AN APPRAISAL OF THE POLY- TECHNICAL WORKS OF

Jim Coyle

Submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Sydney Conservatorium of Music

The University of Sydney

2019

I declare that the research presented here is my own original work and has not been submitted to any other institution for the award of a degree.

Signed: ......

Date: ...... 5th February 2019

ABSTRACT

Works featuring musically-untrained children form a uniquely large and important part of the output of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Some of these pieces are poly- technical, which is to say they feature professional musicians alongside musically- untrained children. This thesis examines the ways in which Britten made technical adjustments when writing these works. These were necessary for the children to be able to perform them. A detailed analysis of the relevant vocal and instrumental music was undertaken, with some of Britten’s other works analysed for comparison. The results of these analyses demonstrate the methods and extent of these technical adjustments. By examining Britten’s own writing about music and relevant critical literature, this thesis also concludes that in making these technical adjustments, Britten in no way compromised the integrity of his voice as a composer. This thesis demonstrates that it is therefore possible for a composer to write music of the highest artistic integrity, but still make technical adjustments to allow for the skills of the performers available.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am extremely grateful for the care and expertise of my Supervisor Dr James Humberstone and Associate Supervisor Dr Michael Webb.

Sincere thanks and acknowledgements go to Dr Philip Eames who edited this thesis. Dr Eames is a researcher working in the field of 20th Century music, but his editorial contribution was strictly limited to matters of style and presentation. Any errors that remain in this work are entirely my own responsibility.

I am also most grateful to my friends and family for their support and suggestions, particularly Shelley Bartley, Ian McIvor, Gary Macaulay and Melinda Hole.

Finally, my thanks to Trefor Farrow, my high school music teacher, who first introduced me to the works of Benjamin Britten.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

AN APPRAISAL OF THE POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS OF BENJAMIN BRITTEN ...... 1 Acknowledgements ...... iii

Table of contents ...... iv

Table of Figures & Tables ...... vi

1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Britten and poly-technicality ...... 1 1.2 Biographical Context ...... 2 1.3 Britten and British Society ...... 6 1.4 Definition and significance of poly-technicality and musically-untrained children ...... 7 1.5 An overview of Britten’s poly-technical works; grounds for inclusion and exclusion...... 12 1.5.1 The core poly-technical repertoire: St Nicolas, and Noye’s Fludde...... 18 1.5.2 Later poly-technical works ...... 20 1.6 The unique place of poly-technical repertoire in Britten’s output...... 21

2. Literature Review ...... 23 2.1 Extent, Scope and Focus of the Literature ...... 23 2.2 Britten’s Status as a Composer ...... 26 2.3 Britten’s Relationships ...... 27 2.4 Britten and Society ...... 28 2.5 Britten and Children ...... 31 2.6 Technical Considerations in Britten’s Poly-technical Music ...... 34 2.7 Artistic Considerations in Britten’s Poly-technical Music ...... 37 2.8 Analytical Methodology ...... 43 2.9 Conclusion ...... 45

3. Poly-technicality in Britten’s Vocal writing ...... 47 3.1 Technical Difficulty of Vocal Music – Representative Excerpts ...... 47 3.2 Technical Difficulty of Vocal Music – repertoire and Methodology ...... 50 3.2.1 Methodology for Comprehensive Analysis ...... 54 3.3 Findings ...... 55 3.4 Discussion ...... 56 3.4.1 Range ...... 56 3.4.2 Mean Pitch ...... 58 3.4.3 Pitch Proximity ...... 59 3.4.4 Pitch Reversal ...... 59 3.4.5 Expert and musically-untrained mean pitch values ...... 60 3.4.6 Other Factors Affecting Technical Difficulty – analysis of further Representative Passages. .60 3.4.7 Phrase length and Other Technical Considerations ...... 63

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3.4.8 Discussion and Detailed Analysis of the Core Poly-technical Repertoire ...... 71 3.4.9 Analysis of Texture in the Core Repertoire ...... 74 3.4.10 The Cambiato Voice ...... 76 3.4.11 The Ragazzo Sound and Singing Loudly ...... 77 3.4.12 Spreading to Harmony ...... 78 3.4.13 Descant, Ostinato, Canon ...... 79

4. Poly-technicality in Britten’s instrumental writing ...... 81 4.1 Woodwind ...... 84 4.2 Brass ...... 88 4.3 Percussion ...... 90 4.3 Keyboard Instruments ...... 99 4.5 String Instruments ...... 100 4.5.1 Britten’s Poly-technical String Writing In Noye’s Fludde ...... 101 4.5.2 Britten’s Poly-technical String Writing after Noye’s Fludde ...... 107

5. Britten’s Poly-technical works: Integrity and Authenticity ...... 110 5.1.1 Public statements by Britten about his poly-technical works ...... 110 5.1.2 Prominence Given to Premieres of Poly-technical Works ...... 113 5.1.3 Publishing and Recording Poly-technical Works ...... 114 5.2 Critical Appraisal of Britten’s Poly-technical Repertoire...... 115 5.2.1 ...... 115 5.2.2 St Nicolas ...... 116 5.2.3 The Little Sweep ...... 117 5.2.4 Noye’s Fludde ...... 118 5.2.5 Psalm 150...... 121 5.2.6 Children’s Crusade ...... 122 5.2.7 Welcome Ode ...... 123

6. Conclusion ...... 125

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TABLE OF FIGURES & TABLES

Table 1.1: Musical Forces in the Three Core Poly-Technical Works...... 12

Table 1.2: Chronological List of Britten’s Poly-technical Works...... 15

Figure 1.1: Britten, Les Illuminations I, p. 5 ...... 16

Figure 1.2: Britten, Simple p. 5 ...... 16

Table 2.1: Speaking Range and Cooksey Stages ...... 35

Table 2.2: Distribution of Ripieno String Parts in Noye’s Fludde ...... 36

Figure 3.1: Britten, , pp. 243-244 ...... 48

Figure 3.2: Britten, , pp. 10-11 ...... 49

Figure 3.3: Britten, The Little Sweep, pp. 51-52 ...... 50

Table 3.1: Works with Vocal Parts Analysed in Detail ...... 52

Table 3.2: Results Summary of Pitch Analysis of Vocal Music ...... 56

Figure 3.4: Britten, , p. 194 ...... 57

Figure 3.5: Britten, Peter Grimes, p. 171 ...... 57

Table 3.3: Average Pitch Data for Expert and Musically-Untrained Singers...... 60

Table 3.4 Analysis of Typical Examples from the Repertoire...... 61

Figure 3.6: Britten, Peter Grimes, pp. 275-6 ...... 62

Figure 3.9: Britten, , p. 7 ...... 66

Figure 3.10: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 16-17 ...... 68

Figure 3.11: Britten, The Golden Vanity, p. 18 ...... 70

Table 3.5: Range in Core Poly-technical Repertoire ...... 72

Table 3.6: Pitch Proximity in Core Poly-technical Repertoire ...... 72

Figure 3.12: Animals’ Ostinato Patterns in Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp.60, 158...... 72

Figure 3.13: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 19 ...... 73

Table 3.7: Vocal Textures in Core Poly-technical Repertoire ...... 74

Figure 3.14: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 30-31 ...... 76

Example 3.15: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 8 ...... 78

Figure 3.16: Britten, The Little Sweep, p. 25 ...... 79

Table 4.1: Britten’s Works with Poly-Technical Instrumental Parts...... 82

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Figure 4.1: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 150-151 ...... 86

Figure 4.2: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, p. 136 ...... 87

Figure 4.3: Britten, Psalm 150 p. 11, ...... 88

Figure 4.5: Britten, Welcome Ode p. 23 ...... 89

Figure 4.6: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 28 ...... 91

Figure 4.8: Britten, Noye’s Fludde pp. 107-108 ...... 94

Figure 4.9: Britten, Children’s Crusade, pp. 85-86 ...... 95

Figure 4.10: Britten, Children’s Crusade, pp. 1-2 ...... 96

Figure 4.11: Britten, Children’s Crusade, p. 37...... 98

Figure 4.12 Britten, Psalm 150 p. 16 ...... 99

Figure 4.13: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 3 ...... 101

Table 4.2: Analysis of Ripieno String Parts in Noye’s Fludde ...... 102

Figure 4.15 Welcome Ode 13 (2nd violins) ...... 107

Figure 4.16 The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra 27 violin parts only...... 108

Table 5.1: Occasion for Britten’s Poly-Technical Works...... 112

Figure 5.1: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, p. 105 ...... 119

Table 5.2: Solo Singers in Children’s Crusade and All Britten’s Untrained Children’s Solo Vocal Music...... 123

Table 5.3: Chorus in Children’s Crusade and All Britten’s Untrained Children’s Chorus Music. 123

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 BRITTEN AND POLY-TECHNICALITY

Musical works in which professional performers and musically-untrained children perform together (to be defined as poly-technical works – a usage coined for the purposes of this paper) hold a unique place in the output of English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).1 This thesis shows that Britten made technical compromises when writing these pieces, but maintained the integrity of his compositional voice, thereby making no artistic compromises. For this reason, it will be argued, this repertoire is some of the most important music Britten produced.

Britten was one of the most important composers of the 20th century. All of his works have been recorded, some of them multiple times.2 His compositions remain in print and are performed regularly throughout the world,3 and he is the subject of numerous biographies and scholarly works4. He was, in informal ways, England’s national composer for a significant period. For example, it was he who composed the , (, 1953) to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II,5 and it was he who was asked to create the commemorative work used for the rededication of Coventry Cathedral (, 1961). This work is regarded as one of the landmarks of 20th century music,6 as is his opera Peter Grimes (1945), the first significant opera by an Englishman since (1659-1695).7 He was created Baron Britten of , the first composer to be ennobled.8 In spite of this, Britten always considered himself something of an outsider, largely because of his political views and sexual orientation, and his work is often concerned with those on the margins of society.9 The need to include, therefore, was a strong motivation in Britten’s creative process and this led to him creating significant works with parts for musically-untrained children.

1 Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten (Oxford: , 1996), 257. 2 Charles H. Parsons, A Benjamin Britten Discography, Studies in History and Interpretation of Music 21 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). 3 http://www.boosey.com/cr/catalogue/ps/powersearch_results?composerid=2770 4 Peter J. Hodgson, Benjamin Britten: A Guide to Research (: Routledge, 2013). 5 David Matthews, Britten (London: Haus Publishing, 2003), 109. 6 Michael Kennedy, Britten, 3rd edition The Master Musicians (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 209–214, 7 Kennedy, Britten, 157–168. 8 Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin, 2013), 555. 9 Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 5.

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Analysis of selected works by Britten will show the ways in which he modified the technical requirements of the music for musically-untrained children to sing and play. The criteria for selecting these works will be explained in detail and three of these works (St Nicolas (1947), The Little Sweep (1948) and Noye’s Fludde (1958)) will be identified as the core works of this repertoire. Established analytical methods are employed to examine matters pertaining to the relative difficulty of sung parts in these works. These are applied to parameters including tessitura, mean pitch, phrase length, accompaniment, texture and pitch proximity (defined below). Some of these data are based on the Implication-Realization model of music analysis developed by Eugene Narmour10 and refined and simplified by Glenn Schellenberg.11 These aspects were chosen to demonstrate the relative ease with which children may learn new songs.12 The analysis will be compared with a control set of pieces that Britten composed exclusively for professional performance. Also presented is an analysis of the instrumental music in these works. These parts are compared to the standard instrumental pedagogical works contemporary to Britten and their relative difficulty established principally on those grounds. Discussion of these poly-technical works with reference to established Britten scholarship, and with close attention to Britten’s own statements about art, will demonstrate that Britten did not compromise his artistic vision when composing these works.

This introductory chapter will provide a biographical sketch of Britten’s life and career. It will then examine his relationship with British society, a critical relationship because of Britten’s clear vision of the place of the artist in an ideal society. This ideology informed Britten’s thinking about musical matters such as inclusivity and occasionality, that is, music composed with a specific occasion, location and ensemble in mind. This chapter will then discuss the terms of this study and will examine the idea of poly-technicality and the definition of a ‘musically-untrained child’ in some depth. There follows discussion of Britten’s compositional output and grounds given for inclusion in and exclusion from the corpus of works under consideration. Finally, the unique place of these works within Britten’s ouvre is considered, including the contribution they make to Britten’s achievements.

