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Benjamin Britten (1913–1976): The Life Narratives of the Ever-Young “Working Composer”

Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon

in Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten

Britten completed his last opera, Death in Venice (1973), just before cardiac surgery during which he suffered a stroke. Not yet 60, he underwent many of the changes associated with extended aging: ... More

Britten completed his last opera, Death in Venice (1973), just before cardiac surgery during which he suffered a stroke. Not yet 60, he underwent many of the changes associated with extended aging: dependency, physical impairment, the facing of his imminent demise. Known for his work ethic and professionalism, the prolific Britten completed only 9 independent works before his death 3 years later, but productivity is no measure of creativity: the last works stand as some of his best. Britten’s self-identification as a “working composer” underpinned one of the two life narratives that, this chapter argues, structured and gave meaning to his sense of himself. While he retained this narrative to the end, the other story of the self had to be abandoned with his sudden entry into older age: that of being ever youthful. Britten’s delight in the company of young boys, the topic of much gossip, is here seen as rooted in his own strong nostalgia for the innocence and spontaneity of youth. His two life narratives come together in that last opera, Death in Venice, the story of the homoerotic desire for a beautiful young boy experienced by an older artist in the throes of a creative crisis.Less

Britten's Parables

W. Anthony Sheppard

in Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater

The phenomenon of domesticating the exotic is common to many examples of cross-cultural appropriation or (more neutrally) of influence in the twentieth century. Modernist Euro-American composers ... More

The phenomenon of domesticating the exotic is common to many examples of cross-cultural appropriation or (more neutrally) of influence in the twentieth century. Modernist Euro-American composers repeatedly discovered what they had been looking for in their exotic models and tended to adopt only those prevalued elements. Such exotic features then took on a special fluid status: having been extracted from their specific native environment they became “exotic” in general and lost their particular meanings. Stripped of their original context, they were routinely cloaked with new meanings, and they were readily combined with traits from other exotic sources. Like Yeats, who had moved from three plays based on Japanese Noh models to an entirely Christian context with his final dance play Calvary, Britten moved progressively away from his exotic source both in the composition of Curlew River and in the evolution of the Church Parables. This departure from the exotic toward the security of a “comparable setting” was of paramount importance to Britten's creation of this genre.Less

Peter Grimes: The Development of a Hero (1986)

Willard Spiegelman

in Imaginative Transcripts: Selected Literary Essays

This chapter criticizes English composer Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes. It examines how audiences viewed and partly misunderstood the character of Peter Grimes and discusses the problems ... More

This chapter criticizes English composer Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes. It examines how audiences viewed and partly misunderstood the character of Peter Grimes and discusses the problems concerning the recreation of a literary character in another medium and the dilemma of making retrospective connections along a literary lineage. It suggests that Peter Grimes' embedding of his identity in the life of the community is similar to Britten's own communal life which demonstrates a commitment to the social relationships upon which all identity depends.Less

“O Hurry to the Fêted Spot of Your Deliberate Fall”: Death in Britten, 1936–1940

Stephen Arthur Allen

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter examines three major concert works of Britten's early maturity. The Auden song cycle Our Hunting Fathers is the seminal work of 1936, the year of Britten's official break with the ... More

This chapter examines three major concert works of Britten's early maturity. The Auden song cycle Our Hunting Fathers is the seminal work of 1936, the year of Britten's official break with the Christianity of both his youth and his mother. The Violin Concerto (1939) constitutes an aural snapshot of the fêted spot itself, one in which Britten's new compositional voice articulates in wordless instrumental sonority the terms of a metaphysical drama, most notably in the Passacaglia finale. Finally the Sinfonia da Requiem (1940) shows Britten's quasiliturgical reframing of the dramaturgy of his spiritual fall, anticipating the language of the opera Peter Grimes and of his mature aesthetic—in which Death ultimately underpins all.Less

