conductor: Benjamin Britten

The Company of Heaven

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Britten composed the music between 8 August and 22 September 1937 as incidental music for a radio broadcast for Michaelmas on 29 September 1937. The complete work lasted just under 45 minutes. One of the numbers, a setting of Emily Brontë’s poem “A thousand gleaming fires”, was the first piece of music Britten wrote for Pears, with whom he had recently begun a friendship that became a lifelong personal and professional partnership. Although Britten and Roberts discussed publishing the piece or reworking it for concert performance, Britten did neither. The score came into the possession of Harvey around the beginning of the Second World War, and after the war he arranged a concert version, which he conducted on BBC radio on 20 May 1956. Harvey’s version comprised Nos. 2, 6, 7 and 8. Another version was published in 1990. Reviewing that performance, Hilary Finch wrote in The Times, “bearing up the mawkish tales of angelic rescue and hymning of watchers and holy ones, is a robust cyclic plan, some healthy string writing (Britten had recently completed the Frank Bridge Variations) and, best of all, a direct, unselfconscious engagement with the word so characteristic of early Britten.” She concluded:

The Golden Vanity (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Premiere#

The Golden Vanity was composed in 1966, and premiered on 3 June 1967 at the Aldeburgh Festival by the Vienna Boys’ Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben), to whom it was dedicated. Britten’s notes on the score indicate that the work came about as a result of a request from the boys of the Wiener Sängerknaben themselves, to perform on their tours. “They particularly asked that they should not have to play girls’ parts”, Britten wrote. The Golden Vanity was published as his Op. 78. According to Graham, the Vienna Boys Choir gave a “riotous” performance at the premiere; but when they returned to England to perform it at the Royal Festival Hall some months later, they were “absolutely shattered and exhausted” after “one of their interminable world tours”. Britten “was furious and lodged a formal complaint with the director of the choir for exploiting and exhausting the boys”. The work was subsequently dropped from their repertoire.

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Little Sweep

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s Make an Opera!#

The Little Sweep is the second part of a stage production entitled Let’s Make an Opera!. The first part takes the form of a play in which the cast portray contemporary amateur performers conceiving, creating and rehearsing the opera. Intended as an introduction to and demystification of the operatic genre, the play also provides an opportunity to rehearse the audience in the four “Audience Songs” they will sing after the interval. The format of the play altered radically in the early months of its existence, passing through at least three versions (including one specially written for radio) utilising different approaches to the exposition. An initial version set “on the stage of any village hall” during an open dress-rehearsal for an already-written work morphs into one where the “Little Sweep” narrative is related by Gladys (Mrs. Parworthy) as a true story which happened to her grandmother, Juliet Brook, when Juliet was a fourteen-year-old in 1809 or 1810. In this telling the long-term happy ending is revealed, that Juliet’s uncle (the father of the visiting Crome children) took Sammy the rescued sweep-boy on as a gardener’s boy. Gladys’s mother remembered him as “old Samuel Sparrow, the head gardener”, who used to give her apricots on her birthday. The group of six adults (including the conductor) and six children choose this as the subject of their home-made opera, libretto by Anne Dougall, a young Scottish bank clerk, and music by Norman Chaffinch, an enthusiastic amateur. The opera is written, composed, cast, produced and rehearsed in the space of less than an hour. The adult characters in the play were given the cast members’ own first names and invented surnames, while the children originally had the first names of the children in the opera. For these, Britten used the names of the children and nephews of Fidelity Cranbrook, (wife of John Gathorne-Hardy, 4th Earl of Cranbrook), a personal friend of the composer’s, whose family seat Glemham House lies a few miles inland from Aldeburgh, in Great Glemham close to Snape. In later versions of the play the children also acquired the names of the respective cast members, and Elisabeth Parrish became Pamela, to reflect the part of Rowan having been taken over by Pamela Woolmore, who originally understudied the role.

The National Anthem (Benjamin Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

Britten arranged the anthem for an SATB chorus and an orchestra consisting of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B-flat, two bassoons; four horns in F, two trumpets in C, three trombones, one tuba; a percussion section that includes timpani, cymbals, side drum, bass drum; and strings.

Notable performances#

The piece was performed by Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra, along with the overture The Building of the House, at the openings of two English concert halls in 1967.