1.2 BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT

10 Eugene Narmour, The Analysis and Cognition of Melodic Complexity: The Implication-Realization Model (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 11 E. Glenn Schellenberg, “Simplifying the Implication-Realization model of Melodic Expectancy.” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14, no. 3 (1996): 295–318. 12 James Henry Byrne Humberstone, “Cassations: ’s for Musically- Untrained Children” (PhD diss., University of New South Wales, 2013), 34–35.

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Edward Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, England’s most easterly town, on 22nd November 1913. His family were upper-middle class people; cultured and musical, particularly his mother.13 Britten’s relationship with his parents is one that has caused considerable speculation among some of his biographers, such as John Bridcut14 and David Matthews.15 Britten was educated first (up to the age of eight) privately by two sisters, the Misses Astle, where music, particularly singing, seems to have been an important part of the daily routine.16 He then went to a private preparatory school, South Lodge, in his hometown where, unusually in his peer group, he was a day boy and went home every evening. At the age of thirteen, he was sent to board at Gresham’s, a public school in Holt, Norfolk, fifty miles from the Brittens’ family home.17 He showed considerable musical gifts from an early age and had started to produce a great deal of his own music from about the age of ten.18 This juvenilia has largely survived and is held in the archives of the Britten-Pears Foundation. Some of this material has attracted scholarly attention,19 but the present study is concerned with Britten’s mature output as a composer.

Britten’s schooling was fairly typical of his generation and social class (except that he did not board at South Lodge, his preparatory school), and after he finished his secondary schooling, he took up a scholarship position at the .20 His formal music education was, on the whole, not a happy one, although the extent of his dissatisfaction will be examined in Chapter Two. It is certainly true to say that Britten found far more satisfaction early in his life with family music-making (especially with his mother) and in his public school and Royal College years, with his teacher and mentor , than he did with those who were assigned by institutions to teach him, namely Walter Greatorex and John Ireland.21 Throughout his boyhood and student days, Britten was a highly assiduous and determined young composer, producing score after score, listening to, studying and performing a wide variety of music, and undergoing gruelling lessons with Frank Bridge, some of which lasted an entire day.22

13 John Bridcut, Britten’s Children (London: Faber & Faber, 2006), 9–11. 14 Matthews, Britten, 39 15 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 11–12, 41. 16 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 37–38. 17 Matthews, Britten, 11. Public school in the British sense, meaning an expensive private school. 18 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 12. 19 Lucy Walker, “How a Child's Mind Works: Assessing the Value of Britten's Juvenilia,” Notes 64, no.4 (2008): 641–658. 20 , Britten, The Great Composers (New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1966), 24. 21 Matthews, Britten, 9–20. 22 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 10–16.

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After leaving the Royal College, the young Britten found a little work as a composer, notably with the GPO Film Unit where he composed, among other things, the soundtrack for the short film to a poem by W. H. Auden.23 During this period, Britten came under the influence of Auden and his literary set and it was at this time he was to meet his life-partner . In April of 1939 Britten and Pears left for the United States of America in an attempt to establish careers there.24 They returned to England in 194225 and settled on the coast where they were to remain for the rest of their lives. It was after the Second World War that Britten’s stature as a composer grew, particularly after the premiere of Peter Grimes made a major impact on both the critics and the public.26 In 1948, Britten and Pears established the , which was to become one of the leading musical festivals in Europe.27 It was at this annual event that many of Britten’s works received their premiere performance. Britten died in 1976 and was recognised as one of the great composers of the 20th century.28

The reputation for greatness that surrounded Britten for most of his professional life may be seen as justified because of the critical and popular reception of his compositions and because of the calibre of conductors, instrumentalists and singers who were eager to perform his work. Many of the artists who premiered Britten’s works were the leading global professionals in their field, for example, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and .29 British musicians of the highest quality were also closely associated with Britten and his music, including James Blades, Dennis Brain and .30 It could be argued that these musicians’ reputations grew because of their association with Britten; this only serves to emphasise the point that Britten’s works were associated with artists of the highest calibre.

Benjamin Britten differed from most other 20th century composers of such high reputation in that he was also keen for his works to be associated with artists of no reputation at all, specifically amateur musicians and musically-untrained children. This desire has its origin in

23 Kennedy, Britten, 17. 24 Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, eds. Donald Mitchell & Phillip Reed, vol. 1, 1923–1939 (London: Faber & Faber, 1991), 618. 25 Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, eds. Donald Mitchell & Phillip Reed, vol. 2, 1939–1945 (London: Faber & Faber, 1991), 1030. 26 Matthews, Britten, 69–70. 27 Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), 255–257. 28 Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, eds. Phillip Reed & Mervyn Cooke, vol. 6, 1966–1976 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012) 738. 29 Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, eds. Phillip Reed & Mervyn Cooke, vol. 5, 1958–1965, (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), 495, 514. 30 Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, eds. Phillip Reed, Mervyn Cooke & Donald Mitchell, vol. 4, 1952–1957 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 295, 361.

4 how Britten viewed his place as a composer in society.31 By the 1960s, Britten had found a place in a wider society, as the national composer of England. There is an official position for such a composer - The Master of the Queen’s Music - and it has been held by esteemed composers such as Purcell and Elgar and by lesser composers such as Green and Shield. In 1975, when the position became vacant, Britten was ill, frail, was composing little,32 and so the job went to Australian Malcolm Williamson. Williamson, incidentally, was a composer also much dedicated to inclusiveness and poly-technicality in his works.33 Nevertheless, recognition from national figures came to Britten during the post-war period. For example, the Queen opened the new concert hall in Snape in 1967 and stayed for lunch with Britten and Pears at their home.34 Britten finished his life as Lord Britten of Aldeburgh, and a member of the highly prestigious Order of Merit, whose membership is limited to twenty-four living persons.35

Britten also saw community as a smaller thing than nation and recognised a composer’s place in that community.36 His earliest musical experiences were his mother’s gatherings in their family home where members of the local choral and operatic societies and nearby instrumentalists of some skill would come together to share music. Certainly, this image of a musical salon is a very bourgeois one, but it impressed upon Britten the importance of music in a community such as Lowestoft37 - which he later acknowledged when given freedom of the town.38 His experiences at Gresham’s, too, were formative on his view of society and a musician’s place in it. His relationship with his music teacher there has usually been portrayed as a difficult one and Walter Greatorex is said, by some biographers, to have actively discouraged the young composer.39 This point of view appears to have been made public first by Imogen Holst. 40 However, there is some evidence to suggest that these perceptions have been exaggerated41 and that Greatorex had more of a positive influence on Britten than Britten himself ever understood.42 What Britten observed in Greatorex was a musician dedicated to serving the musical needs of his community, in this case a large public

31 Benjamin Britten, On Receiving the First Aspen Award (London: Faber & Faber, 1978), 16. 32 Kennedy, Britten, 245. 33 Carolyn Philpott, “An Australian Composer Abroad: Malcolm Williamson and the Projection of an Australian Identity” (PhD diss., University of Tasmania, 2010), 363. 34 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 6, 75. 35 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 372. 36 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award. 37 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 11–12. 38 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 1, 90. 39 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 27. 40 Holst, Benjamin Britten, 22. 41 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 45–54. 42 The present author has written a paper on this subject which is under review for publication at the time this thesis goes to be published.

5 school. Greatorex was a conductor, organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue43 and served his community for 25 years.44 In him was a microcosm of what Britten later believed was the purpose of a composer in a much larger society: ‘I want my music to be of use to people, to please them, to enhance their lives.’45 At Gresham’s, Greatorex may have planted the seed of inclusiveness which was later to flower into works such as Noye’s Fludde and St Nicolas.

1.3 BRITTEN AND BRITISH SOCIETY

There is something of a paradox in Britten’s relationship with larger society. On the one hand, he wanted his music to serve society, and on the other, he readily identified and sympathised with the outsider. In his early life he found his social circles difficult. He was very lonely and anxious at school,47 although to what extent this feeling was greater than that of any other young child away from home and family for a long time is impossible to say. Further, he did not fit in well at the Royal College of Music.48 When he moved to New York, he found the louche, bohemian circle of Auden and his friends, with whom he and Pears lived from December 1940 to July 1941, not to his taste.49 It is perhaps these formative experiences as an outsider in society that led to the centrality of the outsider in many of his greatest works. Peter Grimes is the most striking example, where the eponymous Grimes is hounded to death by the people of his town, but this theme may also be found in choral works such as (1943) where his sympathy for poor, deranged Christopher Smart, whose poetry Britten sets, is manifested in some of his most touching music.50

Nevertheless, Britten was firmly committed to what he saw as his role in serving his society, both locally and nationally. Britten was determined that his music would be useful and enjoyable and would enhance the lives of others. As he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1946:

Until the 19th century, the composer was the servant of society… [then] composers began to blow up their egos… Now the artist is the glorified

43 Hales, H. J. “W. G. – An Appreciation,” The Gresham (1936): 1–2. 44 James Denman, “Walter Greatorex,” The Gresham (1950): 249. 45 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 21–22. 47 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 1, 75. 48 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 59. 49 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 110–118. 50 Hilary Seraph Donaldson, “An Analysis of Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb,” Choral Journal 51, no. 10 (2011), 6.

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mouthpiece of God… I believe in the reverse of that. I believe in the artist serving society.51

This was an ambition made even steeper by the fact that he and Pears were, prima facie, excluded from mainstream British life. As Pears put it, ‘we are after all queer and left and conchie which is enough to put ourselves outside the pale.’52 This makes Britten’s acceptance as the, albeit informal, national composer of England all the more remarkable, and a vivid testimony to his extraordinary gifts.

1.4 DEFINITION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF POLY-TECHNICALITY AND MUSICALLY-UNTRAINED CHILDREN

The expression ‘poly-technicality’ is derived from the Greek poly, many, and techne which refers to the skill or ability someone has to perform specialist tasks, in this case to perform music (Larry Shiner takes the idea further and argues that for most of the history of human civilisation, techne was art).53 One of the recent studies of one of Britten’s poly-technical compositions is Joshua Nannestad’s doctoral thesis on Noye’s Fludde which refers to the work as an ‘inter-generational’ opera.54 This it undoubtedly is, as the parts of Noye and Mrs Noye were intended for adults to perform, in addition to some of the orchestral parts (namely the duet, organ, principal percussion and five principal string players). Every other performer was intended to be a child or an adolescent55. Nevertheless, the critical criterion about the vocal and instrumental music in this opera is not the age of the performers for whom it was intended, but their level of skill. Noye’s Fludde is often performed by schools with the parts of Noye, Mrs Noye and the Voice of God being taken by competent teenagers, as their technical vocal demands are not exceedingly great, as the present thesis will demonstrate. This technical accessibility will be examined in detail in Chapters Three and Four.

‘Inter-generational’ is a term that is apt for Noye’s Fludde, but it does not cover all of the works in this repertoire because it does not differentiate between Britten’s compositions for musically expert children to perform (for example War Requiem or Missa Brevis (1959)) and those for musically-untrained children to perform. The sound of treble voices is one very

51 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 446. 52 Ibid., 419. 53 Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 54 Joshua Hawkins Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde: An Analysis and Re-Positioning for Contemporary Use” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2014), 1. 55 Benjamin Britten, Noye’s Fludde (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1958), iii.

7 often associated with Britten and much has been written about them representing the fragility of innocence.56 Many of these works were written for children whose level of skill and mode of rehearsing and performing could very easily be said to be professional. An example of this is The Golden Vanity (1966), composed for the Vienna Boys . This work relies on the aplomb and vocal assurance that can only come from what is, in practical terms, a professional choir. Similarly, Missa Brevis was written for the trebles (boy ) of and is one of the most demanding pieces of repertoire for that type of choir.57 With solo children’s parts, there is a strong differential in the sort of music Britten wrote for musically expert child singers when compared to his writing for other children. The parts for children in The Turn of the Screw (1954), and Albert Herring (1947), for example, require a professional level of technical ability.58 Furthermore, children who were cast in these roles in premiere runs under Britten’s musical direction were part of the same exhaustive rehearsal process as their adult counterparts; their working life had far more in common with that of their adult colleagues than with the musically-untrained children for whom also Britten wrote.59

If these are Britten’s musically expert children, the others may be termed ‘musically- untrained’ children. In his 2013 study of the children’s Cassations by Malcolm Williamson, James Humberstone uses this expression.60 In the strictest possible sense, it is not an accurate definition. For instance, the children playing third violin in Noye’s Fludde need to have had some formal instruction in their instrument, albeit an extremely elementary one. Similarly, even with parts that require no formal tuition prior to the rehearsal period,61 the rehearsal period itself is, ipso facto, musical training. However, there is a clearly discernable difference when Britten is writing for musically expert children. The difference lies in technical scope and expectation (as discussed in Chapter Three) but not in the size of Britten’s artistic vision (as discussed in Chapter Five). In the present study, the term ‘musically-untrained children’ is used in contradistinction to ‘musically expert children’ because it describes those singers and instrumentalists whose musicianship is not the core activity of their lives. Their ‘untrained’ status is a relative, not an absolute state.

