Benjamin Britten (1913–76) Curlew River: A Parable for Church Performance (1964) A virtuous wife raped by the vicious son of a an artist who, for all his deep curiosity about Roman tyrant; a Japanese mother, maddened other cultures, was grounded in the tradition by grief perhaps, in search of her abducted set in train by the Enlightenment, that West was son. How much can The Rape of Lucretia and probably best. However, neither The Rape of Curlew River have in common? For a start Lucretia nor Curlew River attempts to synthesise there’s a span of 18 years between the first the European past and present or East and performances of each work, during which time West; both are simultaneously and separately Benjamin Britten’s interests moved in different present in each work and are somehow brought directions. Then The Rape of Lucretia is described together within the performance itself. Indeed as an opera, while Curlew River was subtitled ‘performance’ may be said to act as a bridge ‘A Parable for Church Performance’. It’s true that between these two worlds. So the principal both works tell their tales within a specifically action of the church parable has the Madwoman Christian framework, with the man and woman and the Traveller being ferried across the Curlew of the chorus in Lucretia struggling to relate River, while in the chamber opera Tarquinius her rape and eventual suicide to Christian must ride from his army camp outside Rome ideas about suffering and redemption, and into the heart of the city to ravish Lucretia. the history of the Madwoman in Curlew River performed by a cast of medieval monks in a Britten was always alert to creative worlds work that begins and ends with plainchant. beyond his native shores. As a young man excited by the music of Mahler he had hoped But look and listen again. The Rape of to study with Alban Berg in Vienna. His Lucretia was composed hot on the heels of journey to America in 1939 may have been the triumph of Peter Grimes in 1945, while largely for personal and political reasons, Curlew River was first performed in 1964, but he evidently relished the possibility of four years after A Midsummer Night’s Dream. becoming a part of a different musical And both would seem to anticipate that late culture. Indeed, it was in the USA that he first masterpiece Death in Venice. What all three encountered the music of the gamelan, which works share is a desire to rethink both the form would become such a distinct accent in his and, perhaps, the function of music drama own music after a holiday to Bali in 1956. after the composer had demonstrated (in Peter Grimes, Albert Herring, Billy Budd and In February of that year Britten, together with The Turn of the Screw) his mastery of larger- his partner Peter Pears, had been invited to scale works which sit relatively comfortably perform in Tokyo by the Japanese broadcaster within the tradition of European opera. NHK and the British Council. Up to this point the composer’s relationship with Japan had More significantly, both The Rape of Lucretia not been a happy one. In 1940, at the age of and Curlew River look to cultures that are either 26, he and five other European composers at the edge of the Western tradition or outside (including Richard Strauss and Jacques Ibert) it: to Rome when it was ruled by kings and to had been invited to write a piece celebrating medieval Japan. Yet both set their stories within the 2,600th anniversary of the founding the dominant Western tradition of Christianity. of the Japanese empire. Britten’s resulting If Britten intends to revise our notion of what work – Sinfonia da Requiem – composed in constitutes music drama in both of these memory of his parents, was unacceptable works, he is also, perhaps, a child of his time; to the Japanese. It was, a court official told 4 him, unsuitably Christian and too ‘gloomy’ can trace its roots back to the 14th century. And to celebrate the birthday of a dynasty. although music and dance play a central role in noh and its starting-point is a text – albeit Matters were much improved in 1956. Britten in a Japanese that is not easily understood and Pears gave a recital that included the Seven without study – it would be wrong to equate Sonnets of Michelangelo together with the noh with western opera. It makes demands on composer’s arrangements of British folk songs. actors and audiences that are a great deal Nine days later Britten conducted the NHK more challenging than an evening spent in the Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Les company of Mozart, Verdi, Wagner or Berg. illuminations, with Pears as the soloist, and, for An actor sitting still and silent on stage for 90 Programme notes the first time in Japan, the Sinfonia da Requiem. minutes is a challenge for both the performer and those who are watching. Noh is a kind of In the meantime the two men were steeping ritual. As Donald Keene, a historian of Japanese themselves in traditional Japanese culture, with theatre has written, ‘the purpose of noh is not to recitals of traditional geisha singing, visits to divert on the surface but to move profoundly and kabuki and noh theatre and a performance of ultimately to transcend the particular and touch gagaku, Japanese court music. On 11 February the very springs of human emotion.’ Character the composer seems to have experienced and action are scarcely present on the noh something of an epiphany at a performance of stage, which, as another commentator reminds the noh play Sumidagawa. So moved was he by us, is ‘a sacred space where the meeting of our the story of the madwoman who has travelled the world with the other dimension is represented.’ land in search of a son who had been abducted a year before that he asked to see the play The ritual element in noh undoubtedly would again on the day that he was to leave Japan. have appealed to Britten. The chanting chorus, the actors wearing their all-important masks and Two years later Britten reflected on what he the onstage musicians – just four of them – a had seen that day in a talk for NHK. ‘I count flautist and three drummers. He was also lucky [the performance of Sumidagawa] among in the particular play that he saw performed by the greatest theatrical experiences of my life. the Kanze school of noh. It belongs to a group of Of course it was strange to start with, the plays called kyo¯jomono (drama of madwomen). language and especially the curious kind Generally these stories have a happy ending, of chanting used. But we were fortunate in with the lost child or the vanished husband having an excellent literal translation of the or lover eventually restored to the woman, poem and we soon became accustomed to who then recovers her sanity. Sumidagawa is the haunting sounds. The deep solemnity and different in that the son is already dead. At the selflessness of the acting, the perfect shaping of end the madwoman can only hear his voice the drama like a great Greek tragedy coupled and see his spirit. Britten must have been as with the … universality of the story is something much moved by the death of innocence – an which every Western artist can learn from.’ abiding theme in his work – as he was by the sorrowing mother in what is sometimes called Here was a story that stretched out from its a drama of madness – monoguruinoh. roots in a traditional form of Japanese theatre to appeal to an English composer in search It seems likely that on his return to Europe Britten of creative bridges between his own cultural shared his excitement about what he had seen patrimony and its ‘other’. And it doesn’t require with the poet William Plomer, who would write much effort to see this fascination between the libretto for what became Curlew River. But the self and the other as the central motif of two years later in 1958 it was still an ‘idea’ Britten’s own personal life as well as that of his rather than a definite project as a letter from art: the homosexual in a society where it was a the composer to Plomer makes clear. ‘The criminal offence for almost all of his adult life Sumidagawa doesn’t come into any immediate and a man overwhelmingly attracted to boys plans. I’d rather put it to the back of my mind. who was thus imprisoned in his own chastity. But any time that you feel that you’d like to talk about it can be brought forth again. It is Noh is not the most yielding of theatrical forms something that I am deeply interested in and for a Western audience; indeed, many Japanese that I am determined to do sometime. Isn’t it have difficulties with this form of drama, which a curiously moving and disturbing story?’ 5 Plomer did want to talk about it and, more However, when you listen to Curlew River, you importantly, to start writing. So by the end of hear unmistakable echoes of the music that the summer of 1958 there was a draft libretto. Britten heard in Japan in 1956, though always Daisaku Mukai, who has studied this first draft, wonderfully bent to his own creative purposes. points out that the work is a long way from The very particular use of the chamber organ its final form at this stage, being an English- and the gradually accelerating tremolando language version of the original play.