Benjamin Britten’s liturgical music and its place in the Anglican Church Music Tradition By Timothy Miller Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music and Sound Recording School of Arts, Communication and Humanities University of Surrey August 2012 ©Timothy Miller 2012 ProQuest Number: 10074906 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10074906 Published by ProQuest LLO (2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract This study presents a detailed analysis of the liturgical music of Benjamin Britten (1913- 1976). In addition to several pieces Britten wrote for the Anglican liturgy and one for the Roman Catholic Church, a number of other works, not originally composed for liturgical purpose, but which fonction well in a liturgical setting, are included, providing a substantial repertory which has hitherto received little critical commentary. Although not occupying a place of central importance in the composer’s musical output, it is argued that a detailed examination of this liturgical music is important to form a fuller understanding of Britten’s creative character; it casts additional light on the composer’s technical procedures (in particular his imaginative exploitation of tonal structure which embraced modality, free-tonality and twelve-tone ideas) and explores further Britten’s commitment to the idea of a composer serving society. The importance of church-going in Britten’s early life and the influence it exerted on his music for the church is considered. It is argued that ‘Tradition’ is a key concept in the music of the Anglican Church. The presentation of an adumbration of the Church of England’s history shows what the totems of this Tradition are and that they are clearly recognisable in the music of composers at the heart of it. It is shown that Britten both respected and fed off Tradition and that his liturgical music clearly relates to the Anglican Church Music Tradition in a specific way. This study concludes that Britten’s liturgical music can most intelligently be viewed in relation to a specific branch of the Tradition: the Parish Church Musical Tradition. It is a context that has not previously been clearly recognised in previous critical studies and this has therefore led, it is argued, to an insufficient understanding of its particular aesthetic characteristics. Table of contents Abstract Table of contents Acknowledgements Chapters Introduction 1 I The proposition for an Anglican Church Music ‘Tradition’ 14 and a context for Benjamin Britten’s liturgical music II What constitutes Britten’s ‘Liturgical Music’? 21 III The history and Tradition of Anglican Church Music 29 from the Reformation to S S Wesley IV The Parish Church Tradition 49 V The Rural Tradition: a context for Britten’s Psalm 150 69 Va Britten’s Psalm 150: a ‘tribute’ to the Rural Tradition 73 VI A landmark in the Anglican Church Music Tradition: 1955 82 VII Britten and the Anglican Church Music Tradition 90 VIII The Anglican Anthem: the measure of Traditional 102 Anglican Church Music Villa Britten’s Anthems 108 IX Iconic and iconoclastic Anglican church music composers 178 and the shaping of a Tradition X The English celebration of Christmas 225 and Britten’s Christmas music XI Britten and the organ 297 Conclusion 324 Music examples 336 Bibliography 370 Acknowledgements Dr Christopher Mark of Surrey University has patiently and knowledgeably steered me, over many years, through this study. It is thanks to his guidance that I looked out for things that I otherwise would have glossed over and thought through ideas which benefitted from his critical view of them. Other members of the teaching staff in the music department at Surrey University and some fellow research students there have, through their questions, criticisms and discussions at seminars, given me new ideas and angles of approach. Colleagues at the Institute for Music and Dance at my own University, Stavanger, in Norway, have offered continual encouragement. This was especially valuable at times when pressure of work made it difficult to believe I could ever bring this work to a conclusion. Some financial support from the University of Stavanger is also gratefully acknowledged. Dr Nick Clark at the Britten-Pears library in Aldeburgh was helpful in dealing with some enquiries and offered the resources of the library should I need them. Dr Bill Gatens was generous in his replies to my email enquires about his book Victorian Cathedral Music in Theory and Practice (1986) and also offered words of encouragement too. Professor Jan Erik Vinnem lent his expertise on the production of this thesis with kindliness and patience, which, given his extremely busy life, was a gesture of personal friendship of great value. Will Armstrong proof-read the script of this thesis and helped to correct many spelling and typing errors. Mr Tony Jay, organist at St Andrew’s church, Gorleston, allowed me access to the organ there and supplied me with information about it. This gave me direct contact, aural as well as physical, with an instrument Britten himself heard. The music publishing firm of Cantando, Stavanger, Norway, supported my research by commissioning a lecture. Parts of this dissertation (in an earlier form) were presented in Lincoln at a conference for choir conductors. I would like to thank particularly the managing director, Stefan Bengtsson and the publishing consultant and editor, Geir Munthe-Kaas. My fi-iend and former student-contemporary, Mark Sellen, also commissioned a lecture, given in Oxford, which helped me hone material which has since become part of this study. It is a matter of considerable sadness for me that neither of my parents lived to see the conclusion of this study, although both were alive at its commencement. Their certainty in its eventual completion was a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. Without the Herculean support of my wife Kari, involving both severe social and financial deprivations, this study would never have been written. Introduction The aims of this study are to give a detailed analysis of a corpus of work by Benjamin Britten that has hitherto largely escaped the in-depth scrutiny of scholars -the liturgical music -and to place this in the context of the Anglican Church Music Tradition. Like two gear-wheels, the two aims interlock and operate in concert. Although they are not, and cannot be treated as if they were, one and the same single object -an issue discussed a little later -their points of engagement are frequent. The larger gear-wheel, the Anglican Church Music Tradition, would naturally be thought to drive the smaller gear-wheel, Britten’s liturgical music. However I will show that the driving-power also occasionally shifts direction; that Britten’s liturgical music actually affected the shape of music in the Tradition. A dramatic power-reversal of this type, where a single composer has altered the course of a long Tradition, is perhaps easier to appreciate (it has certainly been almost unquestionably accepted) in a composer like Howells or even Stanford who, rightly or wrongly, are seen as central Anglican church music composers and whose music has influenced the musical tradition of the Anglican Church to the extent that it has almost become synonymous with it. The extent of Britten’s influence in the Anglican Church has received little critical assessment and one of the reasons for this, I would argue, is that he has made little impact in the Cathedral. When the Anglican Church Music Tradition is mistakenly taken to equate with the Cathedral Tradition, which it all too frequently is, such an oversight is inevitable. The extent of the Tradition’s influence on Britten or Britten’s influence over the Tradition presupposes that Britten was aware of the Anglican Church Music Tradition and recognisably engaged with it and responded to it in a positive way. It is my intention to present an unequivocal case for this presupposition, demonstrating that Britten knew a great deal about the Tradition, or at least a branch of it, and about the church’s liturgical practices, about the church’s musical repertoire and about the church’s primary musical resources, the choir and the organ. It has been necessary to investigate basic issues about the nature of the Anglican Church in order to form a substantive opinion about its musical ideals and aesthetics. I have not investigated source material to do this but relied on existing authoritative literature. As a corollary, I have not sought to present an alternative or revisionist view of the subject. I accept the view which scholars in the field have presented in a reassuring degree of agreement. Naturally I have been selective, choosing to record those events which I see as contributing substantially to the shaping of Tradition. I have found it natural too to emphasise the role music and composers have played in the shaping of these issues. Britten’s music remains the central concern of this dissertation; I am not primarily concerned with the history of the Anglican Church. What I seek to provide is an adumbration of the history of the Anglican Church which makes clear, for example, the crucial differences between the Cathedral Tradition and the Parish Church Tradition.