56 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 126-135. 57 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 129. 58 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 244. 59 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 201–208. 60 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 17–20. 61 For example, the tutti percussionists in Children’s Crusade or the singers in Friday Afternoons.

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This distinction between types of singers was essential to the work of Clifford Madsen and Katia Madsen in their detailed study of pitch and rhythm perception between untrained and musically expert children and adults, and it provides a useful framework for making the distinction between the former two categories. 62 Although Madsen and Madsens’ conclusions are derived from aural perception tests, the contradistinction they establish between musically expert and musically-untrained children aged between ten and twelve is an important one in the context of the present study.

Britten, as a function of occasionality, also wrote to exploit distinct differences in sound of the boys’ choruses for whom he composed. The pure and angelic-sounding trebles of A Ceremony of Carols (1942) and War Requiem are not the loud ragazzo voices of Children’s Crusade (1968) (composed for Wandsworth Boys Choir), nor are they the slickly-produced and full-throated voices of The Golden Vanity. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that sometimes Britten wrote for boys’ voices and sometimes he wrote for lads’ voices.63 Britten’s use of the ragazzo sound (the chesty ‘continental’ sound in which boys sing using their natural speaking voices) and the cambiato (undergoing pubescent change) voice will be discussed in Chapter Three.

A surprisingly large proportion of Britten’s vocal works contain parts for children, be they musically expert or musically-untrained, girls, boys or ‘lads’, soloists, or choruses. Of Britten’s ninety-five opus-numbered works, fifty-eight of them have vocal parts and nineteen of those have parts for children’s voices. Each opus number could represent a large work or a small one, so these figures should not be taken as more than representative data: nevertheless it is an unusually high proportion to find children included in 20% of a renowned composer’s works. By comparison, Britten’s friend and near-contemporary Michael Tippett composed 143 published and catalogued works. Of these, thirty had vocal parts and only five were for children’s voices or instruments, representing 3.5% of his output, although a further two works were composed by Tippett for amateur adult musicians.64

Another factor that is both important and distinctive in the poly-technical works of Britten is the use of the audience or congregation as part of the vocal forces. In St Nicolas, Noye’s Fludde and The Little Sweep (1948), there are times when the congregation or audience are

62 Clifford K. Madsen and Katia Madsen, “Perception and Cognition in Music: Musically Trained and Untrained Adults Compared to Sixth-Grade and Eighth-Grade Children,” Journal of Research in Music Education 50, no. 2 (2002): 111-130, doi: 10.2307/3345816. 63 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 131–147. 64 Kenneth Gloag and Nicolas Jones, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

9 required to sing along. St Nicolas and Noye’s Fludde are works on religious themes and in them Britten refers to the assembly as a ‘congregation’. They are required to sing hymns as part of the overall musical and dramatic structure. In St Nicolas, the hymns are All People That on Earth do Dwell and God Moves in a Mysterious Way. Both of these hymns have become increasingly familiar since St Nicolas was composed in 1948, according to the proportion of published hymnals in which they appear.65 In Noye’s Fludde there are three hymns, two of which, Eternal Father, Strong to Save and Tallis’ Canon, were familiar to Britten’s congregations. The opening hymn Lord , Think on Me has never been particularly well known.66 It is included as part of the work because of the suitability of its text and because it acts, like the other two hymns, as a thematic generator for the rest of the opera, as Nannestad’s analysis shows.67 The extent to which these hymns are familiar to today’s audiences is almost certainly much diminished.68 Indeed, for many people, any kind of community singing has become an unfamiliar experience.69

In the case of The Little Sweep, a secular work, Britten composed four songs for the audience to sing, taught to the audience by the conductor before the opera starts. In the case of the television broadcast that was made to accompany The Little Sweep, called Let’s Make an Opera, the learning of the audience songs is very much part of the preliminary action.70 These four audience songs come at critical structural points in the opera, including the opening (there is no overture) and the finale. They are designed to be repetitive, ‘catchy’ and easy to learn.71 Thus, Britten includes musically-untrained adults as well as children in these three key works.

The three works that lie at the core of Britten’s poly-technical repertoire (St Nicolas, The Little Sweep and Noye’s Fludde – their identification as ‘core’ works will be discussed later in this chapter) are designed for performers of differing levels of skill to join together in music-making. Table 1.1 is a summary of the forces required and their levels of skill.

65 Hymnary: A comprehensive index of hymns and hymnals, http://hymnary.org/ 66 Ibid. 67 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 70–89. 68 Alasdair Crockett and David Voas, “Generations of Decline: Religious Change in 20th‐Century Britain,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45, no.4 (2006): 567–584. 69 Dave Russell, “Abiding Memories: The Community Singing Movement and English Social Life in the 1920s,” Popular Music 27, no.1 (2008): 117–133. 70 Benjamin Britten, The Little Sweep (opera), by (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1948), i. 71 Desmond Shawe-Taylor, New Statesman and Nation, July 23, 1949, quoted in Britten, Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, eds. Phillip Reed, Mervyn Cooke & Donald Mitchell, vol. 3, 1946–1951, (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004), 517.

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Table 1.1: Musical Forces in the Three Core Poly-Technical Works

St The Little Noye’s Nicolas Sweep Fludde Adult Professional P P P Singers Musically-Untrained P P P Child Soloists Young People’s Chorus P Children’s Chorus P Not as such, but P often the 8 children sing together, creating a de facto chorus Congregation/Audience P P P Adult Professional P P P Instrumentalists Adult Non-Professional Possible P Instrumentalists Musically-Untrained P P Child Instrumentalists

1.5 AN OVERVIEW OF BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS; GROUNDS FOR INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION

Britten’s first encounter with a deliberately and self-consciously poly-technical composition may have been when Aaron Copland visited Britten at home in Snape in July 1938.72 At this time, Copland had recently completed a music theatre piece called The Second Hurricane (1938). This work was intended for young people of varying levels of musical talent and experience to perform. Copland was a composer who also saw a need to serve his community, although not quite in the same way as Britten.73 Indeed, some critics have suggested Copland had two distinct musical voices, a private one and a public one,74 and one has only to compare the string quartets with the ballet music to hear a clear difference. Copland saw his public voice as important and he saw the creation of a distinctly American sound as an important part of that musical persona75 (for a fuller discussion of voice and persona, see Cone).76 In The Second Hurricane, Britten was able to see the potential in writing large-scale works of artistic importance that involved musicians with differing technical abilities, in this case

72 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 1, 567. 73 Elizabeth B. Crist, Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland during the Depression and War, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 71–75. 74 Neil Lerner, “Copland's Music of Wide Open Spaces: Surveying the Pastoral Trope in Hollywood,” The Musical Quarterly 85, no.3 (2001): 477–515. 75 Copland, Music and Imagination, 97. 76 Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Oakland Press, 1974).

12 children, adolescents and adults. 77 The Second Hurricane itself is a somewhat problematic work; its style is neither quite opera nor quite Broadway; and its libretto, full of 1930s slang, sounds both dated and artificial.78 It is very rarely performed today and only a single recording has ever been made.79 It could very well be that Britten perceived these shortcomings and learned from another composer’s mistakes when composing his own poly- technical works a few years later. Certainly, Copland believed the encounter could have been influential on Britten’s later work with children and young people.80 Alternatively, there could be an argument that Britten repeated some of Copland’s mistakes in 1941 with the unsuccessful opera and only then altered his approach to writing music theatre for young people to perform.81

Britten’s poly-technical works have at their heart St Nicolas, The Little Sweep and Noye’s Fludde. They each contain vocal parts for adult soloists of a reasonably challenging standard at least. They also have parts for musically-untrained children and teenagers as soloists and as members of a chorus. All three of these works contain passages for the audience or congregation to sing. St Nicolas and Noye’s Fludde contain percussion and string parts for musically-untrained children to play. Noye’s Fludde also has parts for bugles, recorders and handbells. There are a number of other works by Britten that have parts for children, but their inclusion in the category of poly-technical for the purposes of this study is largely contingent upon whether or not the children’s parts were intended to be performed by musically expert children. Missa Brevis is therefore excluded, as is War Requiem. Some of Britten’s works are not easy to categorise in this fashion. For example, Albert Herring has children’s parts which were taken by musical professionals at their premieres (under Britten’s direction)82 but these parts can and have been sung by musical but non-professional children, a practice approved by Britten.83 For the purposes of this study, works that Britten explicitly intended to be poly- technical are those that will receive analytical attention.

Table 1.2 includes a list of Britten’s works that may be regarded, by this criterion, as being poly-technical. They will be discussed in chronological order of composition. Three of them,

77 Matthews, Britten, 45. 78 Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life & Work of an Uncommon Man (New York: Macmillan, 1999), 310. 79 Crist, Music for the Common Man, 76–84. 80 Aaron Copland “A Visit to Snape” in A Tribute to Benjamin Britten on His Fiftieth Birthday edited by Anthony Gishford, (London: Faber & Faber, 1963), 72. 81 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 95. 82 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 133. 83 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 6, 60.

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Simple Symphony (1934), Friday Afternoons (1935) and Paul Bunyan will be excluded from the central corpus of this study and a detailed rationale for these exclusions will be given.

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Table 1.2: Chronological List of Britten’s Poly-technical Works

Opus Year Title Instrumentation detail 4 1934 String orchestra 7 1935 Unison voices, piano Friday Afternoons 17 1941 Opera Paul Bunyan 42 1948 Soloists, SSA semi chorus, SATB choir, St Nicolas strings, piano, organ, percussion 45 1949 Opera The Little Sweep 59 1957 Opera Noye's Fludde 67 1962 Children's chorus and instruments Psalm 150 82 1968 Children's chorus and instruments Children’s Crusade 95 1976 Young people’s voices and orchestra Welcome Ode

It is not surprising that in some of Britten’s works for children he looked to his own juvenilia for inspiration and thematic material. One result of these searches through a very substantial body of his own manuscripts (Imogen Holst provides the first survey of these documents)84 was the Simple Symphony. In this work, Britten takes themes that he composed as a boy and works them into a set of four pieces for string orchestra (or string quartet). It has been described as an ‘engaging work and deeper than perhaps Britten himself admitted.’85 There is a limited extent to which these pieces may truly be described as poly-technical. Simple Symphony does not make great technical demands on any of its players. Britten did, however, expect a great deal from the string orchestra in other works and the following examples from Les Illuminations (1939) and Simple Symphony show considerable contrast in that respect.

84 Holst, Britten, 16–21. 85 Kennedy, Britten, 119.

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Figure 1.1: Britten, Les Illuminations I, p. 5

Figure 1.2: Britten, Simple Symphony p. 5

Britten also includes more bowing directions than in other works, including such apparently obvious matters as ‘up-bow’ for an anacrusis, and there are also suggestions for fingerings and left hand positions. However, this relative simplicity does not necessarily imply poly- technicality. Although there may be a chance that instrumentalists of widely-differing levels of ability may find themselves performing this piece together, that poly-technicality would be

16 accidental and not intended; Simple Symphony is therefore excluded from detailed analysis in this study because Britten intended it for string players of a similar standard. For this reason, this work does not form part of the corpus that is examined in detail here.