The Poet's Echo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Prince of the Pagodas

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

In January 1954, Sadler’s Wells Ballet announced that Cranko was collaborating with Benjamin Britten to create a ballet. Cranko devised a draft scenario for a work he originally called The Green Serpent, fusing elements drawn from King Lear, Beauty and the Beast (a story he had choreographed for Sadler’s Wells in 1948) and the oriental tale published by Madame d’Aulnoy as Serpentin Vert. Creating a list of dances, simply describing the action and giving a total timing for each, he passed this to Britten and left him to compose what eventually became The Prince of the Pagodas. Britten dedicated the score to Imogen Holst and Ninette de Valois.

The Prodigal Son (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Synopsis#

The story centers on a farm family, which consists of a father and his two sons. Servants also help with working the land. The elder son and the servants leave to work the fields for the day. The younger son hears a voice that tempts him to indulge his “most secret longings”. The younger son asks his father for his inheritance, which the father grants. The younger son makes his way to the city. There, he is deprived of his fortune and left penniless. The younger son then returns home and asks his father’s forgiveness. His father receives his younger son with rejoicing, but the elder son is initially angry at his father’s reaction, after he himself has loyally worked the fields. The father rebukes his elder son, and asks him to be reconciled to his younger brother, who has returned to restore the family.

The Rape of Lucretia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

The opera was first performed at Glyndebourne in England on 12 July 1946. It is the first work to which Britten applied his term “chamber opera.” The opera debuted in the United States on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre in a production staged by Agnes de Mille which opened on 29 December 1948 and closed on 15 January 1949 after 23 performances. The cast notably included Giorgio Tozzi as Tarquinius, Kitty Carlisle as Lucretia, Lidija Franklin as Bianca, Brenda Lewis as the Female Chorus, and Adelaide Bishop as Lucia. In 1996 the opera was presented at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis directed by Britten expert and friend, Colin Graham. It also appeared in the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s 2009 season. In 2013, the opera was performed for the first time by Glyndebourne since its premiere, directed by actress Fiona Shaw. This production opened on tour to great acclaim. Shaw’s production premiered at Glyndebourne’s festival in 2015 to similar acclaim. In a 2026 “survivor-centric” production by University of Toronto Opera in Toronto, Lucretia did not kill herself. Director Anna Theodosakis said the reference in the libretto to “her body being borne through our city” could be interpreted instead to refer, in contemporary terms, to “someone’s personal trauma being circulated endlessly by the media.”

The Turn of the Screw (opera)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

The opera was commissioned by the Venice Biennale, written in four months, and given its world premiere on 14 September 1954, at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, which had been lost until its rediscovery in the early 2000s. It was staged at the New York City Opera in 1996 with Lauren Flanigan as the Governess and Christine Abraham as Miss Jessel. In 2003, English Touring Opera presented the work throughout England and three years later Glyndebourne Touring Opera toured the UK with their new production of the work before reviving it in 2007 at their summer festival, Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Opera Queensland staged Neil Armfield’s production in 2005 which featured the solo professional operatic debut of Kate Miller-Heidke as Flora. Los Angeles Opera performed the Glyndebourne Touring Opera production of the work in 2011 under music director James Conlon. OperaUpClose reframed the opera in their 2011 production, the story being told from the point of the view of the Governess as a patient in an asylum. It is left unclear as to whether the story stems completely from her mind or whether she arrived there after her experiences in the Bly house. Opera Moderne produced the work in 2012 at Symphony Space in New York under the stage direction of Luke Leonard. Opera Holland Park received positive reviews of their presentation of the work in six performances in summer 2014. For a limited run in 2018, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre presented a co-production with the English National Opera, directed by Timothy Sheader and conducted by Toby Purser. On 6 June 2021, a version by OperaGlass Works was broadcast by BBC4. The new staging of the opera, at Wilton’s Music Hall, London, had been scheduled for a run in March 2020, but this was prevented by the lockdown. Instead, the performance was reworked as a film, shot on location at the Victorian music hall. The whole space of the venue, not just the stage, was used to tell the story.

