Intertextuality, Intermediality and Mediality in Benjamin Britten's
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Intertextuality, Intermediality and Mediality in Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, Op. 60 Von der Falkutät für Geistes- und Erziehungswissenschaften der Technischen Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig zur Erlangung des Grades Doktor der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) genehmigte Dissertation von Kenton Emery Barnes aus Toledo, Ohio, USA Eingereicht am 11.06.2012 Mündliche Prüfung am 28.08.2012 Referent: Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Heinze Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Hero Janßen Druckjahr 2017 Intertextualität, Intermedialität und Medialität in Benjamin Brittens Nocturne, Op. 60 Benjamin Britten ist nicht nur einer der am meisten verehrten Komponisten Großbritanniens, sondern zugleich auch einer der Komponisten, über die äußerst kontrovers diskutiert wird. Kritiker bewerten seine Musik auf sehr unterschiedliche Art und Weise. Einige halten seine Musik für zu altmodisch und zu sehr den Traditionen der Tonalität verbunden, andere bewerten sie als zu modern und schwer zugänglich, an Atonalität grenzend. Aber wie soll man Brittens Musik betrachten? Setzt sie die Traditionen der romantischen Komponisten des 19. Jahrhunderts fort? Ja, dies ist der Fall, jedoch bringt Britten diese Konventionen an ihre Grenzen. Ist Brittens Musik atonal? Obwohl manche Kritiker der Ansicht sind, dass seine Kompositionen abstrakt sind, bleibt er den etablierten Konventionen der Musik doch treu. Nicht zu bestreiten ist, dass Brittens gesangliche Kompositionen in ihrer Poesie nur schwer zu übertreffen sind. Er vertonte Gedichte von bedeutenden Dichtern wie Arthur Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Henry Longfellow, William Shakespare, Edith Sitwell, Emily Brontë und William Blake. Alles in allem vertonte Britten mehr als 300 Gedichte von nicht weniger als neunzig Dichtern. Die vorliegende Arbeit Intertextualität, Intermedialität und Medialität in Benjamin Brittens Nocturne, Op. 60 erforscht die textlichen Verhältnisse innerhalb und außerhalb des Stücks, den musikalischen Einfluss auf die Texte und die Kombination von Text und Musik. Die Studie beginnt mit einer chronologischen Darstellung der Entwicklung des Liederzyklus. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt hier auf dem orchestralen Liederzyklus, um Britten im Kontext des Genres zu etablieren. Die darauf folgenden Kapitel befassen sich mit dem Konzept der Intertextualität, um den Bezug zwischen Text und Musik der Nocturne erörtern zu können, dem Konzept der Intermedialität, um die Interaktion zwischen Text und Musik zu beschreiben und dem Konzept der Medialität, um zu untersuchen, wie Text und Musik an das Publikum kommuniziert werden können. Diese Arbeit schließt eine Lücke in der Musik- und Literaturwissenschaft. Dies nicht nur, weil sie eine kritische Analyse des musikalischen Stückes darstellt, sondern auch deshalb, weil sie Wissenschaftlern, Laien und Künstlern Wissen vermittelt, wie das Stück verstanden und aufgeführt werden kann. Intertextuality, Intermediality and Mediality in Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, Op. 60 Benjamin Britten, considered to be one of Britain’s most revered composers, is simultaneously one of its most controversial. This dichotomy exists because critics are at odds when describing or discussing his music is. Many believe his music is much too rooted in the traditional conventions of tonality and not modern enough or forward looking for his time; yet, there are others who believe his music to be too modern, too difficult to access, and bordering on atonality. How should Britten’s music be considered then? Does it continue in the traditions and conventions of the 19th century Romantic composers? Yes it does, but at the same time, Britten takes these conventions and stretches them to their limits. Is his music atonal? While it may sound atonal to some, his dissonances always have a tonal center. Are Britten’s musical forms abstract? While the musical forms he uses may sound abstract, new, and distorted to some, they are forms that are actually well-established and conventional. What one cannot dispute, however, is that Britten’s vocal output utilizes some of the best poetry ever written. Among the poets, whose works he set to music are Arthur Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Henry Longfellow, William Shakespeare, Edith Sitwell, Emily Brontë, and William Blake. All in all, Britten set over 300 different poems from no less than 90 different poets to music. This work, Intertextuality, Intermediality and Mediality in Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, Op. 60 explores textual relationships both within and outside the piece, the musical impact on the texts, and the combination of text and music. The study begins by chronolizing the