Friday Afternoons is a set of twelve songs for unison children’s voices with piano. They are so called because Friday afternoon was the time for community singing in Britten’s brother’s preparatory school, Clive House in Prestatyn.86 These are Britten’s first published works written for musically-untrained children to sing. They consist of a dozen miniatures, often in simple strophic form, setting a variety of folksy texts with pastoral or playful themes. This is, in the strictest possible sense, a poly-technical work because the piano accompaniment requires a musician of considerable skill to play it. However, there is no differentiation within the vocal parts and there are no additional instrumental parts. For this reason, Friday Afternoons is to be considered a marginal work as far as the repertoire under consideration here is concerned.

Paul Bunyan (1941) was the first opera Britten completed. He wrote it in America and on an American theme, that of the eponymous folk-hero whose gigantic frame and legendary exploits helped open the frontier. It was originally conceived as a piece of music theatre for young people to perform and therefore has no major roles, but many smaller ones. 87 Paul Bunyan, Britten’s only operatic collaboration with Auden,88 is described by the composer as an operetta89 because it contains spoken dialogue and relies quite heavily on strophic songs.90 Possibly because it is Britten’s most American work, some authors have compared it to the American musical. 91 One of Paul Bunyan’s problems is that its genre and style do not easily conform to expectations of opera, operetta, or musical, with composer Virgil Thomson remarking ‘I never did figure out the theme.’92 The work was not received well by the critics93 and, despite retaining its opus number, was withdrawn by Britten.94 He was persuaded, after extensive revisions, to allow a performance of Paul Bunyan in 1976.95 Nevertheless, some critics have seen musical merit in it, including Peter Evans who sees it as a sort of study for

86 Matthews, Britten, 30. 87 Kennedy, Britten, 148. 88 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 95. 89 Benjamin Britten, Paul Bunyan (operetta), (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), ii. 90 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 96. 91 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 147–50. 92 Ibid., 149. 93 Kennedy, Britten, 31. 94 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 95. 95 Ibid., 95–96.

17 some of the operatic techniques that Britten would use in later works.96 However, Evans’ conclusion that ‘Paul Bunyan stakes no claim for the inclusion in the canon of Britten’s operas’97 is very difficult to refute. Although the work has remained in print with an opus number, Britten never considered it truly part of his operatic canon.98 Therefore, for the purposes of the present study, it remains, like Britten’s available juvenilia, of interest, but not sufficiently so to merit detailed analytical attention.

1.5.1 THE CORE POLY-TECHNICAL REPERTOIRE: ST NICOLAS, THE LITTLE SWEEP AND NOYE’S FLUDDE

In chronological order, the next three works are those at the core of Britten’s poly-technical repertoire. The first of these to be composed, St Nicolas, was commissioned by Lancing College to commemorate their centenary. Unlike Paul Bunyan, the work was extremely well received.99 Its musical forces were determined by its occasionality.100 Britten wrote a large- scale work to a text by Eric Crozier on the life of the legendary fourth century saint. The very demanding part of Nicolas was written for Peter Pears and is amongst the most vocally difficult repertoire Britten wrote for him.101 Other voices in the work are four solo boys, a girls’ semi-chorus in three parts which is drawn from a larger gallery choir, a five-part (SATBB) mixed choir of young people’s voices and, in two movements, the congregation. In addition, the work requires a professional organist, piano duet and string quartet with other instrumental parts of a much lower standard of difficulty for strings and percussion, the details of which are examined in Chapter Four. These are explicitly intended to be played by musically-untrained teenagers. The poly-technicality of St Nicolas is very much a function of its occasionality; Britten wrote for these forces and differing levels of skill because they were the resources available to him on this occasion. This exemplifies an important strand of Britten’s artistic and social thought.102

The Little Sweep is scored for a professional pianist, percussionist and string quartet. However, its sung parts are written for adults and children of varying degrees of vocal ability. It tells the story of a cruelly-used chimney sweep’s boy, Sammy, and his rescue from his master. The premiere performance used professional adults from The

96 Ibid., 99–102. 97 Ibid., 103. 98 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 160–167. 99 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 63. 100 Benjamin Britten, St Nicolas (), libretto by Eric Crozier (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1949), i. 101 Matthews, Britten, 95–96. 102 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 11.

18 and musically-untrained children from a comprehensive school in .103 This piece was not written as the result of a commission. However, Britten was very enthusiastic about composing it.104 It is significant that, in the era of Peter Grimes and (1947), a composer as successful as Britten so passionately embraced a poly-technical project. There are some difficulties with this work; as Chapter Three will show, some analytical methods reveal that the adults’ and children’s parts in The Little Sweep are of roughly equal technical difficulty. The Little Sweep has also not aged well. It was written as a period piece and set sixty years before it was composed, so it has always retained an antique quality. Nevertheless, as Matthews points out, The Little Sweep ‘verges on the twee.’105 The Little Sweep was intended to be the second half of a television program called Let’s Make an Opera. The libretto, by Eric Crozier, is uncharacteristically problematic for a Britten opera. Sammy the Sweep may be identified as the oppressed outsider and an exploited innocent. Instead of Britten crying out on his behalf and railing against a society so corrupt it allows these things to be, he has Sammy rescued from his cruel master by upper-class children who then release the boy to an uncertain, undetermined and not-thought-through fate. This is from a composer whose artistic identity was with the outsider, the oppressed, the underdog.106

The archetype of the poly-technical major work is Noye’s Fludde, based on the mediaeval retelling of the story of the biblical flood. It is Britten’s masterpiece in this field and has not been equalled by any subsequent work of its type.107 Like St Nicolas, it was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival; unlike St Nicolas, it was not written to commission, so its scope and forces are largely the result of Britten’s unimpeded decision-making. Noye’s Fludde almost immediately became one of Britten’s most performed works.108 It has singing parts for two adults and six solo children (one of whom, Jaffett, has an ossia in the register). Additionally, there is a semi-chorus of ‘older girls’ and many children to sing the parts of the animals. The instrumental forces are led by a professional percussionist, piano duet, organist and string quintet. They include musically-untrained children playing percussion, handbells, bugles, recorders and strings. The last three of these instrumental groups are further differentiated by technical skill. The congregation are also called to join in by singing hymns on three occasions. The work lasts about fifty minutes and is a triumph of music, drama, spectacle and inclusivity.109

103 Holst, Benjamin Britten, 50. 104 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 3, 407. 105 Matthews, Britten, 110. 106 , “Britten and Grimes,” The Musical Times 118, no. 1618 (1977), 997–998. 107 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 4. 108 Ibid., 60. 109 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 282.

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1.5.2 LATER POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS

Psalm 150 (1962) was an occasional piece written to commemorate the centenary of South Lodge, Britten’s old preparatory school. Of all Britten’s poly-technical works, this has the most flexible instrumentation, being scored for treble instruments, brass instrument, percussion instruments, keyboard instrument and instrument or multiples thereof. Its vocal parts are for sopranos and , with much unison singing.

Children’s Crusade is a lesser-known work by Britten and has a text by Bertolt Brecht about abandoned children in the Second World War. It was written for the Wandsworth Boys Choir whose Director, Russell Burgess, encouraged the hard-edged ‘continental’ sound that Britten sometimes preferred.110 In terms of poly-technical thinking, this work is, vocally at least, somewhat marginal as the technical expectations of all the singers are similar. However, the large percussion battery contains parts for instrumentalists of some technical ability and those of almost no technical ability and therefore includes some of Britten’s most poly-technical instrumental writing.

It is fitting that Britten’s last composed work, Welcome Ode (1976), should be poly-technical, occasional, involve young people, and be written very much with a community in mind. In this case the community was his county town of Ipswich, the piece being written for a royal visit there in 1977 for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. It is scored for young people’s voices, , and (with some divisi in the baritone part), and orchestra. The three- rather than four-part choral writing could be seen to reflect the decline in the number of boys singing by 1976, an issue which will be discussed in Chapter Two.111 Thus, Britten was continually aware of issues in young peoples’ music-making right up until the end of his life.

110 Ashley, How High Should Boys Sing?, 59. 111 Ibid., 30-41.

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1.6 THE UNIQUE PLACE OF POLY-TECHNICAL REPERTOIRE IN BRITTEN’S OUTPUT

Benjamin Britten was not the first composer to create poly-technical works. Examples may be found from the masters of the Baroque and Classical period including some of Vivaldi’s concerti, or Mozart’s and Clementi’s piano duets. Indeed, the entire baryton trio output of Haydn is deliberately poly-technical. Examples become harder to find in the nineteenth century because, to use Britten’s memorable phrase, composers tended to see themselves as ‘the mouthpiece of God,’112 so practical considerations such as involving musicians of lesser skill were not of the highest importance. Thus, Britten’s practice of placing non-professional and professional musicians side-by-side in works of substantial intent was, at the very least in Britten’s view, a pioneering revival of an older tradition. To him this was one of his core duties as a composer, to serve the community for whom he was writing; a community not only of listeners but also of performers.113

Composers after Britten, too, have composed poly-technical works. Malcolm Williamson’s Cassations occupy a central place in his output114 as do the poly-technical works of David Bedford. More recently, Jonathan Dove, who is emerging as one of the leading British composers of his generation,115 has taken an interest in poly-technicality. Dove is a practical and community-minded composer whose view of his place in society is similar to that of Britten.116 Of a number of his poly-technical works, the most notable is The Monster in the Maze (2015), which was performed with a cast of professionals and musically-untrained children at three major European festivals in 2015. No major composer other than Britten, however, involved children in one fifth of his or her compositions. Children and their voices, both literally and figuratively, were central to Britten’s worldview and vision as an artist, and the literature concerning that will be examined in the next chapter. What is significant here is that a large number of those works with children performing are for musically-untrained children. The sheer volume of this output makes Britten unique in the twentieth, or any previous, century.

112 The New York Times, 1946, quoted in Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 441. 113 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 22. 114 Humberstone, “Cassations: Malcolm Williamson’s Operas for Musically-untrained Children,” 16- 20. 115 Jill Barlow, “London, King's Place: Simon Holt and Jonathan Dove at ‘Britten 100’,” Tempo 67, no.265 (2013): 85-86. 116 “Interview: Composer Jonathan Dove Talks about his New Opera, The Walk From the Garden” by Adam Sweeting, The Telegraph, May 18, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9275552/Interview-composer-Jonathan-Dove-talks- about-his-new-opera-The-Walk-From-the-Garden.html

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It is not only the volume of these works that speaks to their centrality in Britten’s output, but also the importance that he clearly attached to them. He was a composer who is regarded as one of the century’s finest creators of opera, and who, at the height of his fame, created Noye’s Fludde. He received higher royal honours than any other British composer and his last published work was for a royal occasion, notably a poly-technical effort. In between these works, Britten gave as much prominence to his poly-technical pieces as to any of his others. They received significant premieres, often at his beloved Aldeburgh Festival. Indeed, St Nicolas was the first work of any kind to be performed at the first Aldeburgh Festival.117 It is partly for these reasons that the poly-technical pieces are central to understanding Britten and his music.

117 Holst, Benjamin Britten, 46.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 EXTENT, SCOPE AND FOCUS OF THE LITERATURE

Benjamin Britten is a much studied and discussed composer and there is a very substantial body of literature concerning his life and works.118 Biographical and analytical texts range from the thorough and scholarly to those intended for the general reader and even for school children. Within this large body of scholarly literature, there are two areas of particular interest to the present study. One includes literature that explores Britten’s relationship as an artist with the society in which he worked, also encompassing the statements on this subject from Britten himself. The other includes the analytical works that draw parallels between Britten’s poly-technical works and his broader musical output. Other published sources relevant to the present study are Britten’s scores themselves, the numerous biographies and the ‘plethora of scholarly research relating to the composer’s life and work’.119

A recent survey of the literature on Britten was undertaken by Jonathon Manton.120 This brief survey, written during Britten’s centenary year, offers a useful overview of some of the preoccupations of recent Britten scholarship. Manton concludes that published print material has shown a greater frankness in discussing Britten’s private life and motivations in recent years, which has opened new avenues of discussion.121 Manton also notes an increasing emphasis on Britten’s sexual orientation as an influence on his output as an artist.122 This particular emphasis received its first detailed examination in the biography of Humphrey Carpenter, who strives to find a source of stress and conflict in Britten’s music engendered by the composer’s socially unacceptable (at that time) homosexuality.123 However, just how socially unacceptable this was (although homosexual acts were illegal until 1967) is open to question, when a known homosexual was publicly lauded as a musical genius, entertained Her Majesty the Queen to lunch, and was the first person ennobled for composing music. This is not the usual fate of someone who, to quote Pears, was ‘outside the pale.’124 It is another quote from Pears that, at least from the person closest to Britten, dismisses this matter entirely;

118 Hodgson, Benjamin Britten: A Guide to Research, 135. 119 Manton, “Studying Britten,” 229. 120 Jonathan Manton, “Studying Britten: The Current Landscape of Published Britten Scholarship,” Notes 70, no.2 (2013): 229–241. 121 Ibid., 231–234. 122 Ibid., 234. 123 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 100–108. 124 Ibid., 419.

