Britten's Choral Music
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SLUG Benjamin Britten at Crag House c.1949: the seeming inevitability of his response to words is one of his hallmarks 22 CHOIR & ORGAN MARCH/APRIL 2013 www.choirandorgan.com C&O - March April - FEATURES - Reed Britten - Tweeked.indd 22 20/02/2013 18:10:43 BRITTEN’S CHORAL MUSIC Sacred and profane Whether writing a cappella church music or a major symphonic choral work, Benjamin Britten responded to texts with depth of insight. In the composer’s centenary year, Philip Reed argues that there is much still to discover in his choral canon he seeming inevitability of nal setting for eight-part chorus in a faux Britten’s response to words is one medieval style. It was first performed in Tof the hallmarks of his output. 1931 by the Lowestoft Choral Society Indeed, so idiomatic are his settings that (in which the composer’s mother sang), it remains difficult, when reading a text he along with his unaccompanied carol, The has set, for one’s mind’s ear not to conjure Sycamore Tree, a setting of a text related to up Britten’s music. This remains as true of the more familiar carol I saw three ships, his wide-ranging choral music as it does of which Britten did not publish (in a revised his numerous song-cycles and operas. But version) until 1967. whereas in his operas and orchestral song- Christmastide remained a favourite cycles Britten was something of a pioneer, season for Britten, one to which he repeat- establishing a national tradition for opera edly responded in his compositions. A where none existed, in his choral music Ceremony of Carols (1942) for boys’ voices he was working within an already well- and harp, and independent carol settings established tradition, which lay at the heart such as A Wealden Trio: The Song of the of British musical life. Women (1930, revised 1967) and The Choral music – unaccompanied, for the Oxen, a setting of Thomas Hardy’s poem, church, and with orchestra – spans Britten’s composed in 1967 at the request of Pears’s entire published output and occupies an sister for the East Coker Women’s Institute, important position in his music-making. explore the dramatic possibilities of their To provide a truly comprehensive survey respective texts. Two major choral works would require more space than presently from the 1930s encapsulate Britten’s love available, so I propose here to focus on of Christmas: A Boy Was Born (1933); and R OLAND the less familiar. Major choral pieces such its forerunner, Christ’s Nativity (1931), H AUPT. IMAGE COURTESY OF WWW.BRITTEN100.ORG COURTESY IMAGE AUPT. as A Ceremony of Carols, Saint Nicolas, originally entitled Thy King’s Birthday, Spring Symphony and War Requiem are well which, with the exception of two of its known and demand no special advocacy. movements, was not heard during the As it happens, one of Britten’s earliest a composer’s lifetime. cappella works is also one of his most cele- A Boy Was Born is a half-hour sequence brated: the beautiful A Hymn to the Virgin, of virtuosic variations on a theme – an composed in 1930 when he was still a example of Britten’s employing an instru- schoolboy. The anonymous text from 1300 mental genre within a choral work to combines English and Latin in an antipho- impressive cumulative effect. It remains www.choirandorgan.com MARCH/APRIL 2013 CHOIR & ORGAN 23 C&O - March April - FEATURES - Reed Britten - Tweeked.indd 23 20/02/2013 18:11:42 SLUG one of the composer’s most taxing yet not only published but also orchestrated rewarding unaccompanied choral pieces; by the composer for harp (or piano) and indeed, when he revised it in the mid- strings, presumably in an attempt to free 1950s, he added an ad lib. part for organ it from a life entirely confi ned to the clois- to support the singers. At the time of its ters. Britten’s other ‘offi cial’ church music premiere, it was Britten’s most ambitious Britten wrote a wedding anthem comprises a little-known Festival Te Deum for the Harewoods, seen here with work to date and its fi rst performance – a from 1944 for the centenary of St Mark’s, the composer and Peter Pears on Thorpeness Meare in June 1949 1934 BBC broadcast under Leslie Woodgate Swindon, composed in a break from writing OF THE BRITTEN-PEARS PH/5/58 COURTESY FOUNDATION FORD JENKINS A.I.B.P., – brought him a great deal of attention. Peter Grimes, and settings of the Jubilate The boy trebles who took part in the Deo in C and Venite exultemus Domino, remains a sketch of a few bars of yet another premiere of Boy came from St Mark’s, from 1961. The latter were composed at the Te Deum from the same period. North Audley Street, London, and they were request of the Duke of Edinburgh for St Among those who approached Britten rewarded for their labours later that year