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The Making of "Peter Grimes3' Volume i, Facsimile of 's Composition Draft Volume 2, Notes and Commentaries Edited by Paul Banks

Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer, 1996 122 folios, 251 pages, $531.00

Beleaguered as "serious music" publishers are, it has been common in recent years to find that the publications of contemporary have been repro- ductions of the composers' fair copies of vocal scores. Instructive though such a score may be — if indeed, the hand is that of the composer and not that of a copyist—the publication may be as idiosyncratic as it is unclear. Given the expense of publishing vocal scores even today when composers may have pro- vided print-ready, computer-generated scores, it is astonishing that in recent months two far more expensive and surely less salable manuscripts have been published in facsimile: the orchestra score of Kurt Weill's Die Drei- groschenoper by European American Music and Britten's composition draft of , in honor of the work's fiftieth anniversary. To my knowledge, there are no other such publications of twentieth-century operas. Although the title of the first volume uses the phrase "composition draft," Britten himself used the word "sketch," boldly written on his titlepag e in red crayon. Then follow the complete sketch and three related pages, all repro- duced in four-color offset litho at 92 percent original size, but clearly legible. Information usually found on a tide page is included with the colophon. The second volume is handsomely printed in large, widely spaced type, with color plates of Kenneth Green's costumes and set designs of the original Sadler's Wells production, and reproductions of typescripts, handwritten libretto drafts, and discarded pages of the orchestra score. There are eight chapters related to the creation and early productions of Grimes, most of the contents either writ- ten years ago and now first published or prepared for this celebratory publica- tion by authors who have written extensively on Britten and his music. Bibli- 9 4 BOOKS

ographic material covers every conceivable aspect of manuscript scores and libretto states, publications, sound recordings and film, even the first box-office receipts, print runs, and sales acquired from the Boosey and Hawkes files. Par- ticularly fascinating is the information that Britten's own copy of the (interlude 4) includes a highly specific program, the action cued to bars. Both Philip Brett's chapter, "The Growth of the Libretto," and Philip Reed's chapter, "Finding the Right Notes," are, respectively, detailed studies of the words and the music and refer to the comprehensive holdings of the Britten- Pears Library at . (The music sketch, long considered lost, was restored and bound by the British Library and is also at Aldeburgh, having been donated by , the conductor of the premiere.) Helpful in fol- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/93/1381502 by guest on 27 September 2021 lowing the details of these two chapters is the preceding "A Peter Grimes Chronology, 1941-1945 " which quotes extensively from letters, program notes, radio interviews, and other sources in detailing the progress of the work from the first scenario ideas of Britten and Pears in Escondido, California, through the rehearsal revisions in . The composer's work habits were often described by him and his collabora- tors. They are confirmed by this facsimile manuscript. We cannot know his thoughts during his long, fast, afternoon walks, during which formal ideas and notes were decided. But we can all now see what he set down on these pages in the three-hour stints later in the afternoons and the following mornings. The general impression is that of fluencyan d assurance. Britten always wrote in pen- cil, a gum eraser close at hand; for the most part in the Grimes years he did not use sketchbooks and odd sheets, though there are occasionally fragmentary jot- tings in the sketch itself. Apparently the manuscript shows many erasures, the original notes sometimes legible: thesepentimenti are sometimes legible in the facsimile. Obvious are the rejected bars and short passages decisively crossed out. Except in the orchestral passages, a pair of staves usually suffices to limn the orchestration; except where a favored woodwind is to be remembered or strings are to be disposed unconventionally, instrumental notations are rarer than in other such scores I have seen. Almost throughout Britten indicates triplets in duple meters a;,J duplets in compound meters with brackets, with- out the usual 3s and 2s. The engraver of the piano-vocal score followed the com- poser's notation except when he slipped into the old-fashioned manner and was not caught by the proofreaders. It is not usual for a composer to "edit" an opera sketch so thoroughly, to include most of the dynamic indications that are to be found in the engraved vocal score. (Some of the latter may well have been added by Britten in the copyists' intervening ink fair copy, as well as metronome indi- cations, which are not in the manuscript.) Philip Brett's chapter does not seek to provide commentary on every subtle aspect of the score and indeed could not be expected to do so, even in his thirty- six-page discussion. This composer-reviewer can add only that on every page there is more than a little to catch the ear and the eye: a plain vocal line, later to be chromatically inflected; a word setting bettered in blue pencil; a vocal line BOOKS 95

