Professional Documents
Culture Documents
must have realized that the left-wing, pacifist, agnostic and queer
model they offered him provided a suitable identity niche in which to
lodge his particular personal concerns, though few of his friends
believed that he was ever entirely comfortable with it.
The immediate result of the friendship with Auden, apart from the
flood of film scores, was a large orchestral song cycle on human
relations to animals that would both attack the fox-hunting set at
home and act as a parable for the worsening political situation
abroad. Early in 1936, Auden chose three poems and wrote a
prologue and an epilogue. In April Britten attended the ISCM festival
in Barcelona, where he played his Suite with Antonio Brosa and heard
Berg's Violin Concerto. The important new work, Our Hunting
Fathers, went forward during the summer, and predictably met some
disapproval at its first performance at the Norwich Triennial Festival in
September. Later even Britten himself treated it as something of an
embarrassment. Perhaps Auden's voice ventriloquizes too insistently;
yet it is Britten's first major work to encapsulate a social or political
issue in a way calculated to challenge received opinion because of
the unusual combination of high drama and biting irony in an up-todate eclectic score brilliantly orchestrated. If this way of thinking about
music and art were all that Auden gave Britten, it was ultimately the
gift that turned him into a composer of lasting impact. On this aspect
of his work, Britten later wrote (in connection with Sinfonia da
Requiem), I don't believe you can express social or political or
economic theories in music, but by coupling new music with certain
well known musical phrases, I think it's possible to get over certain
ideas (Letters, 705).
In January 1937, Edith Britten died unexpectedly after on illness.
Britten was both devastated and, at a level just beginning to find
expression in his diary, relieved to be free from her controlling
influence. An immediate result was an exploration of those
submerged sexual feelings that Auden, Isherwood and others had
attempted to urge to the surface. On 6 March, at lunch with the
conductor Trevor Harvey, he met a tenor, named in his diary as Peter
Piers. A year later they were sharing a London flat. For some time
there was a parental element in Pears's relation to Britten preventing
a complete union, which only came about as a result of happy sexual
experiences early in their time in North America (193942). It was a
fortunate match for Britten on account of his real need for protection.
On a cultural level it was unusual for being between two individuals of
the same race, class and age, each with commensurable and
connected talents that led to their spurring one another on.
In 1937 and for some time after, Britten was still trying out potential
liaisons of a similar kind. But much of his own affectional and sexual
imagination he invested in people younger than himself. In summer
1938 he renewed contact with Wulff Scherchen (son of the conductor
Hermann), who had made an impression four years earlier in
Florence. Scherchen, now 18, responded with alacrity and an affair
appears to have ensued. Piers Dunkerley, a slightly younger boy
whom Britten had met in 1934 while visiting his old preparatory
school, brought out a typically parental, advisory streak in the
composer: I am very fond of him thank heaven not sexually, he
wrote, but I am getting to such a condition that I am lost without some
children (of either sex) near me (Letters, 403).
So it was prove: the ease with which he could enter into children's
worlds, as well as the precipitous moments in his encounters with
young boys, are outlined in some detail by Carpenter (especially 341
54). It seems that Britten was captured at many levels by the notion of
return to a perfect state symbolized by childhood it has been called
innocence, but a more useful concept is that of the pre-symbolic
explored by disciples of Lacan or of nescience in the words of
Hardy's poem A time there was (set in Winter Words). The entry into
the symbolic (language) and the patriarchal order make this state
impossible to recapture, and much of Britten's music is about the
difficulty and pain of separation from it, but it is arguably his principal
fount of non-verbal inspiration. Lack produces desire (in the already
lost adult); and the sexual element that occasionally obtrudes, and
can never satisfy or be satisfied, is a symptom of that lack. What
Britten discovered possibly aided by his constant invocation of presymbolic elements such as the mother's voice (many noted that
Pears's voice strongly resembled his mother's) was a way of
accessing powerful messages from beyond the pre-verbal barrier,
even perhaps occasionally of breaking that barrier, at a time when
musical modernism was setting up barbed wire fences everywhere
and driving art music increasingly into the cold unfeeling camps of
masculine intellect and order.
Meanwhile, the stream of film and incidental music was augmented
by some important events, such as the amazingly rapid completion of
a major new work, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, for the
Boyd Neel Orchestra to play at the Salzburg Festival in August 1937.
With its penetrating and unexpected parodies of genres and styles,
and magnificent fugue and finale containing other references to
Bridge's music, this work became for a time a standard against which
other Britten works were judged. His adopting the congenial variation
form had been foreshadowed in the slight Temporal Variations for
oboe and piano written and performed at the end of 1936 and
abandoned the Times critic's reaction was to become a standard
refrain: It is the kind of music that is commonly called clever
(Letters, 784). The same might have been said of the Auden song
collection that followed the Bridge Variations. On this Island open with
a Baroque flourish and Purcellian melisma that no sensitive English
songwriter of the previous 50 years would have countenanced, and
ends with a throwaway dance-hall tune to match Auden's parody of
bourgeois materialistic existence. December 1937 saw the
completion of the suite of Catalan dances, Mont Juic, written in
collaboration with Lennox Berkeley in memory of Peter Burra, a close
friend of Pears's. Berkeley was to move to the Old Mill at Snape that
Britten had bought using his inheritance from his mother.
social concerns. The Japanese government, who paid for it, would
not perform it at the festival celebrating their empire's 2600th
anniversary; one can only wonder at Britten's naivety in accepting the
commission.
193942 was a prolific period, for Britten also completed the Violin
Concerto in the summer and autumn of 1939 when Britain declared
war. The work opens in a suitably foreboding manner and ends in
melancholy and nostalgia so different from the ebullient Piano
Concerto of little more than a year earlier. There was also the rather
homespun Canadian Carnival, a Sonatina romantica to wean a keen
amateur pianist host from Weber, Diversions for piano (left hand) and
orchestra, two two-piano works, a second Rossini suite, to be used by
Balanchine in a work for Lincoln Kirstein's American Ballet Company,
String Quartet no.1 and the eccentric-sounding Scottish Ballad for two
pianos and orchestra. Among works completed early in the visit,
besides the Violin Concerto and incidental music for a further BBC
play, was a setting of seven poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,
intended for Pears's Round Table Singers, but abandoned. In late
1941 came another occasional piece (now called An American
Overture) heavily indebted to Copland and written for Rodzinski and
the Cleveland Orchestra; when it came to light in the early 1970s,
Britten commented that his recollection of that time was of complete
incapacity to work; my only achievements being a few Folk-song
arrangements and some realisations of Henry Purcell (Letters, 985).
One important project of the American period, Paul Bunyan, was also
one of its most problematic, a patronizing attempt by W.H. Auden to
evoke the spirit of a nation not his own in which Britten was a
somewhat dazzled accomplice he was vague about the nature of
the title role's manifestation and staging only six months before it
opened. A bruising response from old stinker Virgil Thompson [sic]
and the other New York critics did not help matters. The work was
withdrawn and reinstated as op.17 only when Britten took it up near
the end of his life (a good overture, wisely abandoned as too long,
was subsequently orchestrated and published). The composition and
production of Bunyan involved Britten and Pears in exchanging the
luxury of the Mayer Long Island household for Auden's louche and
alcoholic lifestyle in a Brooklyn Heights villa; from this bohemian
atmosphere they fled soon after the production of Bunyan at
Columbia University in May 1941. They took up an invitation to stay
with the duo pianists Rae Robertson and his wife Ethel Bartlett at
Escondido in California (where the Scottish Ballad, dedicated to them,
was mostly written); there they came across the radio talk by E.M.
Forster printed in The Listener that began: To talk about Crabbe is to
talk about England. Dissatisfaction with American life had already
surfaced in Britten's letters (the country has all the faults of Europe
and none of its attractions, he wrote to a friend: Letters, 797), as well
as in one of those illnesses that often signalled his dissociation from
his surroundings. Forster's article served as a catalyst to initiate the
next stage in Britten's progress.
The flight to North America had enabled Britten to find out more about
himself in general, to mature as an artist and person, and to find a
certain level of acceptance among others and, more important, in
himself about his sexual orientation (although many people recall
continuing signs of shame). It had also given him an opportunity to
reflect on his direction. The epiphany brought about by Forster's
article not only sent him and Pears to Crabbe for the extraordinary
subject of his first real opera but also may have given him the idea
that if he did return it should be with the intention of becoming the
central classical music figure in Britain (as Copland was struggling to
do in the far more diffuse culture of the USA).
Whether or not this was a fully conscious process, Britten began to
define his relation to the British musical tradition during the American
years. There was, for example, the need to release aggression
towards it, palpable in the 1941 essay England and the Folk-Art
Problem, a statement so angry that it studiously avoids mentioning
Vaughan Williams or Holst; Parry and Elgar are projected as the
binary opposition haunting English composition, the one favouring
the amateur idea and folk-art, the other somewhat surprisingly
seen as emphasizing the importance of technical efficiency and
[welcoming] any foreign influences that can be profitably assimilated.
