V The evolution of a tradition

15 Benjamin Britten

 

Like the musical thought of some of his larger works, Britten’s career has developed simultaneously on several different levels; whether as composer, pianist, founder of both the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, or conductor, his is the most acute musical sensibility; his knowledge and appreciation of literature are formidable; moreover, his music is the best-known and most performed of any contemporary English composer. He has strongly influenced a large number of younger composers, particularly in matters of operatic style. He has received public recognition by being-made a Companion of Honour (1953), and being awarded the Order of Merit (1965). In 1964 he received the first Aspen award in America.

He was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 1913, on November 22nd-St. Cecilia’s day. His talents appeared early; by 1930 he had already written a large quantity of music, both instrumental and vocal, including well over fifty songs [Some were published in 1969 under the title Tit for Tat]. Looking back at these boyhood works, Britten has said, revealingly: ‘The choice of poets was nothing if not catholic. There are more than thirty of them, ranging from the Bible to Kipling, from Shakespeare to an obscure magazine poet "Chanticleer"; there were many settings of Shelley and Burns and Tennyson, of a poem by a schoolmaster friend, songs to texts by Hood, Longfellow, "Anon",- and several French poets; and one to the composer’s own words ("One day when I went home, I sore a boat on the sands"). In some cases the songs were written so hurriedly that there was no time to write the words in, or even to note the name of the poem or poet. The poet whose name appears most frequently is Walter de la Mare, whose verse caught my fancy very early on. I possessed several of his volumes, but a few poems were evidently copied from inaccurate reprints in anthologies... At any rate, although I hold no claims whatever for the songs’ importance or originality, I do feel that the boy’s vision has a simplicity and clarity which might have given a little pleasure to the great poet, with his unique insight into a child’s mind.’

He went to Gresham’s School, Holt, in Norfolk, and during school holidays Frank Bridge gave him lessons in harmony and counterpoint; a valuable discipline for a precocious youngster. In 1930 he went to the Royal College of Music, where he was under John Ireland for composition, and Arthur Benjamin for piano. His musical horizon broadened during these years, and many valuable contacts were made with other musicians. The first of his long list of works, the Sinfonietta, Op. 1, dates from June/July 1932, and was the only one of his student works to be performed at the College; it was written with characteristic speed, in about three weeks, and also was the first work to reach a wider, though specialist, public. [1. At a Macnaghten concert on 31st January 1933].

On leaving the College in 1934, Britten was anxious to spend some time in Vienna studying with Alban Berg; but the combined wisdom of his elders advised against such an extreme course. It is interesting, indeed, though perhaps vain, to speculate what effect the composer of Wozzeck would have had on the twenty-one-year old Englishman. Britten at this time was seething with ideas; he had no doubt whatever that he was to be a composer; and yet he was uncertain of that goal towards which his creativity should be directed. Fluency and facility make their own exacting demands.

As he faced the prospects of musical London, two factors helped him: the first was a contract with a publisher, Ralph Hawkes, whose confidence turned out to be handsomely rewarded [Rarely has a composer been supported by his publisher with more sustained and steady publicity than Britten’s publisher, Boosey and Hawkes, accorded him in their house magazine Tempo. Starting in September 1946, twenty seven full-length articles appeared, culminating in a fiftieth birthday issue (No. 66/7, Autumn-Winter, 1963). Britten's present publisher, Faber Music, are evidently tempting history to repeat itself by offering a contract to another young College student, Douglas Young]; the second was a chance to work on documentary films, for the G.P.O. Film Unit. He had already written the title music for a documentary film Cable Ship in 1933, and between 1935 and 1939 he wrote seventeen more, as well as a considerable number of other film scores, and incidental music for plays. In this way a very difficult period of his creative life was successfully surmounted. As far as technique and style were concerned, not only did film work require fluency and speed of writing, which have always been his in abundance, but it also developed his ingenuity, and ability to write effectively for small combinations of instruments, a trait which was to be fully realised later.

But he was a long time finding his true musical personality. One decisive factor was his close friendship with the poet W. H. Auden. Though some years Britten’s senior, Auden had also been at Gresham’s School, Holt; and it soon became clear that his voice was characteristic of the 30s [The young poets of the 1930s, whose work was represented in New Signatures (1932) are described by Leonard Woolf in his autobiography Downhill All the Way pp. 174-6]. His work took him to the theatre; it also took him, as luck would have it, to the G.P.O. Film Unit, which thus became, however unwittingly, the patron of a remarkable artistic partnership. Coal Face and Night Mail 1936) were the immediate result; but the collaboration between Auden and Britten was extended farther than the film world, into the theatre and beyond. Auden supplied what Britten needed, that poetic impulse and image to which his own creativity could respond. So over the next few years many of Britten’s main works were settings of Aden's words: Our Hunting Fathers, On this Island, Ballad of Heroes, and the operetta Paul Bunion [This was performed on 5th May 1941 in New York, but later withdrawn]. The partnership ended with the Hymn to St. Cecilia (1942).

It was largely through Auden that Britten decided to go to America in 1939. The rise of Fascism in Europe, particularly after the Spanish Civil War, and the Munich affair in 1938, made it appear to him that only in the New World could an artistic personality be fully developed. Moreover, travel in itself can be important for a young composer, particularly if English audiences prove frustratingly slow to win over, as they usually do. So in the summer of 1939 Britten and his friend Peter Pears left for America.

After staying with the American composer Aaron Copland [Copland had been in London in June 1938, when his El Salon Mexico was given at an I.S.CM. concert and met Britten during his stay in England (see 50th Birthday Symposium)] in Brooklyn, they went to Amityville, Long Island, which was their home for the next two years. While in America, Britten’s services both as pianist and composer were much in demand. Works which date from this time include several works for orchestra, the Violin Concerto, the First String Quartet, and two song cycles, Les Illuminations to French words by Rimbaud, and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo with an Italian text.

The years in America mark the end of his preparatory, formative stage as a composer. Gradually the characteristics of his true style became apparent. His is that highly sensitive form of creativity that responds to an already-existing image, and illustrates it with music. The image may be literary, pictorial, dramatic, religious; the resulting composition is a sequence of colourful sound impressions, rather than the development of purely musical themes. Such a style is clearly much more inclined towards vocal and dramatic works than to symphonic treatment; and indeed, after his return from America, orchestral or instrumental works form a very small part of his output, and give place to the operas. Also, his response to other composers’ works makes him the most sensitive of performing artists, whether as pianist or conductor.

His work with Auden in America was centred round the operetta Paul Bunion, which dealt with the early settlers in that country. It was not a success, though it paved the way for what was to come. The image of the American pioneer would strike much more of a response in an American composer; indeed, Copland’s Appalachian Spring is about just that. Would not an English composer be more inspired by something which he knew from experience in his own country?

And so whereas Auden became an American citizen, Britten did not. He decided to return to England in 1941. But this was no simple matter in wartime, and it was not until March 1942 that a passage was found, on a neutral Swedish cargo boat. The months of waiting were not wasted, however, for they resulted in his meeting Serge Koussevitsky, when the latter performed his Sinfonia da Requiem in Boston; this meeting resulted in an advance of $1,000 to the young composer, to enable him to devote time to writing a full length opera, which would be dedicated to the memory of Koussevitsky’s wife Natalie, who had recently died. The result, three years later, was Peter Grimes.

Nor were the weeks spent on the voyage home idle ones: the Hymn to St. Cecilia and A Ceremony of Carols were written on the boat.

On returning to England, he lived at Snape, a few miles from Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Five years later he moved to Aldeburgh itself. Now, starting with the Serenade (1943), his work enters a more mature period. He is no longer searching for a sense of artistic direction; now it is a question of finding those images that would inspire him, and be a vehicle for his creativity; his background became the England that he knew. From now on, starting with Peter Grimes (1945), the greater part of his output was to consist of opera, and other vocal and choral works.

The initial impact of Peter Grimes, its famous premiere at Sadler’s Wells on 7th June 1945, and its instant success, which chiefly enhanced Britten’s reputation, led to two far-reaching results: first the formation of a new opera company, the English Opera Group; next, the establishment of a Festival at Aldeburgh. At this time (1948) music festivals were comparatively rare; their mushroom-like spread came later. Over the coming years the Aldeburgh Festival was to make a most positive contribution to the British musical scene, with a characteristic of its own. Mainly the direct inspiration of Britten and Pears, it nevertheless owed its growth to the work of many other helpers, particularly Imogen Holst and Stephen Reiss. Concerts were given in houses, halls and churches in and around Aldeburgh; at Orford, Blythburgh, Ely and elsewhere. Excellent performances by a small number of artists, and something of the atmosphere of a court-a monarch surrounded by his courtiers - have given the Festival a personal flavour rarely found in the more commercial rough-and-tumble of the concert world; and this matches the highly personal nature of Britten’s style as a composer.

The formation of the English Opera Group, which would develop a tradition of British opera, old and new, and tour in this country and abroad, was a natural concomitant to Britten’s work as an opera composer, and a logical result of the general artistic direction in which he was facing. Opera has always been a minority cult in England, and in the immediate post-war years the outlook was bleak indeed; the only way to get your work performed was to form your own company, particularly if you wanted it sung in English. For reasons of economics it would have to be numerically small. And so the new company presented itself, at Glyndebourne on 12th July 1946, in Britten’s next opera, The Rape of Lucretia. This was the first of his chamber operas, and was followed the next year by another, Albert Herring; and in 1948 by an arrangement of The Beggar’s Opera.

 

Meanwhile, that year the first Aldeburgh Festival took place, and so the 1949 production was a work designed for the somewhat limited capacity of the local Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh. Let’s Make an Opera calls for only a string quartet, piano and percussion, and is described, accurately, as an ‘entertainment for young people’. It is the prototype of many other such works for children, by younger composers such as Malcolm Williamson, Gordon Crosse, and others.