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As to ‘anguish through guilt’! Forget it! Ben never regarded his own passionate feelings for me or his earlier friends as anything but good, natural and profoundly creative. In that direction there was never a moment of guilt. I do not believe that Ben’s private life plays any role in ‘the assessment of his artistry and personality.’ He was a musical genius. Is one really interested in the sex life of the great musicians or the less great? In Bach, Mozart, Gounod, Stamford or Wm Walton? I don’t think so.125

This attempt to try to attribute ‘anguish through guilt’ in Britten’s music to his sexual orientation speaks largely of the mind-set of the authors. It has only been 25 years since Carpenter wrote this biography, but since then the idea of a homosexual couple leading a staid, conservative, married life has gone from being secretive and illegal to being an unremarkable part of the social fabric.126 For Britten and Pears, what is socially normal now was domestically normal (and loving and joyful) a generation ago. Furthermore, Graham Elliott argues that too many Britten biographers concentrate on his homosexuality and pacifism as influences on his writing, whereas his Christian spirituality, which changed and developed throughout his life, is also of great importance.127 In addition, Manton discusses both the resources recently made available in print,128 such as Letters from a Life, 129 and online, such as the thematic catalogue.130

This review of the literature is concerned principally with those aspects of Britten scholarship most closely associated with the poly-technical repertoire. However, first a general synthesis is presented which shows a consensus on Britten’s importance as a composer. The biographical issues examined include Britten’s musical and artistic relationships in general and with children in particular, and his views on the place of the composer in the community. Analytical literature is examined from two points of view. The first is to detail the technical modifications Britten necessarily made to his music when writing for children to perform. This literature is somewhat limited in its scope and detail and Chapters Three and Four of the present study examine this question in more detail than previous authors. The second synthesises the critical appraisals of Britten’s music for children as part of his entire output.

125 Ibid., 101. 126 Tom W. Smith, Jaesok Son, and Jibum Kim, Public Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights Across Time and Countries (Chicago: The Williams Institute, 2014), 1. 127 Graham Elliott, Benjamin Britten: The Spiritual Dimension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3–6, 151–152. 128 Manton, “Studying Britten,” 235–238. 129 Britten, Letters from a Life. 130 See http://www.brittenproject.org/

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The latter point will be examined more fully in Chapter Five in respect to what is revealed by the analysis in Chapters Three and Four. The present chapter will also examine the literature relevant to the analytical methodology used in Chapter Three.

The two principal primary sources for Britten’s own views of his life, relationships and music are Letters from a Life and Britten On Music. Letters from a Life131 is a heavily annotated collection of letters and diary entries from a letter to his parents when aged nine to his obituaries. A large body of material, necessarily, has been omitted. Editorial choice in this matter, however, was informed by scholarship from highly regarded experts in the field. The lead editor of these six volumes was Donald Mitchell who was widely respected as one of the leading Britten scholars and who also had a close relationship with Britten and Pears.132

Britten On Music133 is an extremely valuable collection of all of Britten’s speeches, articles, interviews and other public discourse about music. Given the length of his career it is a relatively small collection of 103 pieces plus the prefaces to his scores. However, as Britten himself said, ‘the artist’s job is to do, not to talk about what he does.’134 Britten claimed that ‘words are not my medium’135 and chose, naturally, to express himself in music. There is, therefore, a danger of over-stating the importance of his words. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, they offer a valuable insight into Britten’s view of his own art, that of others and the place these things must have in society. As public utterances, they contrast in style and register with Britten’s private letters, but there always seems to be a sense of Britten communicating something he feels is important about art, music and society in each of these short pieces of literature.136 This collection is of great importance in assessing the place of the poly-technical compositions in Britten’s body of works because they are explicit about how Britten himself viewed these pieces.

The principal analytical work of Britten’s music is Evans’ comprehensive, detailed and insightful book The Music of Benjamin Britten.137 Peter Hodgson says that Evans’ study of Britten music is a ‘classic’138 and has been referenced in most subsequent studies.

131 Benjamin Britten, Letters from a Life. 132 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/02/donald-mitchell-obituary (retrieved 19th October 2018) 133 Paul Kildea, ed., Britten On Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 134 Kildea, Britten On Music, 214. 135 Kildea, Britten On Music, 214. 136 Kildea, Britten On Music, 2. 137 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten. 138 Hodgson, Benjamin Britten: A Guide to Research, 181.

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Much of what Evans writes is analytical in a post-Schenkerian manner, but he offers strongly supported views on the merits of Britten’s compositions and places them in their artistic and social context. Most pertinent to this study, Chapter Thirteen is devoted to music for children and Evans is very clear in his criteria for those which are included and excluded. For example, he specifically excludes works such as A Ceremony of Carols (1942) and Missa Brevis (1959) on the grounds that they were written for expert child singers and hence do not share the inclusiveness that other works do.139 This analytical approach is followed and extended in the present study.

2.2 BRITTEN’S STATUS AS A COMPOSER

Britten’s partner of more than 40 years, Peter Pears, once said of him ‘He certainly did not think of himself as a great composer, absolutely not.’140 However, the opinion of many of his fellow composers disagreed with the composer’s own assessment. Michael Tippett described him as ‘the most musical person I ever met,’141 Francois Poulenc called him ‘glorieux comme un jeune Verdi,’142 John Adams described Britten’s courageously demotic approach to composition ‘a great inspiration to me’143 and Aaron Copland said he was a ‘greatly gifted composer.’144 The consensus among biographers and critics also aligns with that of these composers. Mervyn Cooke described him as ‘Britain’s most internationally successful and respected twentieth-century composer,’145 while Paul Kildea states he was ‘a composer- executant-entrepreneur of ferocious talent and achievement.’146

However, not everything Britten wrote receives unqualified praise. For example, Michael Oliver raises some interesting questions about Britten’s effectiveness and sincerity as an occasional composer because of the failure in Japan of the (1940), pointing out that commissioned work’s obvious unsuitability for the occasion.147 The work, commissioned by the Japanese Imperial Court as a celebratory piece, was a memorial to Britten’s parents with Christian liturgical text in Latin as titles of the movements and,

139 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 86, 436. 140 Quoted in Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 28. 141 Meirion Bowen, ed., Tippett on Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 72. 142 Anthony Gishford, ed., Tribute to Benjamin Britten on his Fiftieth Birthday (London: Faber & Faber, 1963), 13. 143 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2VkvjOTEfE 144 Gishford, Tribute to Benjamin Britten on his Fiftieth Birthday, 73. 145 Mervyn Cooke, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 146 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 6. 147 Michael Oliver, Benjamin Britten (London: Phaidon, 1996).

26 unsurprisingly, was not well received.148 This, however, may be diplomatic understatement; the work is clearly unsuited for an occasion of national rejoicing. There was also an element of maladministration in this situation, as Britten was only given a few weeks to complete the work.149

Certain aspects of critical and analytical discourse are concerned with the authenticity of Britten’s voice in his poly-technical works, and hence the value of these works within Britten’s oeuvre. These critical and analytical writings are therefore essential to prosecuting one of the main arguments of this thesis, that Britten’s poly-technical works are a central part of his artistic output. For this reason, this literature will be further examined in detail in Chapter Five where it will be shown that it supports Britten’s own view that the poly- technical works are of as much artistic value as Britten’s works exclusively for adult performers. Their critical coverage of these pieces varies in its scope, but every major biographical, analytical and critical work about Britten praises the artistic merit of certain aspects of these pieces. The works singled out for such praise invariably include Noye’s Fludde.

2.3 BRITTEN’S RELATIONSHIPS

Many of Britten’s biographers spend considerable time exploring (and sometimes speculating) on the dysfunctionality in his relationships. It seems clear that in his adult life in Suffolk, Britten’s circle was a closed and possibly sycophantic one and that he was ruthless in casting out those who had displeased him.150 It was members of this close circle (hence their self-awarded designation as ‘specialists’) who produced Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on His Works From a Group of Specialists, a volume of essays on Britten’s music published in 1953 to celebrate Britten’s Fortieth birthday. This very early volume of analysis and appreciation contains a chapter by Imogen Holst on Britten’s children’s music. Being written in the early 1950s, later works including Noye’s Fludde, Children’s Crusade and Psalm 150 are not considered.151

All biographers have an agenda, and in some cases will make sensational revelations without convincing evidence. For example, Carpenter repeats Crozier’s claim that Britten was ‘raped

148 Ibid., 40. 149 Kildea, Britten on Music, 59. 150 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 7–11. 151 Holst, Imogen “Britten and the Young” in Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on His Work From a Group of Specialists, edited by Mitchell, Donald, and (London: Rockliff, 1954), 276–286.

27 by a school master’152 and Matthews makes a bizarrely contrived allegation that he used to procure boys for his father’s sexual gratification.153 A good deal of this gossip has its roots in the homophobia that was prevalent in British society at the time.154 However, there are scholarly and balanced biographies that provide insight into Britten’s character and his relationships. Michael Kennedy completely avoids salacious gossip and sensational speculation, and offers an important and honest insight into Britten as a composer and a man, despite having a clearly sympathetic viewpoint to begin with. He does not mount the obvious hobbyhorses about Britten’s constant longing for his idyllic childhood, and nor does Kildea, who emphasises that Britten’s music is about much more than the outsider in a hostile society and the loss of childhood innocence. Unlike Carpenter and Bridcut, Kennedy and Kildea do not allow their work to become fixated on the psycho-sexual aspects of Britten’s artistic motivation. Nor do they emphasise Britten’s pettishness, nor the accusations of over- cleverness that dogged the young composer. These works form an impression of Britten as a man and an artist; one who genuinely felt himself to be an outsider and who had a great deal of compassion and empathy for other outsiders. They portray a musician of phenomenal talent and a composer driven to use his gifts for the improvement of what Britten called ‘my fellow- men.’155

Kildea offers a weighty biography of Britten,156 written for the centenary of the composer’s birth. It is very much a biographical rather than an analytical work, and places the major events, themes and ideas of Britten’s life and work in the context of the events, themes and ideas of the 20th century. Kildea casts a thoughtful and balanced eye on Britten’s early years in particular. He considers the young composer’s antipathy to his school (Gresham’s), its Music Master (Walter Greatorex) and to the Royal College of Music in the context of those institutions and individuals and the cultures in which they worked. He concludes that Britten’s relationships with these institutions and individuals, particularly Greatorex, were not as hostile and damaging as previous authors had suggested.157 Indeed, Britten’s unhappiness with life at school and college had become accepted fact among Britten scholars and Kildea’s reassessment of the evidence sheds new and welcome light on Britten’s formative years.

2.4 BRITTEN AND SOCIETY

152 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 49. 153 Matthews, Britten, 39–40. 154 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 375. 155 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 12. 156 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century. 157 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 45–52.