Britten and the Avant-Garde in the 1950s

Philip Rupprecht

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter explores Britten's ambivalent but productive awareness of mid-century modishness of style and technique, notably the fetishizing of twelve-tone serialism associated with Darmstadt ... More

This chapter explores Britten's ambivalent but productive awareness of mid-century modishness of style and technique, notably the fetishizing of twelve-tone serialism associated with Darmstadt modernism. Despite a conviction that he was living in a broken musical tradition, Britten in the 1950s repeatedly admits twelve-tone patterns as audible rhetorical features of the musical surface. If the Webernesque Polka (danced by the King of the West in The Prince of the Pagodas, 1956) is an obvious parody, the tone elsewhere turns more earnest—in the interplay of a melodic shape and its inversion as framing doubles in the 1958 Nocturne, for instance. In later works, including Missa Brevis and the Shakespeare opera, Britten unfolds rows of simple triads, and his proto-serial technique is a source of euphony, balance, and aural surprise.Less

Animating Owen Wingrave: Ghosts and Global Television

Danielle Ward-Griffin

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter explores the television opera Owen Wingrave, which premiered on 16 May 1971 as a BBC-filmed production broadcast simultaneously across Europe and the United States. Britten's interest in ... More

This chapter explores the television opera Owen Wingrave, which premiered on 16 May 1971 as a BBC-filmed production broadcast simultaneously across Europe and the United States. Britten's interest in specifically televisual possibilities, such as intense close-ups and quick scene changes, found support in Brian Large's camera directing and David Myerscough-Jones' visual design. Owen Wingrave often blurs boundaries between the living and the dead, as when Owen imagines the Hyde Park Horse Guards riding to their destruction, or when the Wingrave family portraits walk out of their gilt frames.Less

Curlew River and Cultural Encounter

Heather Wiebe

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter shows that Britten's four-month tour of Asia in the winter of 1955–56 was the scene of his engagement with cultural traditions he found exotic. It suggests that Curlew River is a ... More

This chapter shows that Britten's four-month tour of Asia in the winter of 1955–56 was the scene of his engagement with cultural traditions he found exotic. It suggests that Curlew River is a reenactment of the process of encounter, reproducing the shock of difference and the unexpected connection that comes with close attention. This reading situates Britten's novel dramatic venture within the internationalist climate of the 1950s. Britten's travels, and the recitals he gave abroad with Pears, amounted to a form of cultural ambassadorship, a form of peace building continued in his 1960s contacts with the Soviet Union.Less

An Excess of Less?: Britten’s Music of the Late 1960s

Christopher Mark

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter focuses on Britten's music of the late 1960s. In the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (1965), short phrases generate agitation (in “London”) and fragile textures draw out the ... More

This chapter focuses on Britten's music of the late 1960s. In the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (1965), short phrases generate agitation (in “London”) and fragile textures draw out the expressive force of individual intervallic gestures (“The Chimney-Sweeper”). The rhythmic freedom of heterophony is apt for the “Nightmare” evoked in a 1969 William Soutar setting. The chapter analyzes the many subtleties of Britten's harmonic idiom: the achievement of A major, chromatically enriched, late in Children's Crusade (1969), for example, offers the possibility of transcendence in a score whose sound world is startlingly acerbic.Less

On Ambiguity in Britten

Paul Kildea

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter examines the conflict between disclosure and concealment common to Britten's life and his art. Britten's development of an operatic technique coincided precisely with his personal ... More

This chapter examines the conflict between disclosure and concealment common to Britten's life and his art. Britten's development of an operatic technique coincided precisely with his personal acknowledgment of his own homosexuality. The chapter illustrates how ambiguities of presentation and interpretation run through all Britten's staged dramas, by examining specific libretto changes required by the Lord Chamberlain's censor before The Rape of Lucretia could be approved for stage production. In all of his operas, Britten's technique was necessarily one of camouflage, leaving the precise motivations and behavior of those represented onstage meaningfully open.Less