Gradually the reputations of the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival spread internationally, along with that of their founder. In 1954 his fourth chamber opera, The Turn of the Screw, was produced at the Venice Biennale, while six years later a redesigned Jubilee Hall witnessed the premiere of A Midsummer Night's Dream. A most marked advance in the status of the Aldeburgh Festival was made with the building of a specially designed concert hall at Snape, The Maltings. This provided an opportunity for royal recognition, when it was opened by the Queen during the 1967 Festival. It was specifically made suitable for opera performances, as well as chamber and orchestral concerts, and recording. Unfortunately it was very largely built of wood, and on 7th June 1969 it was destroyed by fire after a concert. However, rebuilding was immediately started, and it was ready in time for the opening of the Festival the following year, on 5th June 1970. Again the Queen attended. Against such a background of continual and much-varied activity we may consider Britten’s output as a composer.

 

Songs

The image that inspires Britten’s songs is mainly, and quite obviously, verbal, literary; of all composers, he is the most aware of, and susceptible to, the poetic image; and the poets that he has chosen to set have for this reason invariably been of the first rank; that is to say, those whose vision is clearest, all-embracing, and whose poetry thus both gives the strongest stimulus and invites the strongest response. Of first importance for him, therefore, in realising the poetic image are the capabilities of the human voice, and the clear enunciation of the words, with that rhythmical flow proper to them. Speed, pitch, interval, dynamic, timbre, that together constitute the melodic line, are made to serve this purpose. Next, the accompaniment, whether piano solo or other instruments, is used to throw into relief the solo line, and by means of an illustrative ostinato figure, to enhance the meaning and mood of the poet’s text. So expressiveness is found in the vocal line; colour in the accompaniment.

Within the framework of a diatonic style, many suggestive devices are used. All too easily can a simple idiom slip into the obvious, the banal. Bitonality and polytonality are two of the commonest ways of avoiding this; that is to say, the simultaneous use of more than one key; also the suggestion of ambiguous tonality by means of a unison accompaniment-a ground-bass, allowing for free variation in the upper parts, is one of Britten’s commonest devices; also the introduction of unexpected progressions, and subtleties of metre. In later works, particularly since the War Requiem, there is a greater freedom in the vertical combination of different parts, and a greater sense of spaciousness.

The early songs and choral works were not always fully successful in realising the verbal image, though some works, On This Island for example, contain hints of the individuality that was to come; and Ballad of Heroes is cast in four-movement form, thus foreshadowing the Spring Symphony, while Our Hunting Fathers, particularly in its skilful handling of the orchestra, suggests the future operatic composer.

But his individual characteristics first appear more markedly in Les Illuminations and the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo. In the first of these works particularly, for high voice and strings, there is greater freedom of Vocal line, and greater colour in the accompanimental part, which in this case consists of a string orchestra. The bitonal opening uses two keys (E and Bb) a tritone apart, and thus provides the harmonic basis of the work-a procedure which was to be used later in the War Requiem. Moreover, the threefold repetition of the refrain, ‘I alone hold the key to this savage parade’, lends a structural unity to the suite as a whole. Unfortunately the French words of this cycle, and the Italian words of the Michelangelo songs, while no doubt meaningful to the connoisseur, act as an impediment to the ordinary English listener, to that directness of effect, that rapport with the mass of the audience, which is the cornerstone of such an idiom and style as Britten’s.

But once this obstacle is overcome the songs explore various moods within the limited framework of one poetic idea, in a way that is rather reminiscent of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder-an earlier example of an orchestral song-cycle, which does the same.

Britten indeed has said that he has been influenced by Mahler, and it is not difficult to see certain points of similarity; both wrote song-cycles with orchestra, both had an individual interpretation of tonality, both aimed at a quality of intense dramatic lyricism. The underlying difference between them, however, is that whereas Mahler was a symphonic composer, Britten’s work has been primarily vocal and operatic; and whereas Mahler’s symphonies were set against a symphonic tradition that had been a gradual growth since Haydn, the English operatic tradition was a very fragmentary affair; it is indeed reasonable to say that its start still (1943) lay in the future, with Britten’s own work.

Directness of effect is the chief strength of the Serenade, that most colourful song-cycle with which he announced his return to England. Unity is achieved round the theme of night-another Mahlerian concept; structurally the work is framed (as the Ceremony of Carols had been) by a Prologue and Epilogue; in this case a horn-call, which was modelled on an idea from Aaron Copland’s Music for the Theater [the English horn solo in the Interlude]. But the world abounds in individual characteristics, which indicate that pattern of musical expressiveness that he was to build on later [see p. 224/5]; the triadic pattern of the Pastoral, with its falling phrase to suggest the peace and calm of evening, and lengthening shadows; the onomatopoea of the bugle in the Nocturne; the semitonal inflection of the Elegy to suggest sickness, destruction; the repeated vocal part of the Dirge, which takes up the closing note of the previous song, and appears against a gradually more complex accompaniment; the duet for voice and horn of the Hymn, in which the use of melisma on the word ‘Excellently’ suggests some extravagant gesture of obeisance before the moon-goddess; the silence of the Sonnet, which prepares for its final solo Epilogue. Britten’s meticulous craftsmanship, whatever the nature of his material, ensures effective performance.

Two strongly individual characteristics of style, particularly in choral works, also first appeared fully about this time; the first is a vivace style of writing for voices; the second is the structural use of canon. Both characteristics appear fully for the first time in the Hymn to St. Cecilia for unaccompanied voices, which is a simple and effective example of the new virtuoso style that was transforming English choral music. The second section (‘I cannot grow’) is a particularly clear example of the combination of both these characteristics.

The stylistic advance shown in the Serenade was consolidated in the songs that followed, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Apart from the now-established features of ostinato accompaniment-patterns, bitonality, vivace style, and the use of intervals for expressive purposes, these songs also have a virtuoso quality of the sort that composers only achieve after long collaboration with sympathetic performers of equal calibre; in this case Britten had the advantage of working with the tenor, Peter Pears, who has always been his prime interpreter and colleague. The Donne Sonnets are linked by the religious sentiments of a soul approaching death; the gloomy foreboding of the first song (B minor) eventually resolves into the bold confidence of the last (B major).

The thread linking together the five songs that make up A Charm of Lullabies is one of mood, while in Winter Words Britten was inspired by, among other things, Thomas Hardy’s sense of humour. The ostinati are, as usual, triadic, and frequently polytonal; again, as in the Serenade, a falling phrase represents day-close; but other less subjective ideas present themselves for our consideration-isolated jabs, of two notes a major second apart, represent a creaking table; an accompaniment figure in open fifths represents a violin tuning up.

The first of the three Canticles derives its effect from its subdued simplicity, which allows the symbolic words of Francis Quarles to make their impact unimpeded. Melisma is used at phrase-climaxes, and in the middle section the vivace style is combined with contrapuntal inversion in the accompaniment (‘Nor time, nor place’) before the piece reverts to its prevailingly sombre tone.

The Second Canticle is limited in vocal range by the plainsong style, which the composer uses to portray the religious situation. It is harmonically static, and relies for its effect on the drama inherent in the Abraham/Isaac relationship, that of a father who is compelled to kill his own much-loved son. God’s voice is represented by the two singers (contralto and tenor) singing together, either in unison, or a fourth apart, to suggest early organum. Britten reverted to this work later, in the War Requiem.

The Third Canticle, written in memory of the pianist Noel Mewton Wood, is altogether more individual a work. Edith Sitwell’s poem dictated not merely its nature but also its structure, which is that of a theme (‘slow and distant’) and six short, very contrasted variations for horn, interspersed with six verses of free recitation for the voice. Horn and voice come together for the last variation, and sound the first and second phrases of the opening theme simultaneously. The motto, ‘Still falls the rain’, marks the beginning of each verse, while each variation ends on the key-note, B flat, and its material contains the melodic shape of the verse which follows it. The B flat theme is made up of three phrases, of which the second is an inversion of the first; the third is the longest and contains inversion within itself. Thus arises the structural outline of each variation.

The Songs from the Chinese for high voice and guitar, with a text made up of characteristically philosophical Chinese proverbs, are slight in content, and simple in style, as befits the nature of the instrument. They act as a light interlude to the two more substantial song-cycles composed the following year (1958), the Nocturne and Six Hölderlin Fragments.

The Nocturne takes up after the Serenade, and again uses the image of sleep from which to conjure up musical associations. Strings and seven solo obbligato instruments provide the accompaniment; the strings open with the sleep motif, a rocking figure which underlines the work and provides a structural cohesion; each of the ensuing seven songs has a different solo obbligato; for instance Tennyson’s Kraken is given a bassoon obbligato, while to Keats’ ‘Sleep and Poetry’ is allotted the flute and clarinet. The mood is dark, tense, in some points approaching nightmare. The work ends with strings and wind together, in an unaccustomedly full texture, for Shakespeare’s forty-third sonnet, with strings and voice echoing each other.

Britten’s use of intervals, particularly the interval of the semitone to express anguish, tension, darkness (see p. 224/5), is well illustrated in this song cycle, in which the underlying theme of the night-the contrast and conflict between night and day, sleep and waking, dream and reality-is musically symbolised in the relationship of two keys a semitone apart (C and C flat). The most dramatic expression of this conflict occurs in the Shakespeare sonnet, and so for this poem both keys appear simultaneously. The ending is tonally vague, and suddenly veers into the minor.

It was his friend Prince Ludwig of Hesse and the Rhine who introduced Britten to the poems of Johann Christian Hölderlin (I770-1843). The words of these poems are heavy with ideas, explicit and implicit; they suggest as much as they mean. The Six Hölderlin Fragments are given a structural and thematic unity by the use in different guises throughout the work of the material stated at the opening. The pattern of rising fourths, taken from the third variation of the Third Canticle, supplies the melodic and harmonic outline, and suggests many tonalities. Another similarity with the Canticle is the use of inversion, for instance in the voice part of the fourth song. Canon is also much in evidence, between the voice and piano in the second song, or between piano parts in the sixth.

The Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with the words selected by Peter Pears, present a different world. Though William Blake (1757-1827) was a contemporary of Hölderlin, there is a world of difference between the two poets. Whereas Hölderlin gently reflects the Romanticism of his day and was very much under the shadow of Goethe, William Blake was a visionary who saw far beyond his own age; he was ablaze with poetic imagery and religious fire. Clearly these two poets present widely differing material to the aspiring composer. Hölderlin’s words, like Edith Sitwell’s words of the Third Canticle, are poetically suggestive, and thus receptive to musical realisation. Blake’s words however are powerfully descriptive; their integrated imagery already has an impact unexceeded by any words in the English language, and therefore they are not so open to suggestive or atmospheric music. Such poems as ‘The Tyger’ and ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ are hardly, if at all, enhanced by the ostinato technique of song-writing; indeed the figure allotted to the first of these poems-a quick, scale-like phrase starting at low pitch, very quiet, leading to spread chords-tends to confine the listener's imagination to one specific idea of the tiger, instead of allowing it to roam freely, as the beast itself does, and as the poet invites us to do.

The structure of the Blake songs is broadly similar to that of the Third Canticle; the ‘proverbs’ correspond to the instrumental variations of the earlier work, while the ‘songs’ correspond to the vocal sections. Moreover the material and basic shape of each proverb is the same, though its presentation differs; and it leads directly into the song which follows it. But whereas the Canticle was itself a simple, unified work in several sections, each of Blake’s poems is a separate and distinct thing in its own right. There is no unifying thread.

Britten’s association with the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich took him to Russia several times, and on one such visit, in August 1965, he wrote The Poet’s Echo for Rostropovich’s wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, who first performed the songs in December at the Moscow Conservatoire. The Pushkin poems, again, have no unifying thread, though there is some connection of thought and mood between the first song (Echo) and the fourth (The Nightingale and the Rose). As in the Hölderlin songs, the material of each song is derived from material presented at the opening of the first; this consists of two fifths, one augmented, one diminished, which are both played as a chord and used as a melody.

 

Cantatas and Choral Works

Britten has written numerous works for non-professional performers; gebrauchsmusik for churches, school children. The larger choral pieces, St. Nicholas for example, are thus somewhat limited in expressive range, and often overwhelmingly obvious; they were written for participation rather than for responseful listening; but the dramatic works for young performers have an extra dimension which the more formal, static choral pieces do not; they are therefore much more interesting. Apart from one or two small choral works which fall into the gebrauchsmusik category - such as Rejoice in The Lamb, Festival Te Deum and St. Nicholas-the Spring Symphony was the first substantial choral composition since the Hymn to St. Cecilia. The term ‘symphony’ is a misnomer, since the work lacks symphonic growth or development. It is a suite of songs with orchestral accompaniment, on the general topic of spring, culminating in a sort of rustic patriotism, with the Reading Rota thrown in for good measure. An earlier example of such a poetic miscellany, formed into a choral suite, is Arthur Bliss’s Pastoral (1929), in which the poems deal with the general topic of the countryside. Lambert’s Summer's last will and Testament also falls in this category.

Once again, few choral works followed, apart from small ones; the Five Flower Songs for Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst [The founders of Dartington Hall in Devon, with whom Britten had stayed], and the two little Church works, Op. 56. It was ten years before the next important choral composition appeared, the Cantata Academica. This remarkable work was written for the quincentenary of Basel university, and first performed there on 1st July 1960. The Latin words are taken from the University Charter; and however inspiring such a document might be to those well Versed in Latin, Britten abandoned his customary procedure, and simply used the words as a peg on which to hang a set of choral variations on a theme. The theme is a 12-note one, but tonal, in the key of G minor, and he brings to bear every academic device he can think of to breath life into this ‘row’. The twelve notes dominate each section either harmonically or melodically, and the work as a whole is an abstract study in contrapuntal ingenuity.

Very different, and much more characteristic, is the Missa Brevis written for George Malcolm and the boys of Westminster Cathedral that same year (1959). In a sense it is a foretaste of the main work in Britten’s choral output so far, which was written two years later, the War Requiem.

In this work, as usual, the principal parts are allotted to the singers, whether solo or choral; the orchestras are accompanimental. But the range of mood is wider than hitherto, because the image that this time inspired Britten was two-fold: religious truths on the one hand, expressed in the timeless words of the Missa pro defunctis, and human pity on the other, expressed in the anti-war poems of Wilfred Owen. It was a theme, and an occasion, which affected the composer deeply; he had always been opposed to war, since the 30s when he wrote the Ballad of Heroes for those who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Now in 1962, as it turned out, he was accurately reflecting an anti-war mood that was widespread at this time; it was a mood that was reflected in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Aldermaston Marches; there was a genuine popular fear that political tension between America and Russia would erupt into open nuclear warfare, as had very nearly happened already in Korea. Moreover the English, with their customary taste for anniversaries, were just approaching the fiftieth one of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914; the realities of warfare were preying on the popular imagination. What could more aptly epitomise this mood than the work of Wilfred Owen, whose poetry had a sudden upsurge in the years up to 1964?

Such was the general background to the War Requiem, which was first heard in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral on 30th May 1962, within sight of the old bombed-out building. The whole performance was intended to be an act of international reconciliation: the soloists were to be a Russian, a German and an Englishman [The work was recorded with Galina Vishnevskaya, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Peter Pears]; a true coming-together for an act of collective remembrance and pity.

The work is conceived on three levels. The main sections of the Latin Requiem are allotted to the full chorus and main orchestra; the Owen poems are sung by tenor and baritone soli, accompanied by chamber orchestra; the distant choir of boys’ voices are accompanied by a chamber organ. Occasionally two levels overlap, as in the Agnus Dei; all three come together for the final pages.

The words of the Requiem provide the overall structure; the Wilfred Owen poems, four of which were textually altered by Britten, are interspersed. Such a principle had been adopted in several previous works and had been used four years previously by Fricker in The Vision of Judgement. In this case the two themes are juxtaposed in stark contrast, and the musical material of the solo sections is derived from the music of that part of the Mass to which they are attached. The image that chiefly inspires Britten, to which his music is the response, is pity. To an observer, the results of wars are pitiful; the composer realises this pitifulness, which he presents, exposes and reflects. How we respond to his art depends on our view of the artistic function. Is it to describe or to explain? To explore or to interpret? To observe or to prophesy? The larger the theme, the greater the need for creative insight, not merely into the appearance of events, but into their reality.

And how are we to interpret pity? It is a simple matter to dispel any sense of emotional detachment or religious complacency by the rude contrast of the battle-field. Such a dramatic device indeed provides a contrast that is basic, almost primitive. But it does not lead to any conclusion. What is to be our view? Anger? Resignation? If we accept that the artist’s function is to interpret suffering, not merely to indicate the fact that it exists, then such dwelling on pity can come very near to self-pity, which is anything but ennobling. Pity is not necessarily the same as compassion. Only the compassion and the prophecy of a great artist can point the way through suffering to a wider goal; but the War Requiem stops short at the pity.

Technically speaking, one unifying feature, as it had been in Les Illuminations, is the interval of the tritone (C-F sharp), which pervades the work right from the opening. Other familiar technical characteristics are the use of canon, inversion, and ostinati; a not-so-familiar feature is the freer vertical combination of independent levels of sound. Britten is very far from being an aleatoric composer, but the simultaneous sounding together of the different groups and soloists does call for a freedom, a lack of rigidness on the part of both conductors.

Earlier works are suggested, both generally and in particular. The Owen poem ‘Bugles sang’, which follows the Dies irae, and is based on the trumpet fanfare at the beginning of it, inevitably evokes echoes of the Nocturne movement in the Serenade. The closest quotation of all occurs in the Offertorium, which is made up of material from the Second Canticle, Abraham and Isaac. As before, the divine voice is represented by two singers at the interval of a fourth. This section moreover provides a clear example of Britten’s artistic response to the theme of pity. Whereas in the Abraham and Isaac story, Abraham was spared from killing his son Isaac because he had been obedient to God’s wish, in Owen’s poem, because of disobedience, he does kill him-’and half the seed of Europe, one by one’. The very term Offertorium takes on a grimly distorted meaning, which is called to mind immediately by the distant boys’ voices, singing ‘Hostias et preces tibi Domine laudis offerimus’.

What the composer suggests by this juxtaposition is overwhelming in its potentially tragic implication; but he is content to leave it at that. And so the listener who responds positively to these implications is left suspended as it were in mid-air, because they are not pursued; the theme is stated, not interpreted. Pity is there, but nothing more; if our emotions are roused, they are not purged; and the conclusion of the Offertorium section, as indeed of the work as a whole, is simply an inconclusive quietness.

Several critics have suggested a similarity with Verdi’s Requiem, particularly in the dramatic treatment of the material. But an interesting comparison may also be made between this work of Britten and another highly unorthodox Requiem, written nearly fifty years earlier-that of Delius. At first glance the two works could hardly be more different. Britten’s I5 written from the Christian, that of Delius from an atheistic standpoint; Britten was as responsive to the mood of the 60s as Delius was indifferent to, and remote from, that of the First World War; the result is that the work of the later composer was a spectacular success, whereas that of the earlier was an unqualified and unmitigated failure. That said, however, both works have a common origin-the artistic personal stand against the violence and tyranny of the twentieth century; the aggressive instinct that finds its outlet in nationalism and war. Britten sought to show, through Wilfred Owen and the traditional Requiem, the need for pity; Delius, however, also reacting against the false patriotism and mass hysteria of 1914, sought a solution in an anti-Christian philosophy, based on Nietzsche, which propounded the need for self-reliance, the finality of death, the transitory state of man. His was also a major work, written in 1914/16 as a personal tribute to ‘all young artists who sacrificed their lives during the war’. But in 1920, popular memories of the recent slaughter were too fresh to admit the wide acceptance of a work which was based on such a negative philosophy. However fine the music might be-and in places it is very fine-this could not rescue a work whose basic tenets were so out of keeping with the mood of the moment. Only the more permissive, less doctrinally secure, mood of the 60s has allowed Delius’s Requiem to be listened to again in recent years.