The authenticity of folksong is intelligently attacked, and composers'
dependence on it as raw material is deemed either unsatisfactory or
the sign of a need for discipline which the second rate cannot find in
themselves. Actual English folktunes are allowed a certain quiet,
uneventful charm but seldom have any striking rhythms or
memorable melodic features. Yet the ambivalence, reflected in so
many aspects of his life, did not prevent Britten from making a
considerable investment in arranging them ostensibly for himself
and Pears to perform, though as time went on and volume after
volume succeeded the first (printed in 1943) ulterior motives might be
suspected. They gave Britten the chance, for example, to declare his
independence from the Pastoral School by conceiving the exercise
of arrangement very differently. Unlike Cecil Sharp and Vaughan
Williams, who assigned an idealized, essential artistic quality to the
melodies which their accompaniments were thought to reflect, Britten
recognized that the venue changed the genre and turned them in
effect into lieder or art-song, and proceeded brilliantly on that
premise. To see how far he got one should turn from the easy
seductiveness of The Salley Gardens and the psychological
perceptiveness of The Ash Grove to the exquisite and exhilarating
settings of Moore's Irish Melodies published in 1957.
Equally important in this redefinition of himself are Britten's
realizations of the music of Purcell and his contemporaries the
Tudor composers (except for Dowland) were out of bounds because
of their adoption by Vaughan Williams and the pastoralists. Two song
arrangements date from at least 1939, several were done in the USA,
and a much larger number were prompted by the 1945 celebrations
of the 250th anniversary of Purcell's death. The choice was in tune
with Britten's aesthetic as an aspiring dramatic composer: he had
recently married to Eric Crozier. The third was a cantata for the
opening of the first Aldeburgh Festival on 5 June 1948, with an official
premire a few weeks later (24 July) to celebrate the centenary of
Lancing College (Pears's old school). Britten must have been by this
time secure enough in his underlying convictions as a composer to
ignore the undoubted disapproval of modernist taste for any
endeavour involving a large number of amateur musicians. Apart from
Peter Pears as the adult saint, Saint Nicolas required only a
professional string quartet and percussionist, with a proficient organist
and duo pianists. The school choir was supplemented at Lancing by
parts for choirs of other linked schools, and the work included two
hymns for the audience. This was not among Britten's most
adventurous or even most accomplished works, and would have
appeared ludicrous to the postwar avant garde. But from the lilting A
major-Lydian waltz to which the story of Nicolas's birth and growth to
adolescence is told to the broader issues of both involvement in
Christian history and shared experience, it seems now as courageous
and adventurous as the experimental music of the time. Forster, who
had met and admired Britten and Pears, and was attending the first
Aldeburgh Festival as lecturer, called it one of those triumphs outside
the rules of art (The Listener, 24 June 1948) and reported with
enormous enthusiasm about the entire festival.
Meanwhile, the English Opera Group needed new material to keep
going, and Britten had promised a version of The Beggar's Opera for
their 1948 season, to be directed by Tyrone Guthrie (who had
recently produced Peter Grimes at Covent Garden). Fortunately,
Britten worked from an early edition of the original in which the tunes
lack Pepusch's bass lines. He could therefore abandon the
constraints of the Purcell realizations and construct both harmony and
orchestration; he even brought numbers together in interesting
cumulative sequences. The project signifies the culmination of a
process of selfconscious rapprochement with history and national
identity, part of what Britten thought necessary, as a newly connected
and located artist, to fulfil his role. Today, the work seems overelaborate, trading immediacy for musical invention: the music goes
upscale, like the accents of the opera singers who generally take the
roles, and compared with the Brecht-Weill Die Dreigroschenoper it
sounds musically tame and lacking in bite. The drama is in line with
the critique of society, religion, the law, family and social order that
Britten's works notably encompass. But the tone, as in Albert Herring,
often veers towards cosiness in a way that undercuts the portrayal of
brutality and mendaciousness that Britten would earlier have
condemned more roundly in musical terms. The process is best
understood with reference to Britten's own ambivalent position as a
discreet homosexual (Alan Sinfield's term), which encouraged both
protest or subversion but also accommodation to the status quo. The
particular consistency of that mix at any given time is a key to a
deeper understanding of his career.
For the 1949 season, Crozier again worked on a project involving
audience participation, the entertainment for young people Let's
Make an Opera, which included four audience songs. The opera that
formed the second half of the event was The Little Sweep, a scaleddown version of the oppression theme in which the middle-class
audience can identify with the stage children, who help poor
mistreated working-class Sam, the chimney-sweep, to freedom. This
constituted genuine release and fulfilment for Britten even if
Carpenter (p.176) is right to comment on its regressive psychology.
Britten was deliriously happy while writing the opera in spring 1949;
less so with the project it interrupted, the Spring Symphony. He
described his doubts and miseries over it to Serge Koussevitzky,
who commissioned it. The doubts must have been largely about
projecting an orchestral song cycle as a symphony. He explained the
symphony as not only dealing with the Spring itself but with the
progress of Winter to Spring and the reawakening of the earth and of
life, and its form as in the traditional four-movement shape of a
symphony, but with the movements divided into shorter sections
bound together by a similar mood or point of view (Britten, 194950,
p.237); he saw no need to produce a traditional symphonic argument
but rather wanted to project a series of controlled gestures in four
distinct parts, the second and third analogous to the slow movement
and scherzo of a symphony, and with a single poem for the more
extended, joyous finale. The separate settings have an effect
comparable to the series of discrete numbers through which Britten
had learnt in his operas to generate cumulative feeling and climactic
structures. The first invocatory movement is in ritornello form, and a
fairly strict thematics of instrumentation persists, suggesting Baroque
affects rather than Romantic arguments. In the finale, a celebratory
episode complete with rude blasts on the cowhorn, things are kept in
motion by a rousing waltz tune upon which is projected, in a climactic
peroration, the famous Sumer is icumen in cast in duple time. The
emotional centre of the work, however, lies in the final section of the
second part, a setting of W.H. Auden's Out on the Lawn. Britten would
have known the significance of this poem (from which he selected
four of the 16 stanzas) as a description of an actual spiritual
experience of June 1933 which the poet called a Vision of Agape
and which prefigured his later conversion to Christianity. Britten's
setting, which incorporates some of his most distinctive orchestral
and vocal effects, recalls for an anguished moment in its last stanza
the mood of the more radical Our Hunting Fathers, again providing a
reminder of the darker reality of life, a touch that balances and
therefore validates the retrogressive search for innocent states of
mind in other parts of the score.
In late 1949 Britten found time to write a wedding anthem, Amo ergo
sum, for his friends Lord Harewood and Marion Stein on a text by
Ronald Duncan, and in early 1950 a charming and classic set of
choral songs, the Five Flower Songs, for the Elmhirsts of Dartington
Hall.
Britten, Benjamin
5. Success and authority, 19515.
again the hefty drum-beat motif that underpins the trial and ultimately
derives from the sea chase earlier in Act 2. The implication that Vere
is hopelessly contaminated by his role in killing men as leader in
battle as well as naval disciplinarian is powerful on the social as
well as personal level. The advance of Billy Budd on Peter Grimes in
both dramatic and musical terms is nowhere so telling as in this
culminating moment, but is also readily apparent in almost every
other aspect of the score.
The music of Billy Budd took over a year to write and months to
score, leaving time only for two small-scale instrumental pieces
written for individual soloists, Lachrymae, for viola (William Primrose)
and piano, and Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, for oboe solo (Joy
Boughton); the dedicatees played them at successive Aldeburgh
festivals in 1950 and 1951. In addition, there was the realization of
Purcell's Dido and Aeneas for the English Opera Group's 1951
season. In the aftermath of Billy Budd Britten wrote the extraordinary
Canticle II, on the Chester Miracle Play version of the story of
Abraham and Isaac a footnote to the theme of the opera, perhaps,
but arresting in its own right for the opening, in which the alto and
tenor voices combine to invoke the voice of God, punctuated by wide
piano arpeggios reminiscent of the opening of the first quartet.