completely foreign to the words beneath, Britten realizing that the words must be altered to fit his music. In fact, one has the impression from the sketch and the extensive commen- taries that Britten's well-known tendency to avoid confrontation served him ill in his collaboration with his librettist, . At least three other per- sons contributed to the Grimes libretto. To be sure, Slater did rewrite when pressed to do so, but he was soon to publish the libretto, claiming that it was (without the composer's repetition of phrases) the text that had been sung at the premiere. The more inclusive credit "Libretto by Montagu Slater" would have been more accurate than the printed credit "Words by Montagu Slater," for not all the words were his. I wish—as I suspect that Britten wished—that Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/93/1381502 by guest on 27 September 2021 more of the words had been Britten's, or Pears's, or Crozier's, or Duncan's. Reading other of Slater's stage works discloses a poet often unable to adapt his voice to those of his characters.1 Slater is not a character in Peter Grimes, but he remains too often onstage. Since the early nineteenth century, composers have been free more often than not to choose their libretto subject matter. In the last century the amounts of time, energy, and money invested in writing an opera have greatly increased; it is not surprising, therefore, that composers have chosen—or rejected—sub- jects with care, often unaware of their psychological reasons for doing so. If we know comparatively little about the subjects Britten considered and then rejected, we do know that his chosen subject matter provided protagonists as outsiders of one kind or another. There are many inhabitants of outsiderdom, and their citizenship derives from various sources, composing operas the most obvious. I believe that writers in these Gay Nineties err in ascribing the choice of Grimes by Britten and Pears so exclusively to their homosexuality. Britten was a pacifist already in his school years; returning to in 1942, he and Pears registered as conscientious objectors and were each heard twice by tri- bunals. Britten rejected alternate service but accepted a simulacrum. Their friend Michael Tippett followed a similar but more rigorous course and spent three months in prison. These events took place while the scenario was in work and deserve to be given their full weight in considering the choice and treatment of their Grimes. Britten's continuing belief in pacifism surely animated his choice of Owen Wing/rave twenty-five years later. Those of us Americans who regis- tered as conscientious objectors during World War II were well aware of the terms adolescent, immature, and failure to adjust, implied by Philip Brett as hav- ing been code words solely for British homosexuals in the closeted forties. Might they not have referred also to Britten's noncombatant status, at least in part? There was reason for some Englishmen to believe that Grimes was Britten's first opera, for 's only performances had taken place at Columbia University four years earlier, in 1941, and had been little noted abroad. Until after its premiere Britten and Auden vacillated between calling their work an opera and an operetta. It was an opera quite unlike any other, and no more an 9 6 BOOKS