The War Requiem did not prove to be, like Peter Grimes, the beginning of a new artistic development in British music; its artistic raison d'être arose from a transitory, popular mood, felt at a specific moment in time, while its structure rested, for all its embellishments, on the foundation of the old oratorio tradition.

Following the War Requiem, two smaller works were concerned with the general theme of peace and pity: the Cantata Misericordium, and an anthem for the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations (1965), for chorus of men, women and children, Voices for Today. The Cantata Misericordium is a setting in Latin of the parable of the Good Samaritan; tenor and baritone soloists enact the story, while the choir function rather as the Chorus in a Greek tragedy, and keep the audience informed of the events, as well as comment on them. It was composed for the centenary commemoration of the Red Cross in Geneva, on 1st September 1963. Though much less ambitious a work than the War Requiem, and much shorter (twenty minutes as opposed to eighty-five,) it is in many ways more artistically complete. Britten’s characteristic style - the immediately arresting ostinato pattern, and the lack of motivic development-is much more applicable to a short work than an extended one; and more over the dramatic development of the theme of pity, which gives the work momentum, is much more complete in the Cantata; the story is not merely told, it is also interpreted.

And Britten’s response to this image, though more orthodox than in the case of the War Requiem, is no less compelling. We are reminded of a Bach Cantata. Indeed, his debt to Bach is most strongly felt in the alternation of chorus, arioso and recitative; also in the molto tranquillo section at [30], ‘Dormi nunc, amice’. The theme of pity is never once lost sight of in the music; the ‘compassion’ motif; with which the work opens, is given to a solo string quartet, and is used throughout the work [at [13], [17], [20]] to point the dramatic tension, and also to depict the passage of time. h falling phrase suggests the suffering of the injured man; a major tonality represents the Samaritan; the end recalls the opening, as was the case in the Hymn to St. Cecilia.

The influence of Bach is also very strong in the D major ‘Overture with or without chorus, 'The Building of the House. This was the short, five minute, occasional piece written for the inaugural concert of the Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, at the twentieth Aldeburgh Festival, on 2nd June 1967. The choir declaim Psalm 127 like a chorale against a baroque-style orchestral texture. This was followed by Children's Crusade, which stands midway between another children’s work, The Golden Vanity, and the late Church Parables. The accompaniment combines two pianos, an electronic organ, and a large percussion section.

 

Operas

In seeking an external stimulus to which to respond, and in enlarging the range of his newly-emerging vocal style, it was inevitable that sooner or later Britten would turn to opera; particularly since for some time oratorio had been a dying form. But what was by no means inevitable in 1942 was the success that lay ahead for his first attempt. Very few operas in England had ever reached beyond their immediate occasion; many were of local interest only; most died on their feet as soon as they appeared. And this fact was not necessarily the fault of the music, which in some cases was excellent; Vaughan Williams and Delius are the chief examples. What was lacking were national roots and a vital operatic tradition. A further instance of this need of roots is provided by the American experience: American composers equally lack an operatic tradition, with the result that few indeed of the operas of American composers have held their own on the international stage. One of the very few to do so was Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), which drew on a distinctively American experience at first hand.

When Britten returned to England in 1942 with Koussevitsky’s commission to write a full-length opera, two main problems faced him. The first was to find a dramatic theme of sufficient substance for a full length work, which would also provide him with an inspiring image, and which would give scope to his creativity. On this would depend the sort of work he wrote. He only knew that he wanted it to be based on George Crabbe’s The Borough, which described Aldeburgh in the early nineteenth century. He had read an article about Crabbe by E. M. Forster [in The Listener, 29th May, 1941], and this had made a very strong impression on him. The second problem was to assess accurately the operatic situation in this country and elsewhere, and to balance idealism with feasibility; on this would depend the reception accorded to the work. As events were to prove, he was astonishingly susceptible to the needs and mood of the time, as he was to be again twenty years later when he wrote the War Requiem.

He assumed, correctly as it turned out, that the musical public were ready for a fresh start in opera: Peter Grimes provided it. Recognisable characters sang in English; the place was geographically localised on the Suffolk coast that Britten knew so well; all traditions have to start in a particular place if they are to start at all. Moreover, as in the case of Gershwin, Britten’s simple diatonic idiom was the most likely to appeal to a wide audience at that time. More sophisticated audiences than the English might have expected a more sophisticated style, but Britten’s possessed that immediate impact which compelled attention, while the idiom was well within the broad operatic tradition of Verdi, Debussy and Puccini. In addition to this, Britten had an acutely instinctive flair for stage-technique, sharpened by experience in film, theatre and radio work.

The central theme of the opera is a compassionate understanding of Grimes, who is an outsider to his society; running parallel to this is the theme of the sea, and the community who live by it and from it. The action develops on many different levels, while the dramatic effects inherent in Montagu Slater’s libretto are realised with simple, bold strokes. The overall three-act structure of the opera is supported by six interludes, which serve not merely the practical purpose of facilitating scene-changing, or marking the passage of time between acts, but also set the scene and describe the characters. In a sense they summarise the opera. The first Interlude evokes the dawn over the coast; the second unleashes the full fury of a storm, which continues with indirect reference through the next scene; the third describes a fine Sunday morning (in A major); the fourth is a Passacaglia, a description of Grimes’s divided character, with its visionary quality on the one hand and its violence on the other-the Passacaglia theme is taken from the climax moment in the previous scene, when Grimes strikes Ellen; the fifth is a picture of moonlight on a summer’s night, with little ostinati on flute and harp to suggest suffering below the peaceful surface; the sixth shows the mist that has come in from the sea, which is also the symbol of Grimes’s despair.

 

Over the next few years Peter Grimes was produced in the opera houses of the world: in Europe, America and the Far East. All of a sudden English opera had begun a fresh phase.

Meanwhile, with his appetite thoroughly whetted, Britten set about his next opera, the first of his chamber operas, The Rape of Lucretia. The trend of his musical thought has always been more towards solo instruments than to the full symphony orchestra; the orchestral scoring of Peter Grimes had consisted very largely of doubling. It was thus a natural choice, as well as economic necessity, which led him to the use of a chamber orchestra for this and subsequent chamber operas-Albert Herring and The Turn of the Screw-as well as for his arrangement of The Beggar’s Opera. This orchestra was twelve strong: wind quartet (flute doubling piccolo and bass flute; oboe doubling cor anglais; clarinet doubling bass clarinet), horn; percussion; harp; string quintet. The recitative was accompanied by a piano.

Once again in The Rape of Lucretia a general situation, in this case the political relationship between Romans and Etruscans, forms the background to the personal drama, between Lucretia and Tarquinius. Once again, as in Peter Grimes, the events lead to suicide. The tension between the two is reflected in the motifs, which appear in both the vocal parts and their accompanying figures; this tension is further increased by their sexual relationship, which distinguishes this opera from its predecessor.

The other two chamber operas introduce fresh factors: Albert Herring introduces the element of humour, while The Turn of the Screw is a musical ghost story, after the story by Henry James. Like the Third Canticle of the same year, it is constructed in the form of a theme and variations, which are interspersed with vocal sections. The material of the story is tense and neurotic, and Britten responds in kind with a 12-note theme of angular severity. The sustained, unyielding tension is made more marked by the absence of any bass singers; the entire work is at a high tessitura. He was to take another Henry James story later for the television opera Owen Wingrave, a study in pacifism, which was first screened on 16th May, 1971,

Britten returned to full-scale opera in 1951 with a work commissioned for the Festival of Britain of that year. Billy Budd, which was first given in its original form at Covent Garden on 1st December, was in many respects a reversion to the style and manner of Peter Grimes. The libretto, by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was an adaptation of Herman Melville’s last novel. Against the background of tough life at sea during the Napoleonic wars, when floggings and the press-gang led to mutiny at Spithead and the Nore, the story tells of how Billy Budd the innocent came to suffer death through injustice. Again, Britten’s inspiring image is that of pity. E. M. Forster has described the ‘counterpoint’ that surrounds a Melville story; the meaning is felt apart from the narrative; no simple explanation of seemingly unintelligible facts is possible. Such material is indeed the breath of life to an opera composer, since he can underwrite the words. And yet this opera lacks something of the impact of Peter Grimes. Why? The fulcrum of the plot is the Claggart-Billy relationship, and this is progressively oversimplified beyond the requirements of drama, to the point of melodrama. Claggart is all bad; Billy is all good; therefore, we are told, the one had to destroy the other.

Moreover, in spite of his admission that no simple explanation is possible of the events leading to Billy’s execution, Forster has put forward just such an explanation in the libretto, by invoking the pre Christian concept of Fate. The three chief characters all admit to their powerlessness against an overriding force of Fate.

Claggart says:

‘O beauty, O hand someness, would that I never encountered you. Would that I lived in my own world always, in that depravity to which I was born.

Having seen you, what choice remains to me?... I am doomed to annihilate you.’

Billy says:

‘I had to strike down that Jennylegs, it’s fate. And Captain Vere has had to strike me down, fate.’ Vere says: ‘I could have saved him’-but did not.

So with these somewhat unconvincing explanations the characters are reduced to puppets; neither through the drama nor through the music do they come into sharp focus. Indeed, instead of becoming the means whereby the characters live, the music is reduced to the subsidiary role of illustrating the various situations. Whereas in Peter Grimes the conflict arose within Peter’s personality, in Billy Budd the conflict is imposed, and has to be carefully explained, both in the libretto and in the music. The results of the conflict are thus merely pitiful, not tragic or ennobling. As Britten was to find later in the War Requiem, the theme of pity requires more than one dimension for its full interpretation. This work therefore lacks the spontaneous inevitability of the earlier opera. But a direct similarity with Peter Grimes is the mist which is symbolic of man’s blindness. It also frustrates the action against the French ship, and this underlines the fact that the main theme of the opera is a personal, not a military or naval one.