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Carpenter gives an insight into Britten’s thinking about the composer’s place in society and his relationship with amateur musicians by providing revealing quotes from Britten himself, for example in an interview Britten gave with The New York Times in 1946:

I believe in the artist serving society. It is better to be a bad composer writing for society than to be a bad composer writing against it. At least your work can be of some use.158

The speech Britten gave when he received the Aspen award in 1964 is very revealing about what the composer chose to tell the public about his artistic and social motivations.159 The need for a composer to engage with his society is a key theme in Britten’s words and one he argues very eloquently here. Some of this speech is about the arts not being taken seriously enough or sufficiently funded.160 He also makes some points about the ubiquity of music via electronic recording and how this is not always the best thing for the listener, suggesting that it takes away the sense of ‘event’ in music and stops it being appreciated as much as it could be.161 It is an interesting statement, particularly from a musician whose father would not have a gramophone in the house for broadly the same reasons.162 This speech is a small document of enormous interest in understanding Britten’s motivation as an artist. In the preface, DM, presumably Donald Mitchell, states that this is the only such statement Britten ever made.163 Though it is short and appropriately occasional, it is the nearest thing to a Britten Manifesto that exists. There exist various interviews and public statements made by Britten, but none of them deviate from the central theme articulated at Aspen.164

The Aspen address was the articulation of the strong views Britten had throughout his life regarding the relationship between an artist and the society in which he or she functioned. He saw a critical social contract between these two parties and felt his obligations in these matters deeply.165 Much of the biographical literature explores this viewpoint, articulated by Britten himself on numerous occasions. For example, Carpenter’s biography offers valuable insights into Britten’s music and, particularly, how he saw his relationship with various elements in society. In this vein there are some telling quotes from Britten on a composer’s

158 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 441. 159 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award. 160 Ibid., 15. 161 Ibid., 17. 162 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 27. 163 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 7. 164 Kildea, Britten on Music. 165 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 16–17.

29 place as a servant of society,166 on the importance of writing for amateurs167 and on his relationship with children as musicians.168

The issue of occasionality is also an important and pertinent matter that is discussed in the biographical and critical literature, explored fully in Chapter Five. For Britten, it was often of great importance that a new work was tied to an occasion (and often, by extension, to a place and ensemble). He himself admired occasionality in other composers such as Purcell,169 and the ability to write bespoke music as well as he did comes in for particular praise from Evans170 and Kildea.171 However, Wilfred Mellers suggests occasionality can lead to a piece sounding dated very quickly.172 Composer John Barber discusses occasional music at length and points out that this is a major theme of Britten’s Aspen Address, and that Britten’s stated strong support for occasional music is borne out in the quantity he composed.173 Barber believes that creating occasional music enhances the quality of his (Barber’s) output as a composer, arguing that ‘tailoring a piece to a practical situation however limited, gives a piece more worth.’174 However, he goes on to say that his own teacher, , absolutely refuted this idea. Barber then describes the collaborative creative process he (Barber) undergoes to create a piece of this type. In this process the children-performers are also children-composers and the principal creator of the work guides a collaborative, ‘workshop’ style of composition.175 This method of proceeding is a common theme throughout this book and seems to be the typical way poly-technical compositions on a large- scale have been created in the in recent times. This presents a striking contrast to Britten’s careful control over his artistic output, as although Britten collaborated readily with librettists and other creative professionals, he always had the last word on creative matters.176

166 Ibid., 440–441. 167 Ibid., 265, 275. 168 Ibid., 80, 232. 169 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 163. 170 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 258. 171 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 109. 172 Wilfred Mellers, “Through Noye’s Fludde” in The Britten Companion, edited by Christopher Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 501. 173 John Barber, “Finding a Place in Society: Finding a Voice,” in Beyond Britten: The Composer and the Community, edited by Peter Wiegold and Ghislaine Kenyon (Woodbridge: Brewer and Boydell, 2015), 109-122. 174 Ibid., 111. 175 Ibid., 112–120. 176 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 3, 594.

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Despite Britten’s sympathy for the oppressed and innocent, borne out by his self- identification as an outsider,177 Carpenter suggests throughout his biography that Britten was the composer of the British establishment after the Second World War and examines the effect this adulation had on Britten’s personality.178 It must be said, however, that this book is almost obsessive in the amount of detail it has about the waspish atmosphere at Aldeburgh,179 as are some passages in Bridcut’s book.180

2.5 BRITTEN AND CHILDREN

Britten’s biographers have much to say about his relationship with children; his fascination with their voices both literally and figuratively, the child-like aspects of his own personality and imagination, and his attraction towards children and young people.181 The precise nature of the last of these is a matter for speculation with some authors, sometimes to the point of sensationalism. The inherent partiality of biographers and their inclination to push a particular agenda182 is particularly noticeable in some biographies of Britten and particularly in this area of his personality.

Some authors have suggested that Britten’s attraction towards boys was sexual in nature, with Bridcut going so far as to claim Britten once made a sexual advance to a boy.183 A good deal of what Bridcut claims in this regard is based on rumour, with allegations including such phrases as ‘there were whispers at Aldeburgh,’184 however the author has no stronger evidence. Carpenter, in particular, labours the question about whether or not Britten had a sexual attraction for children. However, this detailed biography of Britten finds no actual evidence that he did, nor is there anything concrete to suggest that Britten was himself abused as a child. Carpenter claims the use of in (1951) suggests Britten’s abuse as a child185 – this is clutching at imaginary straws. Kildea examines the question more thoughtfully and concludes that Britten’s attraction for children was far more complex than

177 Christopher Palmer, “The Ceremony of Innocence” in The Britten Companion, edited by Christopher Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 68–70. 178 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 491–493. 179 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 500–510. 180 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 287–291. 181 Ibid., 5. 182 Hermione Lee, Biography: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions, vol. 206, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), ix. 183 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 34. 184 Ibid., 226. 185 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 290.

31 mere lust and that any sexual feelings Britten may have had were always strictly suppressed.186

Britten and Pears’ life in Suffolk was at the heart of a circle of close friends and colleagues, who seemed to give Britten the security he needed to compose.187 The first biography of Britten to be published was, appropriately enough, intended for young readers and was written by a member of this close circle.188 Its author was Imogen Holst, who had already established herself as a particular expert in Britten’s works for children.189 She wrote this slim biography in 1966 and had previously lived with Britten and Pears when working as Britten’s musical assistant. It shows a deep knowledge of her subject, but is very much an ‘authorised’ biography and reflects Britten and Pears’ artistic agenda and personal relationships at the time. For example, librettist Eric Crozier, once one of Britten’s closest and most important collaborators, had fallen out of favour with Britten and Pears by 1966 and is not mentioned in the work at all. Nevertheless, the works for children receive particular emphasis, which reflect the importance with which Holst and, by implication Britten, himself attached to this repertoire.

According to the literature, one of Britten’s artistic motivations was the search for the lost innocence of childhood. This is a theme in virtually all the literature and it is summarised and synthesised by Frances Sinclair.190 The Britten Companion contains an article by Christopher Palmer,191 which covers this well-trodden ground in a new way. Palmer takes the interesting viewpoint of comparing Britten’s works to those of Percy Grainger, another composer who was concerned with the primitive in the sense of the innocent.192 Palmer points out that Britten admired Grainger very much193 and they shared a philosophy of involving children and amateurs in music-making.194 Palmer also points out a number of occasions when Britten’s music has very Grainger-like sonorities, particularly in their shared fondness for and bell-like percussion instruments, such as in Children’s Crusade (1968) and the finale of Noye’s Fludde (1958).195

186 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 116–118. 187 Kennedy, Britten, 50. 188 Holst, Britten. 189 Imogen Holst, “Britten and the Young,” in Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on His Work by a Group of Specialists, eds. Donald Mitchell and Hans Keller, (London: Rockliff, 1954), 276–286. 190 Frances T. Sinclair, “Celebration of Youth and Innocence: Benjamin Britten's ‘Welcome Ode’,” Choral Journal 39, no. 10 (1999): 9. 191 Palmer, “The Ceremony of Innocence,” 68–83. 192 Ibid., 72. 193 Ibid., 74. 194 Ibid., 76–78. 195 Ibid., 76.

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Unlike Grainger, Britten does not use folk song as thematic material in his original works, with the specific exception of Britten’s folk-song settings to which he did not give opus numbers,196 but is extremely effective in his use of hymn-tunes.197 Palmer claims that the great affect in the community hymn singing in St Nicolas and Noye’s Fludde has its psychological foundation in the childhood memories of the congregation and thus Britten establishes a connection to the lost innocent in each person present.198

Few authors on Britten have approached his children’s music from an educational point of view, despite Britten’s obvious ease in the company of children, even large groups of them. As Merlin Channon said, ‘he would have made a wonderful prep school master.’199 Imogen Holst was regarded as one of the leading music educators of her generation and was a close associate of Britten. She makes some telling observations about Friday Afternoons, which she says was written for ‘small boys’,200 promoting their pedagogical worth.201 and their lack of compromise in musical quality. She claims the song Old Abram Brown has ‘a dramatic seriousness of purpose that would put most opera choruses to shame’.202 Her book spends a considerable amount of space on The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1946),203 which falls outside the purview of the present study because it is not for children to perform. Nevertheless, its existence shows Britten’s interest in engaging children with music and its popularity shows his success in doing so. Surprisingly, Holst scarcely mentions St Nicolas.204

Nannestad offers insight into the positive educational value of having children perform alongside adults in Noye’s Fludde.205 He advances a strong pedagogical argument in favour of poly-technical works such as Noye’s Fludde, which he summarises very succinctly when describing the position of the children in the orchestra, ‘alongside professionals who embodied the potential each young player had on his own instrument’.206 This argument may be said of the singers, too. Nannestad further claims there is sufficient repetition in the opera to appeal to the children in the chorus, but enough variation to maintain adult interest.207 The

196 Ibid., 69. 197 Ibid., 81–82. 198 Ibid., 82. 199 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 231. 200 Holst, “Fludde,” 279. 201 Christopher Grogan, Imogen Holst: A Life in Music (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 96–98. 202 Holst, “Britten and the Young,” 279. 203 Ibid., 276-279. 204 Ibid., 280. 205 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde,” 67–68. 206 Ibid., 68. 207 Ibid., 117.

33 professional singers’ and instrumentalists’ parts are treated seriously and have their own technical and musical challenges, but the amateur parts are entirely accessible.

In establishing pedagogical worth (as distinct from artistic worth) for these works, light is shed on their place in the continuum of British culture. Gillian Moore places Britten’s poly- technical works in the context of a strong British tradition of community music-making.208 Of particular interest is Moore’s commentary on the role of Imogen Holst in influencing Britten’s poly-technical thought. She taught at for a considerable period and directed ensembles in which ‘People who could hardly hold their instruments were surrounded by competent players.’.209 Moore makes the point that Pears was not really interested in Britten’s poly-technical output, having only performed in one of them, and that it is possible he actively discouraged Britten from writing this type of work.210 She suggests that Imogen Holst countered that influence while she lived with Britten and Pears and came up with many practical suggestions to solve musical and technical issues (including the slung mugs for the rain sounds in Noye’s Fludde).211

2.6 TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL MUSIC

Recent literature on Britten’s poly-technical works has often included some analysis or at least commentary, on the technical difficulty of the parts he wrote for children, and the present study makes a full examination of these issues in Chapters Three and Four. The question of Britten’s influences on composing these works is addressed by Matthews212 who focuses on what may be viewed as the prototypical pieces. These are Paul Bunyan in its original version and an opera for young people by Aaron Copland called The Second Hurricane. Copland visited Suffolk in 1938, showed Britten the score and ‘Britten was impressed’.213

One problem for the contemporary performance of Britten’s works for children to sing is the decline in the number of boys involved in choral singing, arguably for psychological and sociological reasons.214 Martin Ashley argues, from a purely British point of view, about the

208 Gillian Moore, “A Vigorous Unbroken Tradition: British Composers and the Community Since 1900,” in Beyond Britten: The Composer and the Community, edited by Peter Wiegold and Ghislaine Kenyon (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), 45. 209 Ibid., 48. 210 Ibid., 54. 211 Ibid., 45. 212 Matthews, Britten. 45, 56–58. 213 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 1, 567. 214 Ashley, How High Should Boys Sing?, 15.

34 voice as part of a boy’s identity and how he views his own masculinity and social class. It examines these issues at considerable length, having first included a very useful summary of the literature on the physiology of the changing voice and the musical qualities of the robust, ragazzo sound which Britten so admired, which will be examined in detail in Chapter Three.215 The chapter on the physical development of the adolescent voice offers a useful insight, as summarised by Table 2.1.