The death of George VI in 1952 catapulted Britten into another largescale opera for Covent Garden. That year, Imogen Holst arrived at
Aldeburgh as amanuensis and devoted disciple: her presence at
festival concerts with Britten and Pears added status to Britten's
English lineage her father's work was also admitted into the local
canon. Britten had been exploring various libretto ideas for some time
with Forster's friend, William Plomer, an able literary figure personally
less demanding than the novelist, when Lord Harewood began
negotiations that led to the commission of an opera on the coronation
of Elizabeth II in 1953. Elizabeth's Tudor predecessor seemed the
appropriate subject for what was intended as a quintessentially
national opera with a Verdian sweep about it. To base it on Lytton
Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, however, was to put the image of the
Virgin Queen to as tough a test as Vere had undergone. His portrait
deploys Freudian psychology to underpin an anti-authoritarian view of
monarchy. Britten no doubt intended to create a portrait of monarchy,
warts and all, in which a cultured homosexual man could believe: the
brilliance of the celebratory style he devised (avoiding Elgarian
imperialistic overtones) as well as the subtlety of his response to
Elizabethan music in the songs and dances show that he was as
inspired by this project as by the challenge of Billy Budd. Plomer had
him read, as an antidote to Strachey, J.E. Neale's biography.
Elizabeth's own speeches lie behind the debated Norwich episode
that enshrines her ideal concept of authority rooted in humanity,
intelligence and generosity. To invoke the conflict between public and
private to explain Gloriana, however, fails to get at the ultimate
confusion that is part of homosexual social experience, and
undermines the opera: if Britten imagined he was creating an Aida, or
more pertinently a Boris Godunov, in which the private, human and
and Orchestra, completed early in May 1963, was part of the series of
works for Rostropovich. Referred to by its composer during
composition as a sinfonia concertante, it proceeds, in spite of the
opening dark flourishes that appear to herald a conventional concerto
arrangement, as a discourse between equal forces, the soloist
democratically exchanging roles with the orchestral basses at the
recapitulation of the extensive and regularly proportioned sonata-form
first movement. The dark, furtive-sounding Scherzo is followed by an
Adagio that connects to the last movement and is strongly related to
it. The year closed with a more intimate instrumental work, Nocturnal
after John Dowland, for Julian Bream, whose interpretations of
Dowland songs with Pears had become justly celebrated. Writing for
the virtuoso guitar rather than the accompanimental lute, and
adopting the strategy of the earlier Lachrymae, Britten allows the
theme, the song Come, heavy sleep, to emerge in Dowland's own
accompaniment only after eight insomniac variations (the last a
ground-bass treatment of a detail from Dowland's accompaniment)
have succeeded each other without ever achieving the final repetition
of the second strain, whose curtailed presentation lends a witty and
moving air to the conclusion.
Meanwhile, there was the long-postponed Sumidagawa to face. For
the purpose, Britten, Pears and entourage (Graham as stage director
and Holst as amanuensis) took an unusual six-week working vacation
in Venice. The conception belonged to the visit to Japan eight years
earlier, when Plomer had recommended that Britten see all forms of
Japanese theatre, but particularly the n. Although his initial reaction
was of embarrassed amusement at the stylized acting, he soon
became entranced by the story of a distraught mother searching for
her lost child, went to see it again, and procured a translation of the
Sumidagawa of the early 15th-century dramatist Jr Motomasa. He
later visited the kabuki theatre, enjoyed shamisen songs at a geisha
evening and heard the gagaku orchestra whose sounds were to
reverberate in Curlew River. The principal n characteristic of limiting
expressivity in acting and presentation in search of a more profound
underlying truth that springs from its stylization resonated with
Britten's own training, and its all-male cast appealed to a gender
identification intensified by upbringing and sexual orientation. Plomer
and Britten initially planned an operatic translation of the original,
presumably with musical imitation (oh, to find some equivalent to
those extraordinary noises the Japanese musicians made!: Cooke,
D1998, p.141). In April 1959, however, came a change of heart: not a
n pastiche (which, however well done, would seem false and thin)
but a medieval church drama set in pre-conquest East Anglia. It was
to be a Christian work, with Kyrie eleison replacing Amida Buddha:
in 1963 Britten finally identified himself as a dedicated Christian (see
Carpenter, 421)
In Curlew River Britten made a radical attempt to return Western
music to its melodic origins (before the disease of harmony germed,
as it were). A plainchant hymn, Te lucis ante terminum, provides the
melodic fount (and, typically, the outer frame), its intervals extended
to include the augmented 4th for the cry of the curlew and of the
protesting Madwoman. The resonant acoustic works with the
plainchant-inspired lines, already blurred by the heterophonic
technique, emphasized here to a new degree, to create a new kind of
harmony more like the bright but kaleidoscopic hues of stained
glass, with similar iridescence. Characterization is by single
instrumental colours the Ferryman his active horn, the Traveller a
double-stopped double bass, the Madwoman a flute, imitating her
extraordinary vocal line with its heavy portamento. The organ
(imitating the sh) pours cold water on the ensemble; the harp injects
its prismatic detail; and the percussion suggests otherness, whether
exotic or historical. A disciplined ensemble of actor-singers and
instrumentalists in monks' habits three of them assuming the masks
of the main characters in a ritual robing performs, without
conductor, from a score with special notational features to promote
synchronization. The audience is mesmerized by an hour's-worth of
radical renovation which opens out into time unaccounted for or
differently measured. It is a parable about various Christian themes
charity, the afterlife but the focus is on the visionary Madwoman,
one of Britten's few really sympathetic portrayals of women, sung by
Pears in the original.
1964 was marked by other innovations in Britten's life. He parted
company with his longtime publishers, Boosey & Hawkes; the literary
publishers Faber & Faber founded Faber Music for him, with Donald
Mitchell its head. Rosamund Strode entered the Aldeburgh household
as Britten's music assistant, replacing her friend and mentor Imogen
Holst (who continued to be involved with the festival). In July Britten
flew to Colorado to receive the first Aspen Award for an outstanding
contribution to the advancement of the humanities. In his acceptance
speech, later published, he encapsulated his views about the relation
of the composer to society, and about his own needs. I want my
music to be of use to people, to please them my music now has its
roots, in where I live and work. And I only came to realise that in
California in 1941 (Britten, 1964, pp.212). Later in the year, Britten
reported to Plomer that his doctors had ordered rest, and that he and
Pears would take 1965 off, beginning with a lengthy trip to India with
the Hesses. He nevertheless composed the first of the three cello
suites before the New Year (having earlier written cadenzas to
Haydn's Cello Concerto in C for Rostropovich). Soon after his return
from India, in March, he was awarded the Order of Merit (in place of
T.S. Eliot who had recently died); this was the highest possible British
honour (Vaughan Williams was the last musician to belong among the
24 most eminent living citizens personally appointed by the queen).
Composition continued in the sabbatical year. The Indian holiday
saw the completion of Gemini Variations, 12 variations and a fugue
on a theme by Kodly written for Hungarian prodigy twins, Zoltn and
Gabriel Jeney, who between them covered the flute, violin and piano
and could accordingly change instruments between variations and
during the final fugue. The following month produced a work in
complete contrast the bleak Songs and Proverbs of William Blake,
sonority for Britten, in which the sexual outlaw, having made her
forthright confession, finds nobility, peace and purity in an almost
unsullied C major; sweet, fleeting, reminiscences of her life flicker as
she dies and her spirit ascends in an apotheosis of muted string
diatonic chord clusters rising through two octaves over the expiring
pedal C.
Hans Keller, to whom Britten dedicated his last major work, the String
Quartet no.3, wrote that here the composer had taken that decisive
step beyond into the Mozartian realm of the instrumental purification
of opera (Herbert, E1979, p.xv). Another way of putting that without
endorsing the genre over the substance is to say that there is really
no music of Britten's that fails to render meanings. Owing to his
eternal seeking and questioning and the ambiguity with which he
managed to imbue the common musical symbols of his tradition,
those meanings are rarely simple. Quotations from Death in Venice
occur in the recitative introduction to the passacaglia finale,
appropriately sketched on a last visit to Venice in November 1975,
and allusions to the opera are made in various ways throughout. The
agenda probably includes the redemption or transfiguration of
Aschenbach, with whom the composer clearly identified, to whose E
major both first and last movements reach. But the most complete
tonal resolution, on Britten's own C major, occurs in the enigmatic
central movement of the five, Solo; and the end, when it arrives, not
only comes with a question, as Britten put it, but draws attention both
to the arbitrary nature of closure (in art as in life) and in retrospect to
the more complete closures earlier on (see Rupprecht, in Cooke,
D1999, p.258). Whatever the interpretation, few listeners will doubt
that this is as profound a work as anything Britten wrote.
It is nevertheless appropriate that his last complete work, finished in
August 1976, was the unpretentious and cheerful Welcome Ode,
written for a local occasion a visit of the Queen Mother to Ipswich
and designed for young people's chorus and orchestra. As Evans
pointed out (D1979, p.292), the development of instrumental teaching
and growth of youth orchestras in Britain made it possible for Britten
to demand a good deal, and it is fitting that his mission as a composer
should have ended not with the high-flown quartet but this
straightforward and unpatronizing gesture to the children he loved so
much. In fact, work had become increasingly difficult during 1976, and
was made up largely of what he might at other times have called
chores a Tema Sacher that Rostropovich could play for the 70th
birthday of Paul Sacher, an arrangement for viola and string orchestra
of Lachrymae and some folksong arrangements for Pears and Ellis.