Two other works also owe their genesis to Covent Garden. The first was Gloriana, which in spite of its performance in the presence of the Queen on 8th June, 1953, in honour of her coronation, is one of Britten’s rare miscalculations. It is more a masque than an opera. The other was his only ballet score, The Prince of the Pagodas. But more characteristic and no less important in his output are the children’s operas. Let’s Make an Opera, an ‘Entertainment for Young People,’ was the first stage work to be presented at Aldeburgh, in 1949. The next was Noye’s Fludde, which was given in 1958; third was The Golden Vanity ‘a vaudeville for boys and piano’, which was written for the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and given by them at the 1967 Aldeburgh Festival.

But a work which stands somewhat apart from the other operas is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Though written for the small Jubilee Hall at Aldeburgh, where it was first heard on 11th June 1960, the work has also been performed at Covent Garden; and it benefits considerably from the larger surroundings. It stands apart because the text was selected from Shakespeare by the composer and Peter Pears. Yet in many ways it is the first significant advance since Peter Grimes. The vitality and colour of Shakespeare’s magical comedy call forth a corresponding vitality and colour from the composer. Structurally the action takes place on three levels. first, Titania and Oberon, and their estrangement; second Lysander and Hermia, who are fleeing from Athens to avoid an undesirable marriage with Demetrius; third, the group of rustics, Shakespeare’s ‘rude mechanicals’, and their antics. The story is amply suited to musical colour; dreams and night-spells are peculiarly characteristic of this composer. Not that the work is entirely impressionistic. Indeed the whole second act is constructed round a sequence of four chords, which include the twelve notes, but in triadic form, and scored for different instrumental groups-as the chords in Billy Budd [between scenes two and three of the second act, as Captain Vere goes to tell Billy of his conviction and sentence] had been. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the happiest operatic score Britten has so far composed, and the most successful since Peter Grimes.

Very different are the later operatic works, the three ‘Parables for Church Performance’, Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son, which were all played in Orford Church as part of the Aldeburgh Festivals of 1964, 1966 and 1968 respectively. These represent a quite fresh departure, because the image that this time inspired the composer came from an alien tradition, that of the Japanese No-play. He had visited Tokyo in 1956 with his friend Prince Ludwig, who has recorded the effect of the No-play [Fiftieth Birthday Symposium, (Faber, 1963)]; the extreme stylization, the slow moving pace, archaic music, all-male cast, the extreme formalism of production, even down to the costumes, masks and other effects; the rapt attention of the audience, and absence of applause; indeed this, and the legendary nature of the drama, suggested Greek tragedy. Here was a centuries-old tradition; could it be transplanted Westwards? Clearly not without radical reappraisal. Such a tradition was quite foreign to the Western theatre; but what about the Church? There was nothing resembling any contemporary Church drama; nothing since the mediaeval mystery plays, which had already sparked off certain works such as the Second Canticle and Noye’s Fludde. Could the old tradition of the mystery play be somehow brought up to date, and made a valid experience to a present-day Western audience? The particular play that Britten saw was called Sumidagawa (Sumida River) and he has described his reaction as follows: ‘The whole occasion made a tremendous impression on me: the simple, touching story, the economy of style, the intense slowness of the action, the marvellous skill and control of the performers, the beautiful costumes, the mixture of chanting, speech, singing which, with the three instruments, made up the strange music-it all offered a totally new "operatic" experience. ‘There was no conductor-the instrumentalists sat on stage, as did the chorus, and the chief characters made their entrance down a long ramp. The lighting was strictly non-theatrical. The cast was all male, the one female character wearing an exquisite mask which made no attempt to hide the male jowl beneath it. ‘The memory of this play has seldom left my mind in the years since. Was there not something-many things-to be learnt from it? The solemn dedication and skill of the performers were a lesson to any singer or actor of any country and any language. Was it not possible to use just such a story-with an English background (for there was no question in any case of a pastiche from the ancient Japanese)? Surely the mediaeval religious drama in England would have had a comparable setting - an all-male cast of ecclesiastics - a simple, austere staging in a church-a very limited instrumental accompaniment-a moral story? And so we came from Sumidagawa to Curlew River and a church in the Fens, but with the same story and similar characters; and whereas in Tokyo the music was the ancient Japanese music, jealously preserved by successive generations, here I have started the work with that wonderful plainsong hymn ‘Te lucis ante terminum’, and from it the whole piece may be said to have grown.’

The libretto was by William Plomer, who had already written the libretto of the ill-fated Gloriana, and he set the ancient Japanese story in a Christian context. A madwoman comes to be ferried across the river; on the way the Ferryman tells of a child who crossed a year previously only to die of exhaustion on the other side. The woman cries; it is her child; but she is freed from her madness at the voice of her child, and the appearance of his spirit.

The orchestra which Britten had already reduced to twelve for his chamber operas, was now reduced still further to seven, flute, horn, viola, double bass, harp, percussion, chamber organ.

Many familiar features of style occur, as well as many unfamiliar ones. The juxtaposition of different keys, canon, ground-bass are all common; and the plainchant prelude and postlude recall A Ceremony of Carols. But there the resemblance ends; the accompaniment patterns are static, more so than in the Second Canticle, the pace is extremely slow-moving. The use of chamber organ, and the comparatively free vertical combination of sounds, recall the War Requiem; but except for the prelude and postlude the composer dispenses with key signatures, and the tonality is indirect. Moreover, the instrumental parts, which are sparse, are not so characteristically independent of the voices as in other works. Some instrumental association is allowed to creep in, however; a flute, flutter-tongue heralds the mad-woman, a horn calls our attention to the Ferryman, while a glissando represents the movement of the ferry.

The experience gained from Curlew River led to The Burning Fiery Furnace, which differed in that the story was specifically part of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The instruments are the same as for the first Parable, with the addition of a trombone, to give a royal colour to the instrumental sonority. Procession, lighting, costumes, movement and gesture are all an integral part of the composition and these hark back to the Japanese original [several composers in the 60s have sought to augment a basically very simple conception with such musical and visual ‘overheads’; for instance, John Tavener (see p. 312)]. But more happens than in Curlew River, and the plainchant is more integrated into the texture of the music, which otherwise is very slow-moving and similar to that of the earlier work. This begins and ends with a plainchant procession, which as before is the only part of the score bearing a key-signature; the melody Salus Aeterna is the basis of the work. As before, an Angel appears at the moment of culmination.

The third Parable, The Prodigal Son, like the other two, was also written by William Plomer. Again a familiar theme is chosen, of specifically Christian significance. The work differs from its predecessors chiefly in the fuller use made of the chorus, who represent Servants, Parasites, and Beggars. The trombone of the previous Parable is replaced by a trumpet, and the flute becomes an alto flute, changing to piccolo for the dance finale; otherwise the instrumentation and the sonority are the same. The plainchant basis is Iam lucis orto sidere, and the climax of the work this time is one of dancing and rejoicing.

An important difference however between The Prodigal Son and the two preceding Parables is that in it greater importance is given to the dramatic working out of the inner conflict. This reaches the climax with the son’s decision to return home, while forgiveness and reconciliation are the dramatic conclusion of the work. Instrumental association is used, as before, for the heightening of the expressive power of the music. The trumpet and viola represent the extrovert and introvert sides of the Son’s character; harp glissandi represent the Tempter; triads (B flat major) represent the stability and security of home.

Taken as one unit, the three Church Parables represent the three Christian virtues: Hope (Curlew River), Faith (The Burning Fiery Furnace), and Charity (The Prodigal Son).

 

Vocal style

The musical austerity and tonal vagueness of the three Church Parables, though compensated by a certain visual and ritualistic richness, in many ways run contrary to Britten’s practice. Distinctiveness of melodic line, strikingly recognizable colour in the accompaniment, and strict attention to the rhythmic accentuation and articulation of words, have hitherto always been the hallmarks of his vocal technique. The colour in the Parables is traditional, religious, associative rather than musical; and their somewhat meagre musical content is austerity indeed for Western ears accustomed to a more substantial diet.

But certain melodic characteristics and use of intervals have already been referred to, which are fundamental to his thought and lend distinctive colour to his vocal style. Two chief examples: the interval of the semitone expresses any sort of tension, anguish, darkness or disorder; instances from the songs include the Donne Sonnets (particularly No. 3), the Second and Third Canticles (‘Still falls the rain’ consists of Eb-D); instances from the operas include the B-Bb relationship in Billy Budd, with which the opera opens, and which is central to the tension of the musical scheme; the storm Interlude in Peter Grimes is built round the semitone; also it expresses the mad-woman’s grief in Curlew River (at [81]). There are other instances too numerous to specify. Triads, on the other hand, often in root position, are expressive of exactly the opposite: calm, decision, ‘heavenly things’. A few from the many possible instances include the last Donne Sonnet, which is the final, optimistic conclusion of that cycle. At the end of Scene I of the second Act of Billy Budd, Vere sings ‘O for the light of clear heaven to separate evil from good’, and triads suggest such a light. Later, at the end of the next scene, when he has taken the decision to tell Billy of his conviction, simple triads express this calm resolve, as well as Billy’s complete lack of any malicious or dark side to his nature. He is the very opposite of Peter Grimes. An instance from the Parables occurs at the end of The Burning Fiery Furnace, where the Angel’s music, as he sings with the chorus, assumes the repose of triads. The simplest juxtaposition of the two occurs in the Missa Brevis, where the confident mood of the Gloria is illustrated by triads on the organ, whereas the more solemn mood of the Agnus Dei is depicted by semitones throughout. This expressive use of intervals lends consistency to Britten’s vocal works of whatever period.