development of the song cycle with special emphasis on the orchestral song cycle as an attempt to place Britten in the genre. Subsequent chapters focus on a wide notion of intertextuality to discuss the text and music of Nocturne, notions of intermediality to discuss the interaction of music and text in the piece, and notions of mediality to discuss how its text and music can be communicated to an audience. The work fills a gap by not only providing critical analyses about this piece of music and its texts, but also how, through intertextual, intermedial and medial examinations, scholars, lay persons, and performers can gain invaluable knowledge that can aid in how the piece is understood and performed. Table of Contents 1. Introduction………………………………………… 1 2. From Beethoven to Schoenberg…………………….. 5 3. Britten: the Composer and his Song Cycles………. 48 4. Intertextual Theories………………………………. 80 5. Intertextual Analyses……………………………….. 107 6. Intermedial Theories……………………………….. 131 7. Text and Music…………………………..…………. 148 8. An Intermedial Analysis…………………………… 163 9. The Performer and the Performance as Media…….. 179 10. A Tale of Two Performances ………………………. 193 11. Concluding Thoughts and Observations……………. 206 12. Appendices…………………………………………. 212 13. List of Works Cited ………………….…………….. 221 1. Introduction Benjamin Britten, considered to be one of Britain’s most revered composers, is at the same time considered to be one of its most controversial. This dichotomy exists because many critics believe his music is much too rooted in the traditional conventions of tonality and not modern enough1 or forward looking for his time2. Then there are those critics who believe his music to be too modern, too difficult to access, and bordering on atonality3. Some, like Theodor Adorno, say that Britten had little to no compositional talent4, while “many consider him among the five great stylists of modern British music” (Schwartz par. 1). Of course, within these poles lies the truth. Except for being a composer who possesses no compositional talent, I believe that Britten is all of the above. Does his music continue in the traditions and conventions of the 19th century Romantic composers? Yes it does, but at the same time, Britten takes these conventions and stretches them to their limits. Is his music atonal? While it may sound atonal to some, his dissonances always have a tonal center. Are Britten’s musical forms abstract? While the musical forms he uses may sound abstract, new, and distorted to some, they are forms that are actually well-established and conventional, albeit somewhat modernized. 1 Theodor Adorno said of Britten’s compositions that they were “musical cocktails” made from “insipid mixture of elements from a dead tradition and a few unimportant modern ingredients” (qtd. in Hewitt, par. 3). 2 Mervyn Cooke reports in the introduction of The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (a collection of essays on Britten that he edited) that many people took issue with Britten’s music including composers such as Vaughan Williams, who referred to Britten’s music as “very clever but beastly” and critics such as Ernest Newman, who was “painfully disappointed” with Britten’s Billy Budd (2). 3 Anne Midgette, a writer for The Washington Post, says that “[h]is music is too conservative for new-music aficionados but on the wrong side of the dateline for anyone afraid to test the waters of the 20th century” (n. pag.), and Frank Howes, a British music critic for the Times, said “Mr Britten is still pursuing his old problem of seeing how much indigestible material he can dissolve in his music” (qtd. in Bridcut 17). 4 “Across every frontier, the epigones – themselves sworn enemies of the epigonous - resemble each other in their weak concoctions of adeptness and helplessness. Dmitry Shostakovich – unjustly reprimanded as a cultural Bolshevik by the public authorities of his homeland – the lively pupils of Stravinsky’s pedagogical ambassadors, the pretentious meagerness of Benjamin Britten: All of these have in common a taste for bad taste, a simplicity founded in ignorance, immaturity that fancies itself clear minded and a lack of technical capacity.” (Adorno 10) 1 What one cannot dispute, however, is that Britten’s vocal output utilizes some of the best poetry ever written. Among the poets whose works he set to music are Arthur Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Friedrich Hölderlin, Henry Longfellow, Robert Southwell, William Shakespeare, Thomas Weelkes, Edith Sitwell, Emily Brontë, William Blake, Wilfred Owen, and Robert Burns. All in all, Britten set over 300 different poems from no less than 90 different poets to music (cf. Ford xii). Britten’s knowledge and love for poetry was influenced and nurtured by his close friend, Wystan Hugh Auden5, himself a poet, whose poems Britten also used for a number of his songs. Britten chose his poetical texts with care, and believed that it was the composer’s duty