In July he started on a project to mark Rostropovich's first season
with the National SO in Washington, DC, a cantata setting of the
poem Edith Sitwell had dedicated to him, Praise we Great Men. The
work remained incomplete, reaching a performable state only through
the efforts of Colin Matthews, the young composer who had assisted
with the scoring of Death in Venice and had become more intimately
involved in Britten's composing as the older composer became
increasingly infirm.
Issues of gender and race are the more important because Britten
shines out as one of the few composers of the 20th century with
claims to effective political and social engagement in other areas. His
political commitment, begun under the tutelage of Auden and
Isherwood and developed through contact with Forster and others,
stems from a complicated sense of himself as a homosexual. Sensing
the difficulties surrounding the place of the homosexual in society,
and positioning himself so that his partnership with Pears, projected
as normal, masked his paedophilia, Britten pursued a political
agenda far removed from the liberal socialism of his predecessor
Vaughan Williams. It was similarly rooted in the past, and involved a
sense of disengagement from immediate politics that increased as
Britten grew older (Carpenter, 486). Along the lines of interwar
homosexual pacifist ideals, it placed personal relations above
allegiance to institutions; it put the individual before society; it tended
to show institutions such as the law, the military and the church as
hypocritical, unjust or simply evil; it favoured erotic relations over
marriage; it portrayed the patriarchal family as shallow and
oppressive; it passionately argued justice for the victim and the
victimized; and it presented the difficulty of homoerotic relations as a
legacy of this society. Britten's assimilation into the British
establishment, and his silence on contemporary issues, effectively
camouflaged the devastating extent of this social and political critique
in his works.
Two critical responses to the Other, or the marginal, have been
discerned (see Champagne, The Ethics of Marginality, Minneapolis,
1995): the liberal humanist response, granting it greater subjectivity
by trying to remake it in the image of the dominant or centre; and
valorizing or privileging the marginality of the Other by making a
resistant and transgressive use of the very lack at the centre that
caused the construction of the margin. As a person compromised by
his position in society, Britten nevertheless managed to cling to some
semblance of the second view. All a poet can do is to warn, reads
the War Requiem epigraph: but to warn, or do anything else, the poet
has to be heard. It may be that North America taught Britten that to
work for centrality at home would ultimately be more artistically and
therefore politically effective than marginality abroad as a means of
articulating a message to society from that margin where Britten, at
least, always imagined he lived. His old left friends like Slater and
Auden were irritated to see him as a courtier, and gay politics, from
which he distanced himself, have moved far beyond his nervous
position. Yet one still needs to acknowledge his consistency and
integrity in pursuing, sometimes to his friends acute discomfort, a
fairly incisive and certainly passionate line on pacifism and
homosexuality in relation to subjectivity, nationality and the institutions
of the capitalist democracy in which he lived. This line he maintained
in his work rather than his life, where he acted out a role of charm and
compliance laced with occasional brutality. The political stance is all
the more remarkable because it barely exists anywhere else in art
music outside avant-garde circles already too self-marginalized to
Op.
Title
Genre, acts
Composition
17
Paul Bunyan
operetta,
2
prol, 193941
Libretto :
W.H. Auden
First performance :
cond. H. Ross, New York, Columbia U., 5 May 1941
rev. version
19745
19445
1946;
1947
19467
First performance :
cond. S. Bedford, BBC, 1 Feb 1976; stage, cond. Bedford, Snape
Maltings, 4 June 1976
Publication; autograph :
vs 1978, fs 1993
33
Libretto :
M. Slater, after G. Crabbe: The Borough
First performance :
cond. Goodall, London, Sadlers Wells, 7 June 1945
Publication; autograph :
vs 1945, study score 1963; US-Wc
37
Libretto :
R. Duncan, after A. Obey: Le viol de Lucrce
First performance :
cond. Ansermet, Glyndebourne, 12 July 1946
Publication; autograph :
vs 1946, vs 1947 (rev. edn), study score 1958
39
Libretto :
E. Crozier, after G. de Maupassant: Le rosier de Madame Husson
rev.
First performance :
cond. Britten, Glyndebourne, 20 June 1947
Publication; autograph :
vs 1948, study score 1970
45
The
Little an
1949
Sweep [Act 3 entertainment
of Lets Make for
young
an
Opera, people
op.45]
Libretto :
Crozier
First performance :
cond. N. Del Mar, Aldeburgh, Jubilee Hall, 14 June 1949
Publication; autograph :
vs 1950, study score 1965
50
Billy Budd
op,4
195051
rev. version
op, 2
1960
Gloriana
op, 3
19523;
1966
Libretto :
E.M. Forster and Crozier, after H. Melville
First performance :
cond. Britten, London, CG, 1 Dec 1951
Publication; autograph :
vs 1952
First performance :
cond. Britten, BBC, 13 Nov 1960; stage, cond. Solti,. London, CG, 9
Jan 1964
Publication; autograph :
vs 1961, study score 1985
53
Libretto :
W. Plomer, after L. Strachey: Elizabeth and Essex
rev.
First performance :
cond. Pritchard, London, CG, 8 June 1953
Publication; autograph :
vs 1953, vs 1968 (rev. edn), study score 1990; GB-Lbl
54
The Turn
the Screw
of op, prol, 2
1954
Libretto :
M. Piper, after H. James
First performance :
cond. Britten, Venice, Fenice, 14 Sept 1954
Publication; autograph :
vs 1955, study score 1966
57
19556
Noyes Fludde 1
19578
A Midsummer op, 3
Nights Dream
195960
Libretto :
J. Cranko
First performance :
cond. Britten, London, CG, 1 Jan 1957
Publication; autograph :
study score 1989
59
Libretto :
Chester miracle play
First performance :
cond. Mackerras, Orford Church, 18 June 1958
Publication; autograph :
vs 1958, fs 1959
64
Libretto :
Britten and Pears, after W. Shakespeare
First performance :
cond. Britten, Aldeburgh, Jubilee Hall, 11 June 1960
Publication; autograph :
vs 1960, study score 1962
71
Curlew River
Libretto :
Plomer, after J. Motomasa: Sumidagawa
First performance :
dir. Britten, Orford Church, 12 June 1964
Publication; autograph :
rehearsal score 1965, fs 1983
77
The
Burning church parable, 19656
Fiery Furnace 1
Libretto :
Plomer, after Bible: Daniel iiii
First performance :
dir. Britten, Orford Church, 9 June 1966
Publication; autograph :
rehearsal score 1968, fs 1983
78
Libretto :
C. Graham, after old Eng. ballad
First performance :
Vienna Boys Choir, dir. A. Neyder, Snape Maltings, 3 June 1967
Publication; autograph :
1967
The
Golden vaudeville for 1966
Vanity
boys and pf
81
The
Son
Libretto :
Plomer, after Bible: Luke xv.1132
First performance :
dir. Britten, Orford Church, 10 June 1968
Publication; autograph :
rehearsal score 1971, fs 1986
85
Owen
Wingrave
op, 2
196970
in op, 2
19713;
19734
Libretto :
Piper, after James
First performance :
cond. Britten, BBC TV, 16 May 1971; stage, cond. Bedford, London,
CG, 10 May 1973
Publication; autograph :
vs 1973, fs 1995
88
Death
Venice
rev.
Libretto :
Piper, after T. Mann
First performance :
cond. Bedford, Snape Maltings, 16 June 1973
Publication; autograph :
vs 1975, fs 1979
The King's Stamp, fl + pic, cl, perc, 2 pf, AprilMay 1935 [rec. 17 May]; GPO, dir. W.
Coldstream, 1935
Coal Face (verse: W.H. Auden, M. Slater), spkr, whistler, SATB, perc, pf, MayJune
1935 [rec. 19, 26 June]; GPO producer J. Grierson, dir. A. Cavalcanti, 1935
CTO: the Story of the Central Telegraph Office, fl, ob, cl, perc, pf, July 1935 [rec. 20
July]; GPO, producer S. Legg, 1935
Telegrams, boys' vv, fl, ob, cl, perc, pf, July 1935 [1st recording session 20 July];
GPO [film unidentified]
The Tocher (film ballet), boys' vv, fl + pic, ob, cl, perc, pf, July 1935 [rec. 20 July];
GPO producer Cavalcanti, animator L. Reiniger, 1938 [see also choral, Rossini
Suite]
Gas Abstract, fl, cl, bn, perc, pf, AugSept 1935 [rec. 3 Sept]; ?BCGA [film
unidentified]
Dinner Hour, fl, cl, perc, pf, vn, vc, Sept 1935 [rec. 16 Sept]; BCGA, dir. A. Elton,
1936
Title Music III, fl, cl, perc, pf, vn, vc, Sept 1935 [rec. 16 Sept]; BCGA, dir. A. Elton, ?