 

Orchestral and symphonic works

As Britten gradually found his characteristic voice, he wrote progressively less orchestral and instrumental music. His is not a symphonic style. The pre-war orchestral pieces, such as the Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge and the Piano Concerto, belong to his formative years, and display a characteristic fluency and ingenuity; and several orchestral works date from the American period, of which the Violin Concerto and the Sinfonia da Requiem are chiefly still performed. But in a sense these works simply sum up his achievement as a composer up to then; the Sinfonia da Requiem, for instance, used material from Our Hunting Fathers [cf the Scherzo of the symphony with the Dance of Death of the earlier work].

On his return in 1942, three more instrumental works appeared before Peter Grimes; the Prelude and Fugue for Strings (1943), which was commissioned by the Boyd Neel orchestra; the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1946), which was written for a documentary film for the Crown Film Unit; and the Second String Quartet (1945), written for the Zorian Quartet [Olive Zorian later led the English Opera Group Orchestra], to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Purcell’s death.

After 1946 a few instrumental works have been written expressly for individual players. Viola, oboe, guitar and harp have been catered for in this way. But these pieces, along with the piece for organ, Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria, count among his slighter works. More substantial, however, are the 'cello works for Rostropovich: a Sonata, two Suites, and the Symphony for Cello and Orchestra 1963, which was the first orchestral work for almost twenty years since the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and which may be said to epitomise the features of his purely instrumental style, his absolute musical thought, unmixed with any literary or dramatic influence.

It was first played in Moscow in March, 1964, by Mstislav Rostropovich. In spite of its title, and its four movements, it is a concerto in all but name, with a virtuoso solo part, including a cadenza. The image that chiefly inspired the work was the artistry of the great Russian cellist, whose style of playing decided the nature of the themes. So the strength of the work lies in the range and colour of the solo writing, while its chief weakness is a lack of thematic or motivic development-which is the structural equivalent in instrumental music of the plot in an opera, or the words in a song.

The scheme of the work is classical; indeed, the first movement is the most extended sonata-form Britten has ever composed; but the idiom is highly chromatic, almost 12-note in places. Within an established tonality (D minor), Britten tends to use ten or eleven of the twelve notes in a phrase or group; the missing note(s) are then given a prominent place in the next phrase. Thus in the first theme of the first movement, A flat is held back until bar 8; in the second theme G is held back until the climax moment of the passage ([7] + 4). Again in the solo theme of the slow movement, eleven notes are used; the missing one (G) forms the pedal point of the orchestral accompaniment.

The two main themes of the first movement are interrelated, and contain motifs and characteristics from which later passages are derived. Features of the first D minor theme, which consists of 3-part ‘cello chords built round a wedge-like pattern of intervals, are the 2-note rhythm in bar 3, the end-of-phrase appoggiaturas from which the second theme is derived, and the prevalence of two intervals, the minor seventh and the minor third. The broad, episodic, sequential phrases lead forward to a climax (at [2]), from which a derivative bridge passage leads to the second theme at [6.] This consists of little more than semitone appoggiaturas in a parlando style, in which the blend of upward and downward movement suggests question and answer, like a song without words.

The development section is more of a meditation on the existing material; the mood of agitation and tension is largely the result of the semitone interval. Figures and phrases are repeated, not developed, while, for the recapitulation (at [I 7]) the roles of solo and orchestra are reversed. The main theme is given to the orchestra in F major, the subsidiary part, to the cellist. This is maintained for the repeat of the second theme (at [21]); and it is not until the D major coda that the ‘cello chords of the opening reappear, overlaid this time with a woodwind countersubject, taken from the first bridge passage (after [4]).

The mood of restless tension continues into the next movement, which is a very short, Mahlerlike scherzo, whose scale-like theme is also derived from the minor third interval. Scurrying semiquavers flit past, eerie, ghostlike, and lightning-quick. There is just a suggestion of a more sustained scale-theme ([32]-[34]), which provides a Trio-like contrast.

The timpani provide the rhythmic ground over which the slow movement is worked out. As in the first movement, the first theme is episodic and sequential, and is followed through to its climax (just before [52]). Built round the third, whether major or minor, it generates an elegiac intensity, mainly through chromatic tonality. The theme is offset by a filling-in accompaniment figure on the woodwind, from which in due course is derived the comparatively tenuous and loose middle section. At the recapitulation the soloist and orchestra once again change places, and t\ the main theme is allotted this time to the brass; it gains splendidly in stature as a result, while the soloist has to be content with the somewhat gray and neutral accompaniment figures. The work is after all described as a ‘symphony’, not a concerto. The climax this time is more powerful than at first, largely because the strings are held back until the last moment ([60]-3).

A short cadenza introduces the Passacaglia finale, whose D major theme is made up of four progressively lengthening phrases. This is first | announced by a solo trumpet, and is taken from the middle section of the previous movement (at [53]); there its loose construction and derivative nature were less noticeable because its function and surroundings were I subsidiary; but to bring it out into the light of day, as it were, and to give it the much more strenuous task of sustaining six variations of a Passacaglia, is a different matter altogether. Moreover, whether consciously or j unconsciously, it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to part of a certain well-known nursery rhyme [‘Three Blind Mice.’]. All these factors weaken an otherwise ingenious finale. One undaunted critic however, describes it [writing in Tempo No. 70, Autumn 1964) as the ‘affirmative resolution’ of the tension of the previous movements, which he calls the ‘emotional crux’ of what is, taken overall, a ‘disturbing work’. Some such imaginative rationale is needed if the finale is not to leave the listener with a sense of anticlimax, and if the work as a whole is to be brought onto the personal level of the listener’s awareness.

On the strength of Britten’s work so far, certain salient points stand out. His music is highly and unusually personal: that is to say, its creative impulse is his individual artistic response to an image; technical considerations, however striking, are secondary. His idiom, based on tonality, is ingenious, not new; he is not interested in novelty, abstraction or serialism, still less in the impersonal experiments of the avant-garde. So his music relies for its effect on a direct and personal rapport with the listener, at the emotional, neurotic level. If the listener can identify himself with the composer’s personal response to a poetic image, then well and good; his acceptance of the music will be total, instinctive. Twice Britten has shown, in Peter Grimes and the War Requiem, that there can be just such a wide, popular response to a contemporary composer who, judging the temper of the times correctly, speaks with a voice to which the majority can listen.

16 Peter Maxwell Davies

 

Starting in about the mid-fifties, a fundamental change came over the British musical scene. It arose partly from a dissatisfaction among younger musicians and composers with the traditional leanings of their elders; partly from an excitement at the currently unfolding ideas of Schoenberg, Webern and the continental avant-garde, whose work was just beginning to be heard and propagated in England at this time; partly from a desire to discover a new, more cosmopolitan style that owed nothing to neo-modalism, neo-classicism, or any other style previously favoured by English composers. The pendulum of fashion swung markedly and decisively away from the established, the traditional, and towards the new, the avant-garde, the experimental.

Starting originally among certain individual composers and teachers, and in small minority pressure groups, such as the S.P.N.M. and Morley College [See p. 156], the new trend gradually spread outwards, gathering momentum as it went, until by about 1960 it had reached the critical columns of certain magazine and newspapers, as well as the BBC. One of the London orchestras, the L.P.O., was bold enough to grasp the nettle firmly and to include the newly-discovered music in a series of concerts over several seasons; only to find, after some initial success, that the audiences for it formed but a minority of the concert-going public. Since then a more cautious, traditional policy has been followed.

This trend of fashion had both desirable and undesirable effects on public taste. While undoubtedly a fresh and much-needed stimulus, in the broadest sense, was given to the English musical scene, and a hard blow was delivered against those insular and reactionary members of it to whom any change was anathema, unfortunately at the same time a number of babies were lost with the bathwater. Like most, if not all, fashions, it dwelt on some aspects of the musical art to the exclusion of others; it presented a part of the truth as if it were the whole, and thus inevitably contained within itself the seeds of its own reaction, which was to come later.

Thus, on the positive side was felt an exciting sense of fresh discovery, development and experiment, and a breaking away from narrow parochialism into a broader, more cosmopolitan context; on the negative side an aggressive intolerance of whatever did not appear to belong within the newly-discovered serial tradition of Schoenberg and Webern. It was a case of all-or-nothing. Cliques grew up, which showed an unawareness of, or indifference to, the need for contact and artistic rapport between the composer and his audience. The breakdown of tonality was an unquestioned and assumed datum, a starting point from which the composer of ‘the new music’ set out on his voyage of discovery. The tide of serialism, which was running at its full flood in the mid-50s, duly began to ebb in the 60s, leaving behind as it did so a considerable quantity of musical flotsam and jetsam. Many were left high and dry. The goddess of fashion is indeed a capricious and fickle lady, who makes searching demands on her numerous suitors, and sometimes rewards those who succumb to her charms with nothing more than an ungrateful waywardness.

Prominent among this new school was the ‘Manchester Group’-four musicians who happened to be fellow students at Manchester between 1954 and 1956: the composers Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, Harrison Birtwistle, and the pianist John Ogdon. All have since moved in markedly individual directions.

 

Peter Maxwell Davies was born in Manchester in 1934, and his forty odd compositions so far have developed along highly original and daring lines. The course of study which he pursued at Manchester University prescribed 1500-1900 as the approved limits of musical history; and this he found irksome. As far as English music was concerned, he had no sympathy for Vaughan Williams or Delius, who were held up as the accepted models. How could any pre-Schoenbergian be considered relevant for the young composer of the 50s? While at Manchester he was enthusiastic about all manifestations of new music, Eastern as well as European, and still acknowledges two works written by him then, the Trumpet Sonata, and the Piano Pieces, Op. 2, written for John Ogdon. Already in the Sonata he experimented with a rhythmic series, related to the set; while in the Piano Pieces he introduced the use of isorhythm. His starting point was Schoenberg, though he is by no means strictly confined to a 12-note series.

His first 12-note piece as such, and also the first one to use a mediaeval source (a Dunstable motet), was Alma Redemptoris Mater. This is a short, three-movement study for wind instruments (1957), which has since proved to be a fruitful storehouse, and has even influenced other composers, such as Birtwistle and Crosse.