Be Flat or Be Natural?: Pitch Symbolism in Britten’s Operas

Mervyn Cooke

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter examines the symbolic dimension in Britten's pitch language. It demonstrates that Britten's much-reported adult delight in “childish” puns stands behind a deeper tonal and dramatic ... More

This chapter examines the symbolic dimension in Britten's pitch language. It demonstrates that Britten's much-reported adult delight in “childish” puns stands behind a deeper tonal and dramatic symbolism in his mature operatic dramas. Tropes of oppression and discipline invariably find expression within music anchored to B♭ B ♯, by contrast, voices assertions of free will. The courtroom scene opening Grimes provides clear examples of this basic tonal-dramaturgical dualism, one that endures until Peter's and the opera's end. The same chromatic pitch opposition haunts Billy Budd, while in The Prodigal Son B♭ identifies the “home” the Son seeks to escape.Less

Peter Grimes and the “Tuneful Air”

Arved Ashby

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter explores the “paradox” and “difference” of text setting in Peter Grimes. It argues that any of Britten's incongruities of textual-vocal manner in the 1940s are in fact remnants of ... More

This chapter explores the “paradox” and “difference” of text setting in Peter Grimes. It argues that any of Britten's incongruities of textual-vocal manner in the 1940s are in fact remnants of Purcell's influence—an influence the composer happily acknowledged, if in uncertain terms, but one that has gone largely unrecognized.Less

Britten’s Rhetoric of Resistance: The Works for Rostropovich

Arnold Whittall

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter explores the five scores composed (between 1961 and 1971) for the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich—and the Pushkin songs, The Poet's Echo—as documents suggestively bound by the ... More

This chapter explores the five scores composed (between 1961 and 1971) for the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich—and the Pushkin songs, The Poet's Echo—as documents suggestively bound by the fraught political atmosphere of their time. Both the Sonata in C and the Cello Symphony fashion images of dialogue, but where the Sonata's opening utterances are shared, the Symphony stages more restless confrontation and outright defiance. Britten's four trips to the USSR after 1963 bear witness to his compositional study in various resistances. The elusiveness of stable pitch resolution (in the First Cello Suite) tells one sort of story; found Russian folk tunes and a hymn of “repose with the saints” (in the Third Suite) likewise evoke possible consolations for life under a repressively secular regime.Less

Britten and Grimes

Philip Brett

in Music and Sexuality in Britten: Selected Essays

Leaving England for America at the commencement of the war, Benjamin Britten eventually returned to his homeland, realizing the essence of an artists' being in the vicinity of his roots. This chapter ... More

Leaving England for America at the commencement of the war, Benjamin Britten eventually returned to his homeland, realizing the essence of an artists' being in the vicinity of his roots. This chapter appraises the proclaimed proximate connection between Britten's decision to retract to England and the opera, Peter Grimes. It was in Southern California in summer 1941 that Britten picked up an issue of The Listener to which E. M. Forster had contributed an chapter on the Suffolk poet, George Crabbe. This seems to have been the turning point in Britten's assumption not only about nationality but also locality. Crabbe's Peter Grimes is one of the poor of the Borough, and though the poet grew up among the poor, he did not like them. His portrait of the man whose cruelty leads to the death of three boy apprentices from the workhouse and whose guilty conscience drives him to madness and death is alleviated by few redeeming features; a bold and unusual choice for the central figure of a musical drama in the tradition of grand opera.Less

The Dye-line Rehearsal Scores for Death in Venice

Christopher Wintle

in Rethinking Britten

This chapter demonstrates the sheer intensity of Britten's creative process as he completed his last opera in a state of declining health. The dye-line scores document closely how composer and singer ... More