1936 [film unidentified]
Men behind the Meters, fl, ob, cl, perc, glock, pf, vn, vc, SeptOct 1935 [rec. 16
Sept, 2 Oct]; ARFP for BCGA, dir. A. Elton, 1936
Conquering Space: the Story of Modern Communications, fl, ob, cl, bn, perc, pf,
Sept 1935 [rec. 1 Oct]; GPO, dir. Legg, 1935
How the Dial Works, fl, ob, cl, perc, pf, Sept 1935 [rec. 1 Oct]; GPO, producer R.
Elton, R. Morrison, 1937
The New Operator, fl, ob, cl, bn, perc, pf, Sept 1935 [rec. 1 Oct]; GPO, producer J.
Grierson, dir. Legg [soundtrack for silent film; never released]
The Savings Bank, fl, ob, cl, bn, perc, pf, Sept 1935 [rec. 1 Oct]; GPO, dir. Legg,
1935
Sorting Office, fl, ob, cl, bn, perc, pf, Sept 1935 [rec. 1 Oct]; GPO, dir. H. Watt
[soundtrack for silent film; never released]
Negroes/God's Chillun (Auden), SeptNov 1935, rev. Jan 1938 [rec. 8 Jan]; S, T, B,
TB chorus, ob + eng hn + tambourine, perc, hp, pf + b drum; GPO, 1938
GPO Title Music 1 and 2, fl, ob, bn, tpt, perc, hp, vn, va, vc, db, ?Nov 1935; GPO
[film unidentified]
Night Mail (J. Grierson, Watt, B. Wright; verse: Auden), spkr, fl, ob, bn, tpt, perc, vn,
va, vc, db, Nov 1935Jan 1936 [rec. Dec 1935Jan 1936] (2000); GPO, producer
Grierson, dir. Watt, Wright, sound dir. Cavalcanti, 1936 [see instrumental ensemble]
Peace of Britain, fl, cl, tpt, perc, pf, str, March 1936 [rec. 21 March]; Freenat Films
The Dark Valley (Auden), solo female v, fl, eng hn, cl, tpt, perc, May 1940; CBS
(New York), 2 June 1940
The Dynasts (after T. Hardy), brass, perc, str, 1940; CBS (New York), 24 Nov 1940;
music lost
The Rocking-Horse Winner (Auden and J. Stern, after D.H. Lawrence), male vv, fl,
cl, perc, hp, 1941; CBS (New York), 6 April 1941; music lost
Appointment (N. Corwin), orch, 1942; BBC, 20 July 1942
An American in England (6 programmes: Corwin), orch, July 1942; CBS (London),
JulySept 1942
Lumberjacks of America (R. MacDougall), fl, cl, bn, 2 tpt, trbn, perc, pf, hp, db, July
Aug 1942; BBC, 24 Aug 1942
The Man Born to be King, play 10: The Princes of this World (D.L. Sayers), solo
male v, pf, 1942; BBC, 23 Aug 1942 [song: Bring me garlands, bring me wine]
The Man Born to be King, play 11: King of Sorrows (Sayers), S/Mez, male chorus,
hp/pf, Sept 1942; BBC, 20 Sept 1942 [song: Soldier, soldier, why will you roam]
Britain to America (programmes i/9, ii/4, ii/13: L. MacNeice), orch, 1942; BBC North
American Service, Sept, Nov 1942, Jan 1943
The Four Freedoms, programme 1: Pericles (MacNeice), 1943; BBC, 21 Feb 1943;
music lost
The Rescue (E. Sackville-West, after Homer: Odyssey), S, Mez, T, B, orch, 1943;
BBC, 256 Nov 1943 [for concert version, see Arrangements by others of Britten
works]
A Poet's Christmas (Auden), SATB, 1944; BBC, 24 Dec 1944 [music for: 1 A
Shepherd's Carol, 2 Chorale after an Old French Carol]
The Dark Tower (MacNeice), tpt, perc, str, 1945; BBC, 21 Jan 1946
Men of Goodwill (compiled L. Gilliam and L. Cottrell), orch, 1947; BBC, 25 Dec
1947
theatre
Timon of Athens (W. Shakespeare), 2 ob, perc, hpd, OctNov 1935; producer N.
Monck, London, Westminster Theatre, 19 Nov 1935
Easter 1916 (M. Slater), mixed vv, perc, accdn, Dec 1935; producer A. van
Gyseghem, London, Phoenix, 8 Dec 1935; music lost
Stay down Miner (Slater), T/Bar, TB chorus, cl, perc, vn, vc, May 1936; producer W.
Walter, London, Westminster Theatre, 10 May 1936
The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (trans. L. MacNeice), SATB, 2 fl, eng hn, cl, perc,
Oct 1936; producer R. Doone, London, Westminster Theatre, 1 Nov 1936
The Ascent of F6 (W.H. Auden, C. Isherwood), solo female v, 2 solo male vv, SATB,
perc, ukelele, 2 pf, Feb 1937; producer Doone, London, Mercury, 26 Feb 1937
Pageant of Empire (Slater), mixed vv, cl, a sax, tpt, perc, pf, vn, vc, db, Feb 1937;
London, Collins Music Hall, 28 Feb 1937
Out of the Picture (MacNeice), S, solo male v, SATB, tpt, perc, pf, Dec 1937;
producer Doone, London, Westminster Theatre, 5 Dec 1937
Spain (Slater), mixed vv, cl, vn, pf, June 1938; London, Mercury, 22 June 1938;
music lost
On the Frontier (Auden, Isherwood), male v, chorus, 2 tpt, perc, accdn, pf, OctNov
1938; producer Doone, Cambridge, Arts, 14 Nov 1938
They Walk Alone (M. Catto), org, Nov 1938; producer B. Viertel, London, Q Theatre,
21 Nov 1938
The Seven Ages of Man (Slater), 1938; London, Mercury, 1938; music lost
Johnson over Jordan (J.B. Priestley), S, fl + pic, orch, JanFeb 1939; producer B.
Dean, London, New, 22 Feb 1939 [for pubd Suite, see Arrangements by others of
Britten works]
This Way to the Tomb (R. Duncan), S, A, T, B, SATB, perc, pf 4 hands, 1945;
producer E.M. Browne, London, Mercury, 11 Oct 1945
The Eagle has Two Heads (J. Cocteau, trans. Duncan), brass, perc, 1946; producer
M. MacDonald, Hammersmith, Lyric, 4 Sept 1946
The Duchess of Malfi (J. Webster, adapted Auden), 1946; producer G. Rylands,
Providence, RI, Metropolitan, 20 Sept 1946; music lost
Stratton (Duncan), 1949; producer J. Fernald, Brighton, Royal, 31 Oct 1949; music
lost
Am stram gram (A. Roussin), mixed vv, pf, 1954; producer V. Azaria, London,
Toynbee Hall, 4 March 1954 [for pubn, see vocal: chorus with instrumental
ensemble or solo instrument]
The Punch Revue (Auden, W. Plomer), female v, pf, 1955; producer V. Hope,
London, Duke of York's, 28 Sept 1955
For further details of Britten's incidental music, see Evans, Reed and Wilson (B1987) and Reed
(F1987).
4
9
10
12
13
15
16
19
20
21
24
26
1936]
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge,
str, 1937 (1938); Boyd Neel Orchestra,
cond.
Neel,
Radio
Hilversum,
Netherlands, 25 Aug 1937
Mont Juic [after Catalan dances], 1937
(1938), collab. L. Berkeley; BBC
Orchestra, cond. Lewis, BBC, 8 Jan
1938
Piano Concerto, 1938 (red. score 1939),
rev. 1945 (red. score 1946, fs 1967);
Britten, BBC SO, cond. Wood, London,
18 Aug 1938
Violin Concerto, 19389 (red. score
1940), rev. 1950, 1954 (red. score 1958),
1965 (1965); A. Brosa, New York PO,
cond. Barbirolli, New York, 28 March
1940
Young Apollo, pf, str qt, str orch, 1939
(1982); Britten, CBC String Orchestra,
cond. A. Chuhaldin, CBC, 27 Aug 1939;
withdrawn
Canadian
Carnival
(Kermesse
canadienne),
1939
(1948);
BBC
Orchestra, cond. Raybould, BBC, 6 June
1940
Sinfonia da Requiem, 193940 (1942);
New York PO, cond. Barbirolli, New York,
29 March 1941
Diversions, pf left hand, orch, 1940
(1941), rev. 1950, 19534 (red. score
1955,
fs
1988);
Wittgenstein,
Philadelphia Orchestra, cond. Ormandy,
Philadelphia, 16 Jan 1942
Matines musicales [after Rossini]: 1
March, 2 Nocturne, 3 Waltz, 4
Pantomime, 5 Moto perpetuo, 1941
(1943); American Ballet Company, cond.