After Manchester, he went on an Italian Government scholarship to Rome, where he studied with Goffredo Petrassi (1957/8). Here for the first time his technique was thoroughly scrutinised; every note was checked. During this time he continued to assimilate influences from all sources, and also pursued his involvement with old music of the Mediaeval and Renaissance periods, which were shortly to have such a pronounced influence on his work and style. Under Petrassi’s tutelage he wrote two student compositions in which he first showed his orchestral paces: the St. Michael Sonata for seventeen wind instruments, and a full-length orchestral composition, Prolation. Both use mediaeval formal devices, coupled with the serial style. The first piece divides the instruments into two antiphonal choirs, after the Venetian style, though the composer largely nullifies this effect by being more concerned with the horizontal line, with texture, dynamics and timbre, than with the vertical effect of the sounds in combination; this results in a coarse, unyielding texture, which occasionally lapses into a strident vulgarity. The second piece was a study in rhythm, and the temporal relationship of note values. Again, it was an attempt to apply mediaeval principles in a contemporary context. Climaxes are carefully graded according to density, dynamics, note values and so on. It is here the interest lies, rather than in the thematic material itself; indeed the motifs are very short-winded, and serve only as vehicles for the technical procedures. According to this aesthetic, what matters is not so much what you say, as how you say it. The work lasts twenty minutes-long by Webern’s standards-and was awarded the 1959 Olivetti prize in Rome. [For which one of the two judges was Petrassi himself]

In searching for his musical individuality, Davies started from the orthodox serial principle that the smallest particle should be a microcosmic representation of the complete structure. Though he may use a mediaeval melody, or part of a plainchant, as a starting point for a composition, little trace of the original appears in the finished work. For instance, it would take an acute listener indeed to pick out the Dunstable motet round which Alma Redemptoris Mater was conceived; similarly, though the St. Michael Sonata derives its material from chants from the Requiem Mass, these become lost in the overall effect.

Returning home, he taught music for three years at Cirencester Grammar School (1959-1962), where by his freshness and directness of approach he enthused even the most philistine among the pupils. Children whose ability in other academic directions might be distinctly limited, found that they could respond in a positive way to this most refreshingly unorthodox of music masters, who invited them to participate, to improvise. This was gebrauchsmusik with a difference. The most direct result of Davies’ years at Cirencester was the Christmas sequence of carols and instrumental sonatas, O Magnum Mysterium (1960). The intention of this work was to write something within the range of children but without compromising his own individual style which was just beginning to be formed. The importance of the work is that it tested the applicability and relevance of the new style; if young people could assimilate it, surely the composer might thence proceed to enlarge the scope of subsequent compositions. The instrumental sections allow for free improvisation within defined limits. The words of the carols are, needless to say, mediaeval. Both the carols and the instrumental sonatas are, by necessity, simple, and though the chordal, melodic nature of the carols is a perfect foil for the more fragmentary part-writing of the sonatas, the real climax of the work does not come until the concluding organ fantasia, which is a powerful piece, built round the first three notes of the carol theme, (F-Gb-Ab), and which builds to a shattering climax, before dying away to nothing on a solitary pedal note. For sheer originality of conception, and exploitation of the resources of the organ, as well as for such technical features as s-part pedal chords, this work is unique in the English organ repertoire.

The principles of construction worked out in O Magnum Mysterium were followed up the following year in another school piece, ‘Te Lucis ante terminum, in which the verses of the Latin evening hymn are separated by instrumental ‘verses’. Also written in 1959 were the Five Motets, in which three groups of singers and players are treated antiphonally, with considerable freedom of form and style. Davies has also written several shorter carols and choral pieces which stem from the choral style of the O Magnum Mysterium carols: simple, yet markedly individual, which appeal to the unspoilt, unspotted naivete that is in all of us, however overlaid with sophistication.

All his subsequent works tend to fall into sets of two or three compositions derived from the same basic inspiration; and thus his years at Cirencester also saw three works which owe their initial impulse to Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610.

These are the String Quartet (1961), the Leopardi Fragments (1961) for soprano, contralto and instrumental ensemble, and the Sinfonia (1962). Their connection with the Monteverdi original is the same as that of Stravinsky’s Movements to a Monteverdi madrigal; in other words, distant. In the process of assimilating the numerous influences that make up his composite style, Davies has achieved, in the String Quartet, lines of greater length, and a more singing style than in the earlier St. Michael Sonata; it is a softer, more lyrical work, based on Monteverdi’s Sonata sopra Sancta Maria. The Sinfonia is concerned with the gradual process of transformation of the material. Davies thinks if not thematically, certainly with ideas of a distinct musical identity, and the two features that concerned him chiefly at this stage were a greater concern with the vertical sound, and the process whereby the contours of the music gradually evolve as the idea develops. A comparison with Stravinsky is by no means inappropriate; not only is Davies particularly impressed by Stravinsky’s later serial works, such as Movements or Threni, but like the elder composer he is highly and enthusiastically receptive to the music of numerous other periods and traditions; particularly the mediaeval, which he does not slavishly copy so much as embody into his own musical thinking. He is a neo-mediaeval composer to the same extent as Stravinsky was a neo-classical composer; the two are precisely analogous.

After leaving Cirencester, Davies went to Princeton (1962-4) on a Harkness Fellowship. This had come about through the instigation of the American composer Aaron Copland, who had heard and liked Davies’s early piano pieces, and commissioned the Ricercar and Doubles (1959), (on the mediaeval carol 'To many a well’) for the Dartmouth Festival in America. The instruments used are wind quintet, viola and 'cello (the same as in O Magnum Mysterium), but with cembalo; the work lasts for twelve minutes, in three contrasting sections, and is in direct line of descent from Alma Redemptoris Mater.

But these years reach their culmination with the remarkable group of works inspired by the sixteenth century composer John Taverner. The centre-piece of the group is the opera Taverner, which was begun as early as 1957. The two-act libretto was written by the composer, and itself makes a very characteristic composition. Each act has a very precise structure; each of its eight scenes is based on a single form, such as Renaissance dances, a motet, or a verse anthem. Apart from the highly dramatic nature of the material-the catholic musician John Taverner, accused of heresy, compromised his belief in order to save himself from the stake-the two acts form a sort of dramatic canon, the events of one being mirrored in the events of the other. While in America, Davies worked on the opera, and found out all he could of the facts about this extraordinary mediaeval musician, who held such a compelling fascination for him. The work needs to be assessed on many different levels, like Joyce’s Ulysses; there is first the hold of the mediaeval period as a whole over Davies, whose background is that of the industrial North of England; the preoccupation with death, and the archetypal nature of Taverner’s experience; the result of compromising one’s inherent beliefs, which is inevitably an inner spiritual death, in spite of the continuation of physical life. In Taverner’s case his spiritual life was represented by his music, and this died in him after he denied his faith. Just so must any composer, at any time, be true to the music, the creative force, that is in him. In an age such as ours, when doubt is almost a prerequisite for intellectual respectability, the story of John Taverner has a direct and alarming relevance. Davies starts without qualification in the direct line of the Western Christian tradition, and draws parallels between the sixteenth century and our own day. But what gives the work its characteristic and individual colour is the element of parody and blasphemy, as shown in Joking Jesus and the Black Mass. [This projected work is not yet written.]

There is no watering down of the force and impact of the drama with bourgeois respectability; the analogy with Berg’s Wozzeck is, in this respect, most striking. Musical as well as spiritual parallels are drawn: Davies has identified himself with the mediaeval aesthetic to an extent unparalleled by other British composers; far more, for instance, than Britten has identified himself with Purcell, or, in an earlier generation, Vaughan Williams did with Tallis. For Davies, as for his mediaeval model, the cantus firmus is a formal device on which to hang the structure of the work; the composer takes for granted the text associated with the plainsong melody, and interprets the meaning of it. The mediaeval In Nomine was based on the plainsong cantus firmus ‘Gloria Tibi Trinitas’, and was a free invention over this thematic/structural foundation. Just so Davies superimposes his free invention; the theme may be varied by fragmentation, by octave displacement, different instrumental colour, by rhythmic alteration, and all the contrapuntist’s armoury of resources, of which isorhythm and canon are two of the chief ones.

Round the opera, like satellites round a planet, are grouped three instrumental compositions. The First Fantasia on Taverner’s In Nomine theme was written as a ‘preparation’ for the opera; the Second Fantasia, arose from the music of the first Act, already completed by October 1963, and is a ‘comment’ on it; the Third Fantasia will be taken from the second Act. In addition to this, Davies has compiled a short (thirteen minute) instrumental suite, Seven In Nomine, in which three sixteenth-century settings of the plainsong theme are interspersed with free, contrasted settings of his own; a scheme which immediately recalls that of O Magnum Mysterium. The various pieces were written over a considerable period, and the Suite is a reflection of larger works of the same time. The last, very slow piece crystallizes and summarizes, in more static form, the harmonic character of the previous six.

The First Fantasia is short, as befits an overture, and is preceded by Taverner’s original In Nomine, taken from the Mulliner Book. It is the first work in which the composer introduces handbells, which appear frequently in his scores from now on; its style is, of necessity, more dramatic than earlier orchestral works.

The Second Fantasia is an altogether different and bigger work; it is of symphonic proportions, the largest conception since Prolation, but considerably more mature. The somewhat brash serialism of the student work is here tempered by a sense of freedom, such as is shown by the constantly evolving set, or by the whirling woodwind, starting at bar 539, which marks the central climax of the work; by a concern for the vertical sound as much as the horizontal melody, which has the effect of making the music structurally less diffuse, more tightly knit; by the deeper assimilation of mediaeval contrapuntal techniques, which are used throughout this highly complex and intricate score; also by a broader more symphonic conception, which is impelled by a dramatic momentum, originating from that highly dramatic crisis facing John Taverner at his trial; this gives the work an urgency.

It lasts forty minutes, and its thirteen sections are played without a break. Sections I-6 make roughly a sonata-form movement, with an introduction and coda; Sections 8-I0 make a Scherzo & Trio.