operetta than it was the musical comedy they thought for a time it might become. Nevertheless, all commentators have agreed in calling it an operetta, and it was so designated on the Faber Music vocal score of 1978. (Boosey and Hawkes held the 1941 copyright and then, in 1974, generously— and perhaps ingenuously— assigned it firstt o Britten in order that he might revise the work, and later to Faber.) More important than its appellation were Britten's com- ment in 1941 that "I feel that I have learned lots about what not to write for the theatre" and Humphrey Carpenter's comment that "the most obvious lesson he learnt from it was not to be dominated by his librettist."2 Concerning the less important matter, Milton Smith was the stage director of the first Bunyan as well as being in charge of the Brander Matthews Theatre. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/93/1381502 by guest on 27 September 2021 His unpublished autobiography includes a fascinating account of the audition of the work that took place in the New York City apartment of Douglas Moore, 464 Riverside Drive.3 (In an apartment eight buildings to the south Busoni had been at work onArlecchino in 1915.) As Moore, Smith, and Auden listened, Pears sang all the roles to Britten's accompaniment. Milton Smith, much to the annoyance of all his theater colleagues, always insisted on calling all theater pieces with music "operettas." It was he who wrote the program note begin- ning "Paul Bunyan is the first operatic collaboration..." and then reverting to his habitual ". . . this operetta."4 Perhaps the holdings of the Britten-Pears Library can answer the question: Was the birth of Paul Bunyan as an operetta pre-Milton or post-Milton? In early August 19461 was seated on the aisle, down front, at a dress rehearsal for the first American performance of Peter Grimes at Tanglewood. was conducting an opera for the first time in his burgeoning career. In addition to my pleasure in knowing that I was present at the second com- ing of a great work, I remember vividly three details of the event: at the first break, as Lenny was bounding over the orchestra barrier, the sight of Britten popping out of his seat and asking, in an anxious, demanding tone, "Do you thirik we have time for a cup of tea together?"; the close of act 2, scene 1, the D-flat sung by Phyllis Smith (later ) still spinning in my ear; and the passage for two flutes, several times repeated in that beautiful trio-quartet. At each subsequent performance of Grimes I've wondered if the part writing of that passage had come about during its orchestration. Now, with this remark- able publication at hand, I see that the optional D-flat was parenthesized from the outset and that the evocative intertwined falling thirds were provided with "Fl." The last repetition is crossed out (together with "Fl ob") and the whole close transposed up a perfect fifth. Every other admirer of Grimes can now seek the answer to his favorite mysteries. Jack Beeson BOOKS 97

NOTES 1. Montagu Slater, Peter Grimes and Other relevant pages are 475 - 82. Copies of these Poems (London: John Lane, The Bodley and a relevant letter from Smith to Beeson Head, 1946). have been deposited in the Britten-Pears 2. Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: Library. - A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 4. The publisher's note in Paul Bunyan 1992), p. 150. (London: Faber Music, 1978) reprints much 3. The typescript of Smith's memoirs has of the program note but is not dear concern- been deposited in the Columbiana Collection ing its authorship. of the Columbia University Libraries. The Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/93/1381502 by guest on 27 September 2021

Wagfner

Michael Tanner Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996 236 pages, $19.9$

The dust jacket for Michael Tanner's Wagner reproduces two of the most famous images of his subject. On the front, the stern gaze of the master that is preserved in a photograph from 1871 seems to encapsulate the "sufferings and grandeur" of Thomas Mann's formulation. A French cartoon on the back, by- amusing contrast, has the composer mercilessly hammering a note into the bleeding ear of his victim. Tanner, a music critic and a teacher of philosophy at Cambridge University, attempts to come to terms with both of these images by investigating the profound seriousness of purpose that Wagner invested in his art and by addressing the uniquely intense hostility that it and—in recent times even more than the work itself— its creator continue to provoke. That Tanner's cursory treatment of the controversies associated with the lat- ter is by far the weakest aspect of his book is not surprising, since his chief con- cern is to argue for the validity of the first image. Indeed, Tanner makes the highest claims for what Wagner's art can accomplish, directing his efforts to readers who share his conviction that it raises "questions which are both urgent and difficult* (p. ix). Wagner is mainly devoted to a chronologically arranged survey and discussion of the underlying issues (considered from a predomi- nantly humanist angle) with which the operas grapple. It identifies these issues as part of "a continuous effort to show how we might gain or regain the dimen- sions of mystery and potentiality which are certainly missing in a secular age" (p. 203) and which Wagner recurrently seeks to represent through the agency of drama and music. Tanner's desire, expressed for the most part in straight- forward if somewhat graceless prose, is to show how the composer's goal is far from merely aesthetic: "Wagner never wanted to be an aesthete, certainly not if art has beauty as a central feature. Art for him always had something to do