E. Balaban, Rio de Janeiro, 27 June
1941 [no.1 is reorchestration of no.3 from
choral work, Rossini Suite, 1935; see
also Soires musicales, op.9]
Paul Bunyan Overture, 1941, orchd C.
Matthews 1977 (1980); European
Community Youth Orchestra, cond. J.
Judd, London, 6 Aug 1978
An American Overture, 1941 (1985);
CBSO, cond. Rattle, Birmingham, 8 Nov
1983
Scottish Ballad, 2 pf, orch, 1941 (red.
29
33a
33b
34
38
48a
53a
57a
68
79
90
18
31
60
93
Two Part-Songs: I Lov'd a Lass (G. Wither), Lift Boy (R. Graves); SATB, pf,
1932, rev. 1933 (1934); cond. Lemare, London, 11 Dec 1933
Jubilate Deo, E (Psalm c), SATB, org, 1934 (1984); Winchester Cathedral
Choir, J. Lancelot, cond. M. Neary, Winchester Cathedral, 4 March 1984
Te Deum, C (Bk of Common Prayer), Tr, SATB, org/(hp/pf, str), 1934 (1935),
orchd 1936; M. Bartlett, St Michael's Singers, G. Thalben-Ball, cond. H.
Darke, London, 13 Nov 1935
May (anon.), unison vv, pf, 1934 (1935); BBC, 24 June 1942
Street Choir, G. Mason, cond. T.B. Lawrence, Norwich Castle, 5 Dec 1942
Rejoice in the Lamb (festival cant., C. Smart), Tr, A, T, B, SATB, org, 1943
(1943); Choir of St Matthew's Church, Northampton, C. Barker, cond. Britten,
Northampton, St Matthew, 21 Sept 1943
The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard (anon.), male vv, pf, 1943
(1952); Chorus of Prisoners of War, B. Grayson and F. Henson, cond. R.
Wood, Eichsttt, Germany, 20 Feb 1944
32 Festival Te Deum (Bk of Common Prayer), Tr, SATB, org, 1944 (1945); P.
Titcombe, Choir of St Mark's, Swindon, G.W. Curnow, cond. J.J. Gale,
Swindon, 24 April 1945
46 A Wedding Anthem (Amo ergo sum) (R. Duncan), S, T, SATB, org, 1949
(1950); Cross, Pears, cond. Britten, London, 29 Sept 1949
Am stram gram (A. Roussin), (unison vv, pf)/SATB, 1954 (1973, in Tempo,
no.107); London, 4 March 1954 [orig. composed as theatre incid music]
56a Hymn to St Peter, Tr, SATB, org, 1955 (1955); Norwich, 20 Nov 1955
56b Antiphon (G. Herbert), SATB, org, 1956 (1956); Tenbury Wells, 29 Sept 1956
63 Missa brevis, D, boys vv, org, 1959 (choral score 1959, fs 1960); Westminster
Cathedral Choir, org and cond. Malcolm, London, 22 July 1959
Jubilate Deo, C (Ps c), SATB, org, 1961 (1961); Choir of St George's Chapel,
Windsor, W. Harris, Windsor, 16 July 1961
Venite exultemus Domino (Ps xcv), SATB, org, 1961 (1983); Westminster
Abbey Choir, G. Morgan, cond. S. Preston, London, 2 Oct 1983
Corpus Christi Carol, arr. 1v/unison vv, pf/org, 1961 (1961) [from A Boy was
Born, op.3, variation 5]
Fancie (W. Shakespeare), unison vv, pf, 1961, rev. 1965 (1965); BBC, 2
March 1969
67 Psalm 150, children's chorus 2vv, insts, 1962 (1963); Old Buckenham Hall
School Choir and ens, cond. K. Foster, Thorpe Morieux, 29 July 1962
The Oxen (Christmas eve, and twelve of the clock) (T. Hardy), women's
chorus 2vv, pf, 1967 (1968); East Coker Women's Institute Choir, 25 Jan 1968
82 Children's Crusade, ballad (B. Brecht, trans. H. Keller), children's vv, perc, 2
pf, org, 1969 (chorus score 1970, fs 1972); Wandsworth School Choir and
Orchestra, cond. R. Burgess, London, 19 May 1969
Britten, Benjamin: Works
30
chorus unaccompanied
A Wealden Trio: the Song of the Women (F.M. Ford), carol, SSA, 192930, rev.
1967 (1968); rev. version: Ambrosian Singers, cond. Ledger, Aldeburgh, 19
June 1968
A Hymn to the Virgin (anon., c1300), anthem, SATB double chorus, 1930, rev.
1934 (1935); Lowestoft, 5 Jan 1931
The Sycamore Tree (trad.), carol, SATB, 1930, rev. 1934, 1967 (1968);
Lowestoft, 5 Jan 1931; rev. version, Ambrosian Singers, cond. Ledger,
Aldeburgh, 19 June 1968
Christ's Nativity, Christmas suite: 1 Christ's Nativity (H. Vaughan), 2 Sweet was
the song (W. Ballet's lute bk), 3 Preparations (Christ Church MS), 4 New
Prince, New Pomp (Bible, R. Southwell), 5 Carol of King Cnut (C.W. Stubbs); S,
C, SATB, 1931 (1994); A. Barlow, A. Murray, Britten Singers, cond. S.
Wilkinson, Southwold, 14 June 1991
3 A Boy was Born (15th- and 16th-century carols, C. Rossetti), choral variations,
male vv, female vv, boys vv, 19323 (1934), rev. 1955, rev. with org ad lib
19578 (1958); Wireless Chorus, Choirboys of St Mark's, North Audley Street,
cond. L. Woodgate, BBC, 23 Feb 1934
Advance Democracy (R. Swingler), SSAATTBB, 1938 (1939)
A.M.D.G. (G.M. Hopkins): 1 Prayer I, 2 Rosa mystica, 3 God's Grandeur, 4
Prayer II, 5 O Deus, ego amo te, 6 The Soldier, 7 Heaven-Haven; SATB, 1939
(1989); London Sinfonietta Chorus, cond. T. Edwards, London, 22 Aug 1984
[orig. op.17, but number reassigned to Paul Bunyan]
27 Hymn to St Cecilia (W.H. Auden), SSATB, 19412 (1942), rev. 1966 (1967);
BBC Singers, cond. Woodgate, BBC, 22 Nov 1942
A Shepherd's Carol (Auden), SATB, 1944 (1962); BBC Singers, cond.
Woodgate, BBC, 24 Dec 1944 [orig. composed for radio feature, A Poet's
Christmas]
Chorale after an Old French Carol (Auden), SSAATTBB, 1944 (1992); BBC
Singers, cond. Woodgate, BBC, 24 Dec 1944 [orig. composed for radio feature,
A Poet's Christmas]
Deus in adjutorium meum [from incid music to This Way to the Tomb] (Ps lxx),
SATB, 1945 (1983); Elizabethan Singers, cond. L. Halsey, London, 26 Oct 1962
47 Five Flower Songs: 1 To Daffodils (R. Herrick), 2 The Succession of the Four
Sweet Months (Herrick), 3 Marsh Flowers (G. Crabbe), 4 The Evening Primrose
(J. Clare), 5 Ballad of Green Broom (anon.); SATB, 1950 (1951); cond. I. Holst,
Dartington, 23 July 1950
We are the darkness in the heat of the day [arr. of no.2 from The Heart of the
Matter] (E. Sitwell), SMezATB, c1956 (1997)
Sweet was the Song [rev. of Christ's Nativity, no.2] (W. Ballet's lute bk), carol,
SSAA, 1966 (1966); P. Stevens, Purcell Singers, cond. I. Holst, Aldeburgh, 15
June 1966
Alleluia! For Alec's 80th Birthday, canon, 3-pt vv, 1971 (1972) [tribute to Alec
Robertson]
91 Sacred and Profane (8 medieval lyrics), SSATB, 19745 (1977); Wilbye
Consort, cond. Pears, Snape Maltings, 14 Sept 1975
Britten, Benjamin: Works
13 solo voices with 1 or 2 instruments
c60 unpubd juvenilia
11
22
35
40
41
51
52
55
58
61
74
76
84
86
89
92
See also Arrangements by Britten: folksongs and Arrangements by others of Britten works
Five Walztes [sic], pf, 19235, rev. 1969 (1970); A. Peebles, BBC, 10 Feb
1971
Reflection, va, pf, 1930 (1997); P. Dukes, S. Rahman, BBC, 28 Nov 1995
Two Insect Pieces: 1 The Grasshopper, 2 The Wasp, ob, pf, 1935 (1980); J.
