Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)

Home , Billy Budd (opera), Ronald Duncan, Sinfonia da Requiem

PART VI: MUSIC, SPORT, FILM AND MEDIA

JASON JAMES

Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears arriving in Japan in 1956

The composer Benjamin Britten was only in Japan for twelve days, in 1956, but his exposure to Japanese culture had a powerful impact on his music, and resulted directly in his opera Curlew River.

SINFONIA DA REQUIEM Britten’s first involvement with Japan was not a success. His Opus 20, the Sinfonia da Requiem,written at the age of twenty-six,was commis- sioned by the Japanese government as one of a number of works from different countries composed to mark the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire (taken to be 11 February, 660 BC). A celebratory concert took place at Kabuki-za in December 1940, but Britten’s work was not included, having been rejected as an insult by the commissioning committee. The rejection was understandable,since Britten’s work is both Chris- tian and overtly pacifist. Britten was, with hindsight, an inappropriate choice for this Japanese commission. He was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist association in the UK, for which he

419 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITSVOLUMEVIII had written a piece called Pacifist March.Not only did Britten’s attitude clash with the zeitgeist in Japan in 1940, it led him into difficulties at home too.Britten moved to the US in 1939,but he was homesick,and returned in 1942. He was eventually recognized as a ‘conscientious objector’ to the War. Perhaps the most important fruit of his pacifism was the War Requiem, written in 1962 for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral – the old one having been destroyed by the War. Although much smaller scale, and for orchestra only, the mood of the Sinfonia da Requiem seems to prefigure theWar Requiem.

BRITTEN’S CONTINUING INTEREST IN THE FAR EAST For nearly two decades, Britten and Japan went their separate ways. But Britten was intrigued by the Far East – more by Bali, Indonesia, than by Japan. In 1939, he had met the Canadian composer and eth- nomusicologist Colin McPhee, who had made two-piano transcrip- tions of Balinese gamelan music. The two of them later performed and recorded these together. Another likely attraction of Bali for Britten was its reputation for sexual freedom. Britten, who was gay, lived for most of his life with the tenor Peter Pears. Homosexual acts were illegal in Britain until 1967, and Britten was interviewed by the police about his sexuality in 1953. In the musical world, however, his sexuality was the object more of teasing than actual hostility.The conductorThomas Beecham memorably labelled Britten’s opera Billy Budd, which has no female roles, as ‘Twilight of the Sods’.1 Colin McPhee was married, but engaged in ‘homosexual liaisons with Balinese youths’.2 Indeed, McPhee seems to have left Bali in 1938 partly because of a crackdown on homosexuals by the Dutch authorities. Be that as it may, echoes of Balinese music in Britten are generally associated with sexual attraction. There is less evidence of Britten’s interest in Japan before he visited, but he had certainly taken some interest in Noh theatre. Britten was exposed to Noh,of a sort,in London in 1938.According to Noel Stock:3

[Ezra Pound] wanted badly to see a Noh play performed in a theatre and to this end Ronald Duncan persuaded Ashley Dukes to lend them the Mercury Theatre. Benjamin Britten produced a musician who could play gongs and another of Duncan’s friends, Henry Boys, suggested a female dancer by the name of Suria Magito. One afternoon, with Duncan as audience, Pound recited one of his own Noh translations while the girl danced.

Not very authentic,I fear! But Britten had nevertheless found Pound’s translations of Noh plays fascinating,obtaining a copy in 1953,shortly before his oriental trip.4 The most important influence on Britten’s

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