Music TheoryPrint

Benjamin Britten

Nocturne (Britten)

Nocturne, Op. 60, is a song cycle by Benjamin Britten, written for tenor, seven obbligato instruments and strings. The seven instruments are flute, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon, harp, French horn

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

*Work details, Boosey & Hawkes

Composer
Benjamin Britten