George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, though in the 1960s to write a congregational mass with Britten’s initial foray into settings of at the time only the Jubilate was performed. setting was the Dean of Chichester, Revd the Anglican canticles. He wrote the fi rst of Prince Philip attempted to persuade Walter Hussey, who, when incumbent at his two settings of the Te Deum, in C major, Britten to make complete settings of the St Matthew’s, Northampton, had commis- for Maurice Vinden and his choir, and at the canticles for morning and evening prayer, sioned from the composer in 1943 Rejoice same period completed a Jubilate Deo in E but Britten’s response, despite the royal in the Lamb, one of the most engaging fl at. While Britten suppressed the latter – it ‘commission’, was at best half-hearted and and delightful of Britten’s choral works. was posthumously revived in 1984 – the the request remained unfulfi lled. The Venite This setting of part of Christopher Smart’s straightforward setting of Te Deum was was only published posthumously and there Jubilate Agno inspired Britten to create a miniature Purcellian cantata. Originally with organ accompaniment, the composer invited Imogen Holst to make an orches- tration of it in 1952. The title of the early Hymn to the Virgin was emulated in several later choral pieces. First, in the celebrated fi ve-part Hymn to St Cecilia (1942), a setting of a text by Auden; it includes a memorable passage evoking lost innocence in A major with a sharpened fourth degree, the key that Britten habitu- ally used for this image. Second is the Hymn to St Peter (1955), based on the plainsong ‘Tu es Petrus’ which is only revealed, in characteristic Britten fashion, at the work’s conclusion. Finally, and perhaps least known of all, is A Hymn of St Columba – Regis regum rectissi mi, for four-part chorus and organ, composed in 1962 at the request of the artist Derek Hill, to mark the 1,400th anniversary of Columba’s voyage from Ireland to Iona. It was fi rst heard on the hillside at Churchill, Co. Donegal, where Columba was said to have preached. A BBC recording was relayed over loudspeakers, but was virtually inaudible because of the strength of the wind blowing over the hill! Other short church pieces include the exuberant Wedding Anthem (Amo Ergo Sum), composed for the marriage of the Earl of Harewood to Marion Stein in 1949 at St Mark’s, North Audley Street; the Composition draft MS of A Hymn to the Virgin written in July 1930, George Herbert setting Antiphon (1956), when Britten was still a schoolboy © COPYRIGHT 1935 BY BOOSEY & CO. LTD. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF BOOSEY & HAWKES MUSIC PUBLISHERS LTD AND COURTESY OF THE BRITTEN-PEARS FOUNDATION (WWW.BRITTENPEARS.ORG) OF THE BRITTEN-PEARS FOUNDATION AND COURTESY MUSIC PUBLISHERS LTD REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF BOOSEY & HAWKES © COPYRIGHT 1935 BY BOOSEY & CO. LTD. written for the centenary of St Michael’s www.choirandorgan.com MARCH/APRIL 2013 CHOIR & ORGAN 25 C&O - March April - FEATURES - Reed Britten - Tweeked.indd 25 20/02/2013 18:12:15 BRITTEN’S CHORAL MUSIC College, Tenbury Wells, whose words capabilities of larger choral societies. Camus, culminating in an admittedly effec- ‘Praised be the God of Love / Here below / Cantata Academica (1959) was written for tive setting of a passage from Virgil’s fourth And here above’ suggested to Britten three the 500th anniversary of Basle University. Eclogue set in Latin. contrasting types of music; and, despite its Scored for four soloists and orchestra, Also virtually unknown are two post- prep school origins, a setting of Psalm 150 this exuberant piece employs a variety humously published, pre-war pieces for for two-part children’s voices and instru- of ‘academic’ musical devices – canon, speaker(s), soloists, chorus and orchestra, ments of 1962. fugue, serial theme – in setting what at fi rst e Company of Heaven and e World of Probably the most celebrated of all seems an unprepossessing text: namely, the Spirit. Both were conceived originally Britten’s church music is the Missa Brevis the university’s charter rendered in Latin. as BBC radio broadcasts, the former for in D, composed for George Malcolm and But that shouldn’t put anyone off, for this the feast of St Michael and All Angels, the boys of Westminster Cathedral Choir 21-minute piece is rich musically and chal- the latter for Whitsun. e Company of in 1959. This eleven-minute setting can be lenging enough to keep the singers’ interest. Heaven is the better-made piece of moder- sung liturgically (as it was originally) or in Post-War Requiem Britten wrote Cantata ate diffi culty, requiring only two soloists concert, where it can make a neat adjunct to Misericordium for the centenary of the and employing some familiar hymn tunes A Ceremony of Carols.