Second Fantasia on John Taverner’s In Nomine

An analysis based on the composer’s programme-note for the first performance. (References are to the full score published by Boosey and Hawkes Ltd.)

Section 2

Section 1

(a) Bars 1-20 Introduction. The three main melodic figures are heard on solo string quartet in a slow tempo. The first figure is heard on the cello alone; the second on the viola, with a first violin counterpoint, which is its retrograde; the third, after a pause, on the second violin, with a counterpoint on Violin I, which is a varied retrograde of the second figure.

(b) Bars 21-127 A development, for full orchestra, of the introduction. The music gradually quickens, to presto (bar I13), and culminates in a fanfare for brass, with side-drums, which forms an extended ‘up-beat’ into

Section 2

Bars 128-218 Two timpani strokes herald a unison violin melody. This is followed by a ‘secondary group’, whose identities emerge from the violin melody. The section closes (bar 204) with a brief recall, varied, of the initial violin melody, with the timpani as before.

Section 3

Bars 219-446 The development section-in so far as it is legitimate to refer to ‘development’ in this work, where the material is always in a state of transformation. First, a rising figure, which starts in low strings, with double bassoon, and finishes with a reference to the Fanfare of Section I; this introduces the development proper, which starts with a chord for 4 horns, D-F sharp-E-G sharp. The intervals of this chord gradually dominate and unify the whole melodic and harmonic structure of the work. The development consists of isorhythm, mensural canon, and the superposition of elaborate musical structures on a cantus firmus; the In Nomine theme is prominently sung by the oboes (bars 415-442).

Section 4

Bars 447-504 A varied recapitulation by inversion of Section 2, starting with timpani and unison violins.

Section 5

Bars 505-538 A development of the Fanfare from Section I, on woodwind, brass and side-drum. This leads to the climax of the work so far.

Section 6

Bars 539-548 Full orchestral climax with whirling woodwind flourishes; this is an amplification of the quartet of Section I (a). The final bars (540-548, lentissimo) crystallise the harmonies of the music so far into three essential chords.

Section 7

Bars 549-607 A slow transition, with a prominent passage for flutes foreshadowing the material of

Section 8

Bars 608-759 Four varied statements of an ever-developing melody, in three parts, given to different solo woodwind instruments, accompanied by pizzicato strings. These four statements are separated by three interludes, on low strings, harp and double-bassoon, of which the chief feature is the In Nomine theme played on a solo violin, with gradually increasing width of vibrato.

Section 9

Bars 760-865 Prestissimo. Solo strings have long-held ‘cantus’ notes, referring back to Section 1, with quick woodwind figurations, bells and harp. The material is transformed in readiness for Section 10.

Section 10

Bars 866-1008 This section corresponds to Section 8, with the interludes omitted, and with transformed material.

Section 11

Bars 1009-1021 Transition. The entry, for the first time since Section 6 (very high fff), of four trumpets with bells recalls the flutes’ figure in Section 7, which becomes the harmonic basis for Section 12.

Section 12

Bars 1022-1201 Lento molto calmo. This is the longest section, and is scored for strings only, very quiet, except for built-up brass chords towards the end. It consists of four varied statements of a long melody arising out of the three main figures of Section I, with increasingly elaborate counterpoint, but always harmonically derived from Section 2. As in Section 8, these statements are separated by three interludes; the first with a solo violin against harmonics in the other strings; the second with denser texture, recalling Section 3; the third adding the harp, somewhat louder and more jagged in outline, recalling Sections 8 and 10. The fourth statement of the long melody (starting at bar 1156) is made climactic by the addition of the brass. This fades out, and leads into

Section 13

Bars 1202-1215 This final, and shortest, section is scored for woodwind alone, in pianissimo, and refers back to the opening.

The first performance of this Fantasia 1. [By the London Philharmonic under John Pritchard, 30th April 1965. The complaint that scores are too difficult is frequently heard in the dialogue between composers and conductors. Tippett’s works afford another example of this (see p. 278).] had to be delayed for a year owing to its difficulty for the orchestra. Its effect in performance is of extreme power, of orchestral virtuosity, though the use of the orchestra is always subservient to the material; the orchestration is entirely functional; the overall effect is of anguish covering a long time-span. The influence of Mahler is pervasive. It is a symphonic elaboration of certain ideas of Act I of the opera Taverner, and though the material is derived from the opera, the Fantasia has little to do with the dramatic events. The tonal divisions of the orchestra are clearly differentiated; there is for instance a considerable portion for strings only, while the tremendous tension built up round the brass, in Sections 5 and 6, is most carefully graded; yet beyond a certain level of complexity of part writing, and beyond a certain dynamic level, individual part-writing becomes lost in the overall sound.

But the work is a highly individual break-through as far as style is concerned. The post-Webern serialism, which was Davies’ somewhat theoretical and forbidding starting-point, has already been left far behind, and has been humanized, personalized, dramatized by the composer’s affinity with the mediaeval period. This affinity is on many levels-musical, aesthetic, religious, social. Fantasy, parody, a sense of fun, are as central to Davies’s musical thoughts as the strictest attention to contrapuntal detail, and the manipulation of the note-sets are to his technique.

This Fantasia sums up his technical advances up to 1964. It is not to be seen as variations on a theme, in the traditional sense; nor even as a free presentation of Taverner’s original. Rather is the work built, after the manner of the American school of serial composers, on sets which consist of anything from five to twenty notes. These are in a perpetual state of transformation; definite musical patterns and identities are established gradually, only to disintegrate. Sets are chosen more for their ability to be transformed than for any structural potential. Thus, for instance, a set may be transformed by a given interval throughout, but more often by a series of intervals, sometimes in an elaborate permutation which results in complex curves. The rhythmic cells, as well as the larger isorhythmic units, are subject to a parallel process of consistent modification. So at all times the material is subject to harmonic and rhythmic control, and passes, as it were, through a technical filter. This technique ensures that the music moves quite independently of any preconceived harmonic or rhythmic cliche; the original plainchant establishes the idiom on a melodic basis, while the common origin of the sets ensures the consistency of the material. This, at least, was the theory.

The composer’s concern was, he says, ‘to explore the possibilities of continuous thematic transformation, so the material is in a constant state of flux. The musical processes involved are perhaps somewhat analogous to the literary techniques employed by Hoffman in, say, Meister Floh, where certain people, spirits and plants are shown to be, within the context of an elaborate "plot", manifestations of the same character principle, a line of connection sometimes semantic (not a process of development!) making this clear.’

Also written in America, and somewhat akin to O Magnum Mysterium, was Veni Sancte Spiritus. This was for the choir of Princeton High School, New Jersey, who came to England in July 1964 [The same year as Rawsthorne’s Third Symphony.] with their conductor Thomas Hibbish, and performed the work at a Cheltenham Festival concert. Though much less complex than the Second Fantasia, it is no less complete a composition, and is a practical application for schoolchildren of his technique so far. It recalls Stravinsky’s Threni in more ways than one, not least in its deceptive simplicity. It is further simplified by the doubling of voices by the strings. The texture includes hemiola [3 against 2], mirror canon, inversion, diminution and hocket.

During his stay in Princeton, Davies was able to see at first hand something of the musical situation in America, and in particular the isolation of the young American composer from the generality of his society. Certain salient features were particularly apparent to him: that America had inherited the legacy of Schoenberg more than Vienna or any other European country; that Princeton could boast a concentration of talent exceptional even by American standards, epitomized in such musicians as Roger Sessions and his pupil Milton Babbitt; that the ‘contemporary problem’ facing the young American composer found its two extreme polarities in the mathematical precision of Babbitt on the one hand, and the music-less licence of John Cage on the other, whose notoriety-value is a sure sign of the fundamental decline in the true general musicality of American [and European] society. Davies’s comments are both shrewd and highly relevant for the post-Schoenberg English composer, who also faces an unsettling situation.

In spite of offers for him to remain in America, Davies preferred to return to England. He has always been accepted, even by those who are antipathetic to his music, as one of the most prominent, certainly the most articulate composer of his age-group; he has always found his practical services, as lecturer or performer, much in demand. In 1965 he lectured in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and also contributed to a Summer School at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire. His compositions reflect these various activities; for the Wardour Castle course he wrote Ecce manus tradentis; for a group of young singers and instrumentalists in Sydney, Australia, he wrote The Shepherd’s Calendar. [In Tempo No. 72 (Spring 1965)]

In 1966 he was Composer in Residence at the University of Adelaide in Australia; he has also visited Canada and America, appeared in some television broadcasts to schools, and, most important of all, founded, in May 1967, together with Harrison Birtwistle, the Pierrot Players, a highly accomplished group of young instrumentalists. It is specifically for this group, named after Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, that a number of works have been written since 1967.

The works composed since 1964 exploit those veins previously opened up, and also discover new ones; for instance, those of parody and distortion, of mediaevalism, of dramatic presentation. Though the influences interact, a group of compositions whose chief characteristic is that of dramatic treatment includes Hymnos (1967), Antechrist (1967) and Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969); a group whose aim is primarily distortion or parody includes Revelation and Fall (1966), L’Homme armé (1968), and the orchestral piece St Thomas Wake-Foxtrot for orchestra (1969). Several lightweight works act as pendants or preludes to the other large compositions; for instance Stedman Doubles, and its partner Stedman Caters; and the Purcell realisations.

Antechrist was played at the beginning of concerts by the Pierrot Players [Duncan Druce, violin and viola; Alan Hacker, clarinet; Jennifer Ward Clarke, ‘cello; Stephen Pruslin, piano; Judith Pearce, flute, piccolo; Barry Quinn, percussion; also Mary Thomas, soprano. In December, 1970 the ensemble was re-named The Fires of London], like an overture. It stems from the opera Taverner, in which the mediaeval Antechrist concept plays a significant part. Starting with and from the thirteenth century motet ‘Deo confitemini-Domino’, the same ‘transformation’ te