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is scored for symphony orchestra consisting of the following instruments: *Woodwinds: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B and A, two bassoons *Brass: four horns in F, two trumpets in C, two trombones, one bass trombone, one bass tuba *Percussion: timpani, bass drum, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, snare drum, woodblock, xylophone, castanets, tamtam, whip *Strings: harp, first and second violins, violas, cellos, double basses

This England (album)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and composition#

This England, released by Dutch record label PentaTone Classics on November 13, 2012, Symphony No. 5 and Cockaigne were performed February 18 and 19 as part of the program “Kahane Plays Mozart”; the works by Britten were performed May 12–14 as part of the program “Arnaldo Cohen Plays Tchaikovsky”. In his review of the February 18th live performance, The Oregonian James McQuillen noted disturbances from the audience, including coughing and the ringing of one attendant’s cell phone. McQuillen suggested the disturbances could be removed from the audio by engineers if the February 19th recording was not preferable. which also included works by Britten and Vaughan Williams and which received Grammy Award nominations for Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered Album, Classical. The recording was the second of four albums expected to be produced by the Symphony and PentaTone by the end of the 2014–2015 season, all under Kalmar’s artistic leadership. Like Music for a Time of War, This England was recorded in hybrid multichannel (surround sound) Super Audio CD format. In addition to recording the performances, the Boston-based company Soundmirror edited, mixed and mastered the audio.

Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Benjamin Britten studied with Frank Bridge from 1927. In 1932 he began writing a set of variations on a theme from one of Bridge’s works, as a tribute to his teacher, but he was distracted by other matters and the work went nowhere. In May 1937, the organisers of the Salzburg Festival invited Boyd Neel and his orchestra to perform three works at that year’s Festival, in August, only three months away. One of those works had to be a previously unperformed work by a British composer. Neel knew Britten from having conducted his film score for Love from a Stranger in 1936, The first sketch was completed in 10 days, Its British premiere took place on 5 October of the same year. It was first recorded in 1938 by Neel conducting his own string orchestra. A recording with Britten himself conducting did not appear until 1967, with the English Chamber Orchestra for Decca. It has also been recorded by many other ensembles, with conductors including Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Charles Groves, Sir Alexander Gibson, Iona Brown and Steuart Bedford.

Variations on an Elizabethan Theme

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

At the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 1952, Benjamin Britten had attended the premiere of La guirlande de Campra, a collaborative work by seven French composers, and this gave him the idea of inviting several English composers to join him in each writing a variation on a theme from the time of the first Queen Elizabeth to honour her modern-day successor. Lennox Berkeley, Michael Tippett and William Walton all readily accepted Britten’s invitation. Alan Rawsthorne declined outright. Edmund Rubbra initially agreed, but pulled out of the project at the eleventh hour, at which time Arthur Oldham and Humphrey Searle were brought in. The theme was Sellinger’s Round or The Beginning of the World, an Irish dance tune, as harmonised for the keyboard by William Byrd, the leading composer from the time of Elizabeth I. It was orchestrated for the occasion by Imogen Holst, but she did not provide a variation of her own.

Violin Concerto (Britten)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Revisions#

Britten revised the concerto in 1950, 1954, and 1965. Britten wrote to Albert Goldberg in October 1950, saying:

Music#

The concerto is scored for solo violin and an orchestra of 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling cor anglais), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion (timpani, glockenspiel, cymbals, triangle, bass drum, side drum, and tenor drum), harp, and strings. The concerto is written in three movements: This form, although in three movements, is highly unlike that of concertos from the Classical and Romantic eras. First used in the First Violin Concerto of Sergei Prokofiev, this design is also evident in the concertos of William Walton and later in Shostakovich’s first violin concerto, that has a structure that clearly recalls Britten’s concerto.

War Requiem

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The War Requiem, first performed on 30 May 1962, was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original 14th-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The reconsecration was an occasion for an arts festival, for which Michael Tippett also wrote his opera King Priam. Britten, a pacifist and conscientious objector, was inspired by the commission, which gave him complete freedom in deciding what to compose. He chose to set the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead interwoven with nine poems about war by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Owen, who was born in 1893, was serving as the commander of a rifle company when he was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal in France, just one week before the Armistice. Although he was virtually unknown at the time of his death, he has subsequently come to be revered as one of the great war poets. Philip Reed has discussed the progression of Britten’s composition of the War Requiem in the Cambridge Music Handbook publication on the work. Britten himself acknowledged the stylistic influence of Requiems by other composers, such as Giuseppe Verdi’s, on his own composition. David B. Greene has discussed Britten’s ‘indictment’ of religious music in this work. Britten dedicated the work to Roger Burney, Piers Dunkerley, David Gill, and Michael Halliday. Burney and Halliday, who died in the war, were friends of Peter Pears and Britten, respectively. According to the Britten-Pears Foundation’s War Requiem website, Dunkerley, one of Britten’s closest friends, took part in the 1944 Normandy landings. Unlike the other dedicatees, he survived the war but took his own life in June 1959, two months before his wedding. None of the other dedicatees have known graves, but are commemorated on memorials to the missing.

Young Apollo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000