Craxton, M. Wright, Manchester, 7 March 1979
6
Suite, vn, pf, 19345 (1935); A. Brosa, Britten, BBC, 13 March 1936
Two Lullabies: 1 Lullaby, 2 Lullaby for a Retired Colonel, 2 pf, 1936 (1990); P.
Frankl, T. Vsry, Snape Maltings, 22 June 1988
Theme for Improvisation, org, 1936 (1936); A. Marchal, London, 12 Nov 1936
Temporal Variations, ob, pf, 1936 (1980); N. Caine, A. Hallis, London, 15 Dec
1936
Reveille, concert study, vn, pf, 1937 (1983); Brosa, F. Reizenstein, London,
12 April 1937
Themes for Improvisation, org, 1945 (1945); M. Dupr, BBC, 24 July 1945
83
87
concerto cadenzas
J. Haydn: Cello Concerto, C, hVIIb/I, 1964 (1966); Rostropovich, Blythburgh
Church, 18 June 1964 [cadenzas to movts 1 and 2]
W.A. Mozart: Piano Concerto, E , k482, 1966 (1967); Richter, Tours, France, July
1966 [cadenzas to movts 1 and 3]
Britten, Benjamin
ARRANGEMENTS BY BRITTEN
folksongs
1 or 2 voices with 1 or 2 instruments
listed as published volumes in order of publication date
Folk Song Arrangements, vol.i, British Isles: 1 The Salley Gardens, 2 Little Sir
William, 3 The Bonny Earl o Moray, 4 O can ye sew cushions?, 5 The trees they
grow so high, 6 The Ash Grove, 7 Oliver Cromwell; high/medium v, pf, 19412
(1943)
Folk Song Arrangements, vol.ii, France: 1 La Nol passe (The Orphan and King
Henry), 2 Voici le printemps, 3 Fileuse, 4 Le roi s'en va-t'en chasse, 5 La belle est
au jardin d'amour, 6 Il est quelqu'un sur terre, 7 Eho! Eho!, 8 Quand j'tais chez
mon pre (Heigh ho! heigh hi!); high/medium v, pf, 1942 (1946)
Folk Song Arrangements, vol.iii, British Isles: 1 The Plough Boy, 2 There's none to
soothe, 3 Sweet Polly Oliver, 4 The Miller of Dee, 5 The Foggy, Foggy Dew, 6 O
Waly, Waly, 7 Come you not from Newcastle?; high/medium v, pf, 19456 (1948)
Folk Song Arrangements, vol.iv, Moore's Irish Melodies: 1 Avenging and bright, 2
Sail on, sail on, 3 How sweet the answer, 4 The minstrel boy, 5 At the mid hour of
night, 6 Rich and rare, 7 Dear harp of my country!, 8 Oft in the stilly night, 9 The
Last Rose of Summer, 10 O the sight entrancing; high v, pf, 1957 (1960)
Folk Song Arrangements, vol.v, British Isles: 1 The Brisk Young Widow, 2 Sally in
our Alley, 3 The Lincolnshire Poacher, 4 Early one morning, 5 Ca the yowes; high v,
pf, 19519 (1961)
Folk Song Arrangements, vol.vi, England: 1 I will give my love an apple, 2 SailorBoy, 3 Master Kilby, 4 The Soldier and the Sailor, 5 Bonny at Morn, 6 The Shooting
of his Dear; high v, gui, 19568 (1961)
[Four English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians:] 1 Love Henry, 2 What's
Little Babies Made of? 3 The Maid Freed from the Gallows, 4 The Frog and the
Mouse; pf acc., 1967 (1968)
Eight Folk Song Arrangements: 1 Lord! I married me a wife, 2 She's like the
swallow, 3 Lemady, 4 Bonny at Morn, 5 Bugeilio'r Gwenith Gwyn (I was lonely and
forlorn), 6 David of the White Rock, 7 The False Knight upon the Road, 8 Bird
Scarer's Song; high v, hp, 1976 (1980)
Tom Bowling and Other Song Arrangements: for 1v, pf: 1 Tom Bowling [arr. of song
and text by C. Dibdin], c1959, 2 Greensleeves, ?1941, 3 The Crocodile, c1941, 4
Pray Goody, ?19456, 5 The holly and the ivy, 6 I wonder as I wander [arr. of song
collected by J.J. Niles], ?194041, 7 Dink's Song; for 2vv, pf: 8 Soldier, wont you
marry me?, c1958, 9 The Deaf Woman's Courtship; for 1v, vc, pf: 10 The Stream in
instrumental ensemble
The Golden Sonata, z810, 2 vn, vc, pf, 1945 (1946); O. Zorian, M. Lavers, N.
Semino, Britten, London, 21 Nov 1945
Chacony, g, z730, str qt/str orch, 19478, rev. 1963 (1965); Collegium Musicum
Zrich, cond. Britten, Zrich, 30 Jan 1948
solo vocal (realized and edited by Britten and Pears)
Orpheus Britannicus (with orchestra)
Suite of Songs from Orpheus Britannicus: 1 Let sullen discord smile, z321/6 (from
Tate: Birthday Song for Queen Mary), 2 Why should men quarrel?, z630/4d (from
Dryden and Howard: The Indian Queen), 3 So when the glittering Queen of Night,
z333/11 (from D'Urfey: The Yorkshire Feast Song), 4 Thou tun'st this world, z328/6
(from N. Brady: A Song for St Cecilia's Day), 5a Tis holiday, z321/5 (from Tate:
Birthday Song for Queen Mary), 5b Sound Fame thy brazen trumpet, z627/22 (from
other arrangements
in order of date of arrangement
orchestra, vocal-orchestral
E. Carpenter: England Arise! (opt. text: Carpenter), orch, vv ad lib, ?1939 (1939)
G. Mahler: What the Wild Flowers Tell me [arr. of Sym. no.3, movt 2], red. orch,
1941 (1950); BBC Scottish Orchestra, cond. G. Warrack, BBC, 14 Nov 1942
F. Schubert: The Trout [arr. of Die Forelle d550] (C.F.D. Schubart, Eng. trans.), 1v, 2
cl, str, 1942
R. Schumann: Spring Night [arr. of Frhlingsnacht, op.39 no.2] (F. Eichendorff, Eng.
trans.), 1v, orch, 1942
God Save the Queen, orch, 1971; English Chamber Orchestra, cond. Britten,
Snape Maltings, 13 June 1971
choral
The National Anthem, double SATB, orch, 1961 (vs 1961), red. orch 1967; Leeds
Festival Chorus, Royal Liverpool PO, cond. Pritchard, Leeds, 7 Oct 1961
J.S. Bach: St John Passion [arr. of bwv245], ed. Britten and I. Holst (trans. Pears
and I. Holst), S, Mez, T, B, SATB, 2 fl, 2 ob + ob d'amore, bn, org, lute, str, 1967;
cond. Britten, London, 26 July 1967
solo vocal
F. Schubert: Gretchens Bitte [completion of d564] (from J.W. von Goethe: Faust, pt
I, trans. A. Porter), version 1: S, pf, 1938 (1998), M. Blyth, BBC, 27 Dec 1938;
version 2: high v, pf, c1942, Pears, Britten, 1943
C. Dibdin: Tom Bowling (Dibdin), high v, pf, 1959 (2000); Pears, Britten, Aldeburgh,
22 June 1959
J.S. Bach: Five Spiritual Songs [arr. of songs from Geistliche Lieder] (trans. Pears):
1 Gedenke doch, mein Geist, zurcke, bwv509, 2 Kommt, Seelen, dieser Tag,
bwv479, 3 Liebster Herr Jesu, bwv484, 4 Komm, ssser Tod, bwv478, 5 Bist du bei
mir, bwv508; high v, pf, 1969 (1971); Pears, Britten, Blythburgh Church, 18 June
1969
J. Blow: Oh! that mine eyes would melt (anon.), high v, hp/pf, 1975 (1998); Pears,
O. Ellis, Cardiff, 19 March 1976
J. Clarke: A Divine Hymn (Blest be those sweet regions) (anon.), high v, hp/pf,
19756 (1998)
W. Croft: A Hymn on Divine Musick (anon.), high v, hp/pf, 1976 (1998); Pears, Ellis,
Cardiff, 19 March 1976
P. Humfrey: Hymn to God the Father (J. Donne), high v, hp/pf, 19756 (1998);
Pears, Ellis, 20 Aug 1976
Humfrey: Lord! I have sinned (J. Taylor), high v, hp/pf, 19756 (1998)
chamber
F. Bridge: There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook [arr. of orch work, h173], va, pf,
1932 (1990); N. Imai, R. Vignoles, Isle of Man, 27 Aug 1988
See also stage: realizations and completions
Britten, Benjamin
ARRANGEMENTS BY OTHERS OF BRITTEN WORKS
>orchestral, vocal-orchestral
Love from a Stranger: Music from the Film [1936], transcr. C. Matthews, orch,
c1995 (2000); BBC Concert Orchestra, cond. C. Davis, London, 20 May 1995
Temporal Variations [1936], arr. C. Matthews, ob, str orch, c1994 (1995); N. Daniel,
English Chamber Orchestra, cond. S. Bedford, Snape Maltings, 12 June 1994
Suite, from King Arthur [1937], arr. P. Hindmarsh, orch, c1995 (1996); RAM SO,
cond. L. Khler, Snape Maltings, 21 Oct 1995 [orig. composed as radio incid music]
Concert Suite, from The Sword in the Stone [1939], arr. O. Knussen and C.