This chapter demonstrates the sheer intensity of Britten's creative process as he completed his last opera in a state of declining health. The dye-line scores document closely how composer and singer shaped the role of Aschenbach before the opera's premiere in June 1973. Pears' input is most evident in the refracted, ironic diction of Aschenbach's recitatives, refining details of stage movement, diction, and rhythm. In Britten's scores, meanwhile, the overarching concern with dramatic continuity is often achieved by cutting, or with multiple attempts at a given transition.Less

Utopia

Eric Saylor

in English Pastoral Music: From Arcadia to Utopia, 1900-1955

Pastoralism can take on utopian contexts as well as Arcadian ones, imagining a potentially brighter future rather than an idealized and fictitious past. While traditional metaphors of Christ as the ... More

Pastoralism can take on utopian contexts as well as Arcadian ones, imagining a potentially brighter future rather than an idealized and fictitious past. While traditional metaphors of Christ as the Good Shepherd seem appropriate in such a context, several British composers engage with a broader utopian perspective largely detached from narrowly dogmatic forms of religious belief. Their visionary ethos—in some cases, reflecting the prophetic spirituality of figures like William Blake—provides a means of engaging with utopian thought in music that has been largely overlooked, providing new and often unexpected revelations about the significance of their pastoral works.Less

Crucified by the War Machine: Britten’s War Requiem and the Hope of Postwar Resurrection

Martha C. Nussbaum

in Cannons and Codes: Law, Literature, and America's Wars

Nussbaum studies Britten's War Requiem for its insight into the possibility of reconciliation after armed conflict, focusing on images of the body, both beautiful and vulnerable.

The Audience as Congregation

W. Anthony Sheppard

in Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater

With the creation of new forms of ritual music theater in twentieth-century Europe and America came a radical reconceptualization of the audience's role and of the performance space itself. A basic ... More

With the creation of new forms of ritual music theater in twentieth-century Europe and America came a radical reconceptualization of the audience's role and of the performance space itself. A basic trend toward increased audience participation, and away from the notion of performance as commercialized entertainment, reached one extreme in the “happenings” of the 1950s and '60s. These events were based on the premise that everyone present was a participant and that all sound and movement within the performance space constituted the performance. Occasions during which some Euro-American audience members would be accustomed to participate significantly include the religious services of Christianity. In the Catholic Mass, for example, there is a clearly defined audience/congregation and performer/celebrant space. Benjamin Britten is the most prominent twentieth-century composer to have created works of music theater specifically intended to be performed in church.Less

Music Theater in Northern Europe

Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi

in The New Music Theater: Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body

This chapter discusses the work of British composers including Benjamin Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and ... More

This chapter discusses the work of British composers including Benjamin Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Andrew Toovey. British performing institutions have included the Pierrot Players and the Almeida Theatre. Also discussed are Louis Andriessen from The Netherlands (and his influence on younger British composers) and Per Nørgård from Denmark. Institutions mentioned are NewOp, Musiktheater Transparant in Antwerp, Die Munt (Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie) in Brussels, and Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen.Less

The Song Inside Your Mind: The “New Object” of The Tempest

Drew Massey

in Thomas Adès in Five Essays

Adès’s second opera, The Tempest (2003), has been celebrated for many reasons. In the public imagination it has solidified comparisons between Adès and Benjamin Britten (the composer of one of the ... More

Adès’s second opera, The Tempest (2003), has been celebrated for many reasons. In the public imagination it has solidified comparisons between Adès and Benjamin Britten (the composer of one of the other most well-known Shakespeare operas of the last hundred years, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1960). The Tempest also established Adès as a leading presence in contemporary opera. My goal in this essay is to explore how two interrelated concerns—the expressive possibilities of moving from one medium to another and the interpenetration of different subjectivities with one another—show one way of thinking about The Tempest which is emblematic of several recurrent aspects Adès’s sensibility. The Tempest, as the largest work he completed in the decade after his initial flush of success in the 1990s, demonstrates the longevity of his quest for what he calls “new objects” which transcend their medium and engender singular subjective experiences.Less