Table 2.1: Speaking Range and Cooksey Stages216

Note Stage Age Cooper – male vocal range development – NB some overlap with Cooksey stages. D4-E5 Child <11- Soprano. Child-like, boys and girls (middle 11 very similar. D) A3-C4 I 11- 12 A3-B3 II 12- Cambiata. Boys and girls voices 13 diverge. Wide variety in the tessitura available to boys. G3-A#3 III 13- 14 F3-F#3 IV 13- 14 C3-E3 V 13- New baritone. Roughly baritone (viola C) 15 voice but sounds weak and immature. A2-C#3 VI 14- 15

The most detail on the technicalities of performing Noye’s Fludde may be found in Nannestad’s doctoral thesis.217 It is exclusively concerned with Noye’s Fludde and he examines the practical, technical elements of inclusivity in that work and discusses some of the ways in which the work can appear dated and the possible solutions to those difficulties. Boys’ bugle bands, for example, scarcely exist in contemporary America, but are very easily (and unnoticeably) replaced by .218 This is part of a broader point posited by Nannestad, and he presents a convincing argument throughout his thesis that adjustments in

215 Ibid. 48–52. 216 Ibid., 47. 217 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde.” 218 Ibid., 190–192.

35 prescribed instrumentation219 are justified in a work such as Noye’s Fludde to allow for increased opportunities to perform the work today.220 Britten’s own notes in the front matter of the score give a clear indication that the ‘score as holy writ’ approach is misplaced in this instance.221 White takes the view that the composer’s wishes in the score are to be absolutely respected. For this reason, he is critical of what he perceives as the required instrumentation that make it difficult to stage a performance of Noye’s Fludde. White appears to be a under a misapprehension of the forces required to perform the work (based, apparently, on the assumption that every single part must be covered, which is entirely against the spirit of the piece).222 Part of Nannestad’s analysis is a fairly detailed description of the ripieno string parts (see Table 2.2),223 noting that there are three levels of difficulty.

Table 2.2: Distribution of Ripieno String Parts in Noye’s Fludde224

Violin I, Viola, I Up to third position with some double stops (these involve one open string) Violin II, Cello II, Bass Almost entirely in first position Violin III Mostly open strings

A far more thorough analysis of these string parts forms a major part of the present paper and may be found in Chapter Four.

In Psalm 150, Britten takes the idea of flexibility in instrumentation to an extremely high level, with a list of instruments that is the least prescriptive in Britten’s entire repertoire.225 Elliot observes that the opening is built on long tonic and dominant pedals with increasingly chromatic material above it. The second section is in 7/8 and alternates in its subdivisions between 3-2-2 and 2-2-3. Following this is a canon ‘that children’s delight’226 to finish. All of these techniques have a sound basis in musical pedagogy and enable children to produce complex and sophisticated music without straining their technical resources.

219 For example, trumpets instead of bugles, instead of recorders, and the total omission of some instruments. 220 Ibid. 154. 221 Benjamin Britten Noye’s Fludde (opera) (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1958), iii–iv. 222 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 214–215. 223 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 20. 224 Ibid., 20. 225 Elliott, Benjamin Britten: The Spiritual Dimension, 90–91. 226 Ibid., 91.

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Britten’s music has its distinct hallmarks which Donald Mitchell identifies.227 These include a great gift for melodic invention, a sense of drama and theatre, ‘superb orchestration’228, a preference for the Lydian mode, the influence of Asian musics after 1956 and a fondness for older musical structures such as . These are not only strong characteristics of Britten’s music for adults, the poly-technical works show them in abundance too. This theme forms a major part of the argument that will be advanced in Chapter Five.

2.7 ARTISTIC CONSIDERATIONS IN BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL MUSIC

As Kildea points out,229 Britten wrote little about music. However, when he did so, a frequent preoccupation was with the place of the artist in society, as discussed above. Closely related to this are Britten’s views on inclusion and poly-technicality in his own music and the value he placed on those compositions. Many of these views form an essential part of the argument about voice and authenticity in Britten’s poly-technical works and, as such, will be advanced in detail in Chapter Five.

Much of the literature supports Britten’s own views on the value of poly-technicality and the importance of these works in Britten’s art, with a great deal of it focusing on Noye’s Fludde. Critical views on artistic considerations of Noye’s Fludde will be presented first, then on the rest of the poly-technical repertoire. There is a view that Noye’s Fludde is the ‘pinnacle of Britten’s writing for children and an important step forward in the development of his musical language.’230 Not only does this place inherent value on the work itself, but it also considers its position in Britten’s development as a composer. Britten’s poly-technical works were central to his development as a composer in the middle years of his career, partly because St Nicolas and particularly Noye’s Fludde were prototypes of the Church Parables that were such an important part of Britten’s output in the 1960s.231 Setting aside the influences of theatre and gamelan music, in these works there are musical connections through plainsong and a directness of expression. There are also parallels between the St Nicolas, Noye’s Fludde and the Church Parables in terms of their narrative and dramatic devices. All these works use ‘simplicity and directness of expression [to] provide a powerful vehicle for the expression of eternal truths.’232

227 Mitchell, Donald. “What Do We Know about Britten Now?' in The Britten Companion, edited by Christopher Palmer, (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 23–43. 228 Ibid., 25. 229 Kildea, Britten On Music, 1. 230 Oliver, Benjamin Britten, 162. 231 Elliott, Benjamin Britten: The Spiritual Dimension, 133–134. 232 Ibid., 154.

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A major requirement for a self-declared demotic composer such as Britten is the capacity to write strong melodies, and to do so in a way that is unforced and natural.233 Therefore, it is vital that Britten as a melodist could compose poly-technical works without compromising his artistic integrity or his compositional voice. Conversely, Matthews argues that to force melody when it is not a natural part of one’s musical language would ring an inauthentic note throughout such pieces.234 Nevertheless, there is a great deal of sophistication in a work like Noye’s Fludde. The ground in the storm music is dodecaphonic, and both the storm passacaglia and the raven music are palindromic. The use of retrograde as a structural device by Britten may be an area of analysis that repays further attention.235

Beyond the technical skill of the composer there are other reasons for arguing that Noye’s Fludde ‘should rank among (Britten’s) supreme achievements’.236 Mellers does this by proposing a symbolic meaning for the tale, as an everyman journey from darkness, through flood and trial, to the light of reconciliation with God.237 He suggests Britten used such devices as tonal areas, ostinato and passacaglia in a symbolic and suggestive way to take the music on a similar journey. Thus, E minor represents pilgrimage, G major reconciliation and pentatonic scales innocence.238 In Britten’s mature music, key as symbolism seems to have been a recurring device in those works that can be described in terms of such tonality. This includes the poly-technical repertoire.239 Mellers further posits that the lack of modulation and the use of ostinato in the building sequence show is ritual and not drama, because of the non- kinetic nature of the music240 and that the ground of the passacaglia during the storm scene represents the immutability of divine law.241 This is an ambitious program to place on the music of this simple tale, but of considerable significance if it is true. It means that Britten brought his most sophisticated musical thinking to Noye’s Fludde and for this reason it may be argued to rank alongside Peter Grimes and his other ‘adult’ operatic masterpieces.

The other major analytical point about Noye’s Fludde is concerned with the use of the three congregational hymns in that work as thematic generators for the action that surrounds them.

233 Matthews, Britten, 30. 234 Cone, The Composer’s Voice, 45–50. 235 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 218–219. 236 Wilfrid Mellers, “Music for 20th-Century Children. 2: From Magic to Drama,” The Musical Times 105, no. 1456 (1964): 423. 237 Ibid., 423. 238 Ibid., 424, 426. 239 Sinclair, “Celebration of Youth and Innocence,” 10. 240 Mellers, “Music for 20th Century Children,” 425. 241 Ibid., 427.

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For example, ‘Lord Jesus, Think On Me’ with its prominent minor thirds generates thematic material for the opening portion of the opera.242 Similarly, there is a convincing argument made by Nannestad that the ground in this passacaglia is derived from the hymn tune ‘Mellita.’ 243 The argument contends that the rising phrases of the ground are related to the hymn’s third phrase and are tonally anchored by the repeated G, a functional dominant some of the time.244 Despite using all twelve chromatic notes, this ground is not dodecaphonic in the sense that it does not use any of the serial development techniques pioneered by the Second Viennese School.

The passacaglia in the storm music of Noye’s Fludde has been cited as an exemplar of how Britten combined the simple and the complex to such great effect in his poly-technical works.245 In ‘Britten's Use of the Passacaglia’, Darrell Handel opens by offering the idea that only Britten and Hindemith were major users of passacaglia in the 20th century.246 He goes on to examine examples of Britten’s in detail, offering thoughts on their dramatic and structural significance. For a composer such as Britten, so involved in drama and narrative, the passacaglia is a very valuable form because the ground ‘becomes kind of an animated pedal point’247 and is therefore both stable and kinetic. In The Turn of the Screw, Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia the passacaglia is associated with death; it is a form Britten used in serious situations, and in the case of Noye’s Fludde it represents the mortal danger of the storm.248

The passacaglia examples from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943), (1963), and Noye’s Fludde are subjected by Handel to an analysis supported by diagrams.249 These are used to make the point that Britten always reinvented the passacaglia with an ‘imaginative and unexpected stroke.’250 The passacaglia in Noye’s Fludde is no exception, with Britten interrupting the growing storm (expanding texture is equated with growing waves)251 with a congregational hymn, thereby marking both the climax of the storm and the start of its decline.252 As early as 1970, Noye’s Fludde has been consistently placed on

242 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 70. 243 Ibid., 105–108. 244 Ibid., 86–89. 245 Oliver, Benjamin Britten, 162. 246 Darrell Handel, “Britten's Use of the Passacaglia,” Tempo 94 (1970), 2. 247 Ibid., 2. 248 Ibid. 249 Ibid., 4–5. 250 Ibid., 6. 251 Ibid., 5. 252 Ibid.

39 the same analytical footing as his professional adult operas, indicating that critics regarded it as a work to be taken entirely seriously. More recently, Nannestad draws comparisons between the storm passacaglia and those in Peter Grimes and The Turn of The Screw.253 This is part of his wider argument that Noye’s Fludde is an important work in Britten’s oeuvre and is artistically satisfying on many complex levels.

Polytonality is a necessary outcome of Noye’s Fludde as the bugles are fixed in B flat, handbells in E flat and elementary strings on tonal centres of A and D.254 Of particular importance is that certain polytonal passages (particularly near the end of the opera) are pentatonic, or nearly so. This strengthens the argument for Asiatic influences in Noye’s Fludde following Britten and Pears’ visit to East Asia in 1956.255 This, in turn, is part of White’s idea that Noye’s Fludde has a precursory relationship with the Church Parables, ( (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968)), in which the influence of gamelan and Noh Theatre are more clearly evident.256 However, the principal difficulty in relating Noye’s Fludde to these three later works is that Noye’s Fludde is, at its very heart, inclusive of all those in attendance. Whereas the Church Parables, which have the superficial resemblance of being sacred drama, are conceived as arcane rituals in which the assembly are strictly a passive audience. Nevertheless, elements of ritual, pentatonicism and, particularly, have been themes of interest to other authors. 257

Philip Rupprecht’s complex and discursive book258 draws on theories from linguistics and sociology as well as musical analysis to derive meaning from Britten’s utterances in certain of his vocal works.259 Alluding to discourse theory, Rupprecht suggests the introduction of the handbells act as a seal on the recently pronounced Covenant between God and humanity.260 In the finale of Noye’s Fludde, there are symbols for each of its polytextural, polytonal layers as part of the totality of creation. Among these are the idea that the handbells (centred on E flat) represent the rainbow and its promise. Meanwhile, humanity is reconciled with God, symbolised by G major, returning thanks through the Tallis Canon.261 Furthermore, it is critically important that everyone present at this ritual is actively involved, and every

253 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 112. 254 Philip Rupprecht, Britten's Musical Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 255 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 110. 256 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 233. 257 Rupprecht, Britten's Musical Language, 21. 258 Ibid. 259 Ibid., 1. 260 Ibid., 22, 34. 261 Ibid., 26–28.