Matthews, chamber ens, c1983 (1989); Aldeburgh Festival Chamber Ensemble,
cond. O. Knussen, Snape Maltings, 14 June 1983 [orig. composed as radio incid
music]
Suite, from Johnson over Jordan [1939], arr. P. Hindmarsh, orch, c1990 (1993);
Northern Sinfonia, cond. O. de la Martinez, BBC, 25 Feb 1990 [orig. composed as
theatre incid music]
The Rescue of Penelope: concert version of the music to the radio drama The
Rescue [1943] (E. Sackville-West, after Homer: Odyssey), arr. C. de Souza with D.
Mitchell and C. Matthews, spkr, S, Mez, T, Bar, orch (1998); BBC SO, cond. N.
Cleobury, Snape Maltings, 23 Oct 1993
A Charm of Lullabies [1947], arr. C. Matthews, Mez, orch; M. Forrester, Indianapolis
SO, cond. R. Leppard, Indianapolis, 17 Jan 1991
Five Courtly Dances, from Gloriana [1953], arr. D. Stone, school orch, 1963 (1965)
[arr. of 3rd movt of Symphonic Suite, op.53a]
Prelude and Dances, from The Prince of the Pagodas [1956], arr. N. Del Mar,
op.57b, orch, c1963 (1980); BBC Scottish Orch, cond. Del Mar, BBC, 26 Dec 1963
Suite, from The Prince of the Pagodas [1956], arr. D. Mitchell and M. Cooke, orch,
c1997; Deutsches SO Berlin, cond. V. Ashkenazy, Amsterdam, 4 June 1997
Suite, from Death in Venice [1973], arr. S. Bedford, op.88a, orch, c1984 (1993);
English Chamber Orchestra, cond. S. Bedford, Snape Maltings, 13 June 1984
Welcome Suite, from Welcome Ode [1976], arr. T. Osborne, str orch (1994)
band
Russian Funeral [1936], arr. R. Farr, brass band (1987); Grimethorpe Colliery Band,
cond. Farr, Framlingham, 15 June 1984
Soires musicales [1936], arr. T. Conway Brown, military band (1946)
Spider and the Fly, from Johnson over Jordan [1939], arr. D. Barry, brass band
(1993); cond. P. Hindmarsh, Spenmoor, Co. Durham, 18 Nov 1990
Paul Bunyan Overture [1941], arr. C. Fussell, concert band (1985)
The Courtly Dances, from Gloriana [1953], arr. J. Bach, sym. band (1995)
The Building of the House [1967] (opt. text: Ps cxxvii), arr. T. Marciniak, concert
band, SATB ad lib (1977)
choral
Britten, Benjamin
WRITINGS
As You Like It: Walton's Music, World Film News, i/7 (1936), 46
only
An English Composer sees America, Tempo [New York], i/2 (1940),
13
England and the Folk-Art Problem, MM, xviii (1941), 715
Au revoir to the U.S.A., MM, xix (1942), 1001
On Behalf of Gustav Mahler, Tempo [New York], ii/2 (1942), 5 only;
repr. in Tempo [London], no.120 (1977), 1415
Conversation with Benjamin Britten, Tempo, no.6 (1944), 45
Introduction, Peter Grimes, ed. E. Crozier (London, 1945), 78
with M. Tippett: 250th Anniversary of the Death of Henry Purcell:
Homage (London, 1945)
How to Become a Composer, The Listener (7 Nov 1946)
Foreword, The Rape of Lucretia: a Symposium, ed. E. Crozier
(London, 1948), 78
A Note on the Spring Symphony, Music Survey, ii (194950), 237
only
How I Became a Composer, The Radio Listener's Week-End Book
(London, n.d.), 10812
Freeman of Lowestoft, Tempo, no.21 (1951), 35
Verdi: a Symposium, Opera, ii (1951), 11315
A Composer in our Time, Adam International Review, nos.2246
(1952), 1416
Variations on a Critical Theme, Opera, iii (1952), 1446
Three Premieres, Kathleen Ferrier: a Memoir, ed. N. Cardus
(London, 1954), 5461
with I. Holst: The Story of Music (London, 1958/R1968 as The
Wonderful World of Music)
Dennis Brain (19211957), Tempo, new ser., no.46 (1958), 56
On Realizing the Continuo in Purcell's Songs, Henry Purcell: 1659
1695, ed. I. Holst (London, 1959), 713
On Writing English Opera, Opera, xii (1961), 78
Speech on receiving an honorary degree from Hull University, London
Magazine, new ser., iii/7 (1963), 8991
Britten Looking Back, Sunday Telegraph (17 Nov 1963); repr. in
Musical America, no.84 (1964), 46
On Receiving the First Aspen Award (London, 1964/R)
A Composer in Russia, Sunday Telegraph (24 Oct 1965)
Tributes and Reminiscences, Michael Tippett: a Symposium on his
60th Birthday, ed. I. Kemp (London, 1965), 2930
Early Influences: a Tribute to Frank Bridge, Composer, no.19 (1966),
23
Frank Bridge (18791941), Faber Music News (1966), aut., 1720
L.
P.
G.
D.
S.
A.
M.
C.
A.
M.
choral
H. Searle: Growing Pains in England, MM, xvi (1939), 22024
I. Holst: Britten's Saint Nicolas, Tempo, no.10 (1948), 235
R. Manning: From Holst to Britten: a Study of Modern Choral Music
(London, 1949)
D. Mitchell: A Note on St. Nicolas: Some Points of Britten's Style,
Music Survey, ii (194950), 22026; repr. in Music Survey: New
Series, 194952, ed. D. Mitchell and H. Keller (London, 1981)
L. Berkeley: Britten's Spring Symphony, ML, xxxi (1950), 216 only
E. Stein: Britten's Spring Symphony, Tempo, no.15 (1950), 1924
S. Bradshaw: Britten's Cantata academica, Tempo, nos.534
(1960), 2234
E. Roseberry: Britten's Missa brevis, Tempo, nos.534 (1960), 11
16
R. Myers: Carmen basiliense, Adam International Review, nos.289
90 (1961), 46
P. Evans: Britten's War Requiem, Tempo, nos.612 (1962), 2039
A. Robertson: Britten's War Requiem, MT, ciii (1962), 30810
A. Whittall: Tonal Instability in Britten's War Requiem, MR, xxiv
(1963), 201
M. Dawney: Some Notes on Britten's Church Music, Tempo, no.82
(1967), 1320
M. Boyd: Britten, Verdi and the Requiem, Tempo, no.86 (1968), 26
J. Churchill: The Sacred Works of Benjamin Britten, Music: the
AGO and RCCO Magazine, xi/11 (1977), 4043
M. Stimpson: Britten's Last Work, Tempo, no.155 (1985), 346
D. Jarman: War Requiem: the Film (London, 1989)
E. Lundergran: Benjamin Britten's War Requiem: Stylistic and
Technical Sources (diss., U. of Texas, Austin, 1991)
M. Cooke: Britten: War Requiem (Cambridge, 1996)
songs and song cycles
P. Pears: Britten, der Erneuerer des englischen Liedes, Musik der
Zeit, no.7 (1954), 2130
I. Holst: Britten's Nocturne, Tempo, no.50 (1958), 1422
J. Noble: Britten's Songs from the Chinese, Tempo, no.52 (1959),
259
D. Brown: Britten's Three Canticles, MR, xxi (1960), 55
E. Roseberry: Britten's Purcell Realizations and Folksong
Arrangements, Tempo, no.57 (1961), 728
H. Wood: Britten's Hlderlin Songs, MT, civ (1963), 7813
S. Northcote: Byrd to Britten: a Survey of English Song (London,
1966)
I. Holst: Purcell Made Practicable, Music and Musicians, xvii/10
(19689), 48 only
A. Whittall: Tonality in Britten's Song Cycles with Piano, Tempo,
no.96 (1971), 211
A.S. Jacobson: Analysis of Journey of the Magi, Benjamin Britten
(thesis, U. of London, 1980)