40 individual voice adds uniquely to the texture of creation, due to the ‘inexorable’262 nature of canon. Perhaps this insight is a reason that this finale has been stated to ‘shake the strongest men to their foundations.’263

The use of churches as performance spaces can be seen to enhance sonorities and Britten used them effectively by employing canons with short periods, such as in Noye’s Fludde, St Nicolas and A Ceremony of Carols.264 Britten had a fondness for pitch material derived from pentatonic scales which could account for his frequent use of the major second and by extension the major ninth, which are derived from such pentatonicism.265 Arguably, Britten’s solution to the polytonality imposed on him by the utilised musical forces is an analogy for the poly-technicality of his players; Britten needs to write an opera that is multi-planed technically as well as tonally. These are not problems that are merely solved; what emerges are works of great unity and integrity, works that include both professional and child in an artistically valid way. As discussed in Chapter Five, the greatness of Noye’s Fludde is because of its poly-technicality, not in spite of it,266 and Christopher Fox also cites Evans’s appraisal of the great value of this work.267 Fox suggests that the two major works that owe a great deal to Noye’s Fludde are Terry Riley’s In C and Cardew’s The Great Learning. This is largely because they make great music from minimal materials and do not require very high levels of skill from their performers.268

Other poly-technical works of Britten do not receive such universal praise in the literature. For instance, the television program Let’s Make an Opera has aged poorly and Matthews sees the opera in question, The Little Sweep, as lacking relevance and vitality.269 Other writers have also been critical about aspects of The Little Sweep, claiming its plot and scenario run counter to Britten’s world-view and that its archaic, falsely nostalgic qualities are somewhat cloying. 270 271 Despite his generally negative view of the work, White makes two important musical observations about The Little Sweep. Firstly the simple but often overlooked point

262 Ibid., 28. 263 John Culshaw, quoted in Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 446. 264 Palmer, “The Ceremony of Innocence,” 79–80. 265 Ibid., 76. 266 Christopher Fox, “After the Fludde: Ambitious Music for All-Comers,” in Beyond Britten: The Composer and the Community, edited by Peter Wiegold, Peter, and Ghislaine Kenyon, (26–44), (Woodbridge: Brewer and Boydell, 2015), 37. 267 Ibid., 32. 268 Ibid., 38–43. 269 Matthews, Britten, 110. 270 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 168. 271 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 48.

41 that The Little Sweep has spoken dialogue rather than ,272 a unique characteristic among Britten’s operas. The other is that the initial audience cry ‘Sweep!’ in octaves is harmonised in a different way every time because enough members of the audience will be singing wrong notes to generate new a spontaneous harmony every time it is sung.273 This approach, a mixture of the approachable and the sophisticated, is the quality of The Little Sweep that receives particular commendation from some authors, such as Kennedy274 and Evans.275 On the surface, Britten’s musical sophistication is simplified so it can include children, however, it can be shown that he never patronises them.276 It is perhaps this genuineness of voice, this artistic integrity and sincerity that gives The Little Sweep the capacity to move its audience.277

As discussed earlier, a prevailing technique in some of the literature has been comparing passages in Britten’s poly-technical works with those from his purely professional ones. Chapter Three of the present study similarly selects professional pieces by Britten as control samples for the analytical part of this study. A number of these comparative studies are shorter articles or book chapters, ostensibly about one of the smaller poly-technical works, but making comparisons with Britten’s larger scale and more ambitious works. Christopher Mark’s analysis of Friday Afternoons is detailed and thoughtful, claiming Britten included a ‘wide range of textures and techniques’278 and argues that the work has a seriousness of musical purpose. Mark exemplifies this by comparing some of the harmonic techniques used in Friday Afternoons with those used in the early works for adults, such as (1936) and (1933). He even draws parallels with the Moonlight interlude in Peter Grimes.279 Sinclair’s analysis of Britten’s last work Welcome Ode280 points out many traits and techniques that are typical of Britten’s writing both for children and for adults. These include the use of modes, in particular the Lydian, quintal and quartal melodic and harmonic writing, and the use of ostinato and canon. Even Welcome Ode, involves G major, which, as mentioned above, was identified by Mellers as Britten’s key representing reconciliation between God and humanity. 281

272 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 171. 273 Ibid. 274 Kennedy, Britten, 181–182. 275 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 266–270. 276 Kennedy, Britten, 181. 277 Holst, Britten, 282. 278 Mark, Early Benjamin Britten, 92. 279 Ibid., 92–93. 280 Sinclair, “Celebration of Youth and Innocence,” 9–12. 281 Mellers, “Through Noye’s Fludde,” 157.

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Mitchell’s structural analysis of The Golden Vanity shows it to be a theme and variations on a very large scale,282 a form that enables Britten to give the work both unity and variety, and a ‘formal organisation not distinct … from those he uses elsewhere.’283 This analysis emphasises the idea that Britten never wrote ‘down’ to children. Children’s Crusade is also of structural complexity and Mitchell writes a brief analysis of its form.284 However, the piece’s technical requirements are limited in some cases, and this is particularly true of the percussion band, some of whom need almost no technical skill at all. The percussion writing is inspired because it evokes both the childish and the military,285 and is therefore marked by a highly inclusive and flexible approach.286 Towards the end of Children’s Crusade, Britten addresses the audience directly about the grim and harrowing events of Brecht’s narrative. Mitchell describes this moment as transcendent and ‘explicable only in terms of major art.’287 This is significant and necessarily partisan praise. Nevertheless, Mitchell was a highly respected musicologist whose opinion carries considerable weight.288 The tutti percussion adds drama to a work that is the setting of a dry, artless and unsentimental text by Brecht. Evans claims this is Britten’s most syllabic setting of text and offers valuable insight into the techniques Britten uses to chill Brecht’s frigid account of children suffering in war still further.289

2.8 ANALYTICAL METHODOLOGY

Chapter Three is principally a comparative analysis between Britten’s vocal music for musically-untrained children, musically expert children and professional adult singers. The descriptive analysis focuses on such elements as phrase length, vocal flexibility and textural elements of accompaniment. The extra-musical elements examined by some authors in their analytical writing, for example semiotics and discourse theory, 290 do not form a major part of the analysis in the present study. Necessarily, this review will focus on the analyses of the poly-technical repertoire, with particular emphasis on comparative observations between that repertoire and Britten’s music intended exclusively for professional performers.

282 Donald Mitchell, “Small Victims: The Golden Vanity and The Children’s Crusade,” in The Britten Companion, edited by Christopher Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 167–169. 283 Ibid., 167. 284 Ibid., 168. 285 Ibid., 169. 286 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 285. 287 Mitchell, “Small Victims,” 169. 288 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/02/donald-mitchell-obituary (retrieved 19 October 2018) 289 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 286. 290 Rupprecht, Britten's Musical Language, 1–19.

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The most detailed analytical processes used in Chapter Three are those that measure total range, mean pitch and the two elements of expectation-realization: pitch proximity and pitch reversal. Total range and mean pitch of any given vocal part were obtained using plug-in applications that are part of Sibelius 7 music notation software. They refer to the maximum range in pitch of any vocal part (measured in semitones from the highest to the lowest sung note and the mean value of all the notes sung in a vocal part respectively). Expectation- realization is a method of melodic analysis developed by Narmour and modified by Schellenberg.291 It is a culturally neutral way of determining the predictability of the next note in a melody based on the intervallic relationship between the previous two notes. Part of this system (Pitch Proximity) is used as an analytical tool in this study in the way that Humberstone used both it and Pitch Reversal in his doctoral thesis on the Cassations of Malcolm Williamson. 292

Humberstone’s thesis is, at first sight, similar in its scope to the present study. However, the nature of the repertoire studied differs in significant ways. Malcolm Williamson’s Cassations are short operatic works designed to be performed by ‘musically-untrained children,’293 whereas the repertoire at the core of the present study is not exclusively for musically- untrained children. The Cassations are marginally poly-technical in that they include musically-untrained children and professional adults in the same way that Friday Afternoons does as discussed in Chapter One.

Humberstone’s analysis of Williamson’s Cassations is both observational and quantitative294 and it arrives at clear conclusions about the technical limitations Williamson imposed on himself when composing these works.295 He also investigates the concept of a composer’s voice and the less definable ways in which a great composer does not compromise artistically when writing for children.296 This elusive but critically important quality is at the centre of the present study of Britten’s poly-technical works.

Of great value in Humberstone’s thesis is his analytical methodology, which draws on the work of Narmour and Schellenberg to determine the ease with which a melody may be learned and performed by a singer. Two essential numerical values for each sung phrase are calculated: pitch proximity and pitch reversal. The former is relatively straightforward,

291 Schellenberg, “Simplifying the Implication-Realization Model of Melodic Expectancy,” 309. 292 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 39. 293 Ibid., 9. 294 Ibid., 31. 295 Ibid., 116–125. 296 Ibid., 30.

44 indicating the mean interval between sung pitches. This relatively crude but statistically accurate instrument shows that lower numbers are technically easier to sing because smaller intervals are more expected than large ones, and it is easier still to sing the same pitch more than once in succession. Pitch Reversal is used to analyse passages of melodies containing leaps bigger than a tritone to ascertain whether their following intervals conform to expectancy (to counteract an unexpected leap), such as the melodic trope of registral return or ‘gap fill’.297 As Humberstone explains:

By summarising the pitch content of each melody in terms of how easy or difficult it may be for cognitive processing by the performers of each work according to Schellenberg’s measure, one melody can be compared with another. Those pieces that are closer to the psychological processing rules are therefore considered more suitable for children.298

Humberstone’s work on these methodologies is of great value because he takes a large body of highly complex verbal, numerical and notational information and condenses it into usable analytical instruments that are essential to a study like the present one.

Chapter Four analyses Britten’s instrumental writing for musically-untrained children. Its detailed examination of Britten’s string writing in Noye’s Fludde extends and amplifies the work done in this area by Nannestad.299 It measures the frequency of notes played in low left hand position, the frequency of open strings and the frequency of double-stops. These measures of difficulty are consistent with string pedagogy that was contemporary to Britten.300

2.9 CONCLUSION

Bridcut’s claim that Britten’s work with children has received ‘surprisingly little attention’301 seems exaggerated in the light of the substantial body of literature reviewed in this chapter. Nevertheless, when considered as a proportion of the works on Britten; biographies, criticism and analysis of his operas, literature about his sexuality, spirituality, personal relationships,

297 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 41. 298 Humberstone, “Cassations” 34–35. 299 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 20. 300 Eta Cohen, The First-Year Violin Method (London: W. Paxton, 1941), 24. 301 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, xi.

45 and his place in society, the amount of literature concerning Britten’s works for children seems small when compared to the importance the composer himself placed on these works.

The majority of the critics who do examine the poly-technical works closely reach the conclusion that they are of great importance in his output and some go on to provide reasons from the scores themselves to support this view. However, this detailed critical approach is comparatively rare and the present study aims to reduce that shortfall. The literature that exists, along with Britten’s public discourse and, above all, the scores of these works form the foundations for the arguments presented here on the value of these works in Britten’s compositional output.

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3. POLY-TECHNICALITY IN BRITTEN’S VOCAL WRITING

The purpose of this Chapter is to establish the extent to which Britten modified the technical difficulty of his vocal writing to suit the capacity of the singers he had in mind. This chapter analyses the poly-technical repertoire, and other Britten works as representative control pieces with which the poly-technical works can be compared in order to address this question and its derivatives. Specifically, can the vocal writing in the poly-technical works be shown to be truly poly-technical, in that the parts for musically expert and musically-untrained singers have different technical demands? Furthermore, did Britten make different vocal demands of his expert and untrained child singers, and if so, how? Similarly, are his solo parts harder to sing than his chorus parts?

In this chapter, the repertoire choice and analytical methodology for this study are explained, and a digest of the results is presented for the three criteria, with each poly-technical and control work subjected to detailed analysis. These results and their implications are then discussed. Following this, there is then detailed analysis and discussion of other vocal difficulty criteria from representative passages from Britten’s compositions.

3.1 TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY OF VOCAL MUSIC – REPRESENTATIVE EXCERPTS

If three representative samples from the works analysed are examined, respectively for professional adult soloist, musically expert child soloist and musically-untrained child soloist (shown as Figures 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 respectively), differences in vocal difficulty become readily apparent.

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Figure 3.1: Britten, Albert Herring, pp. 243-244

The excerpt from Albert Herring (Figure 3.1) is an instance of music that is difficult to sing, and reflects Britten’s expectations of adult soloists in his operas.302 It has a wide range and demands a top B (B5), while its pitch proximity is large because of the ascending sevenths. The melisma and staccato notes require superior vocal control. The accompaniment, while helping orient the singer in tonality, offers no direct support and the rapid tempo leaves little time to think and recover from any potential mishap.

302 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 147.

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Figure 3.2: Britten, Missa Brevis, pp. 10-11

In this extract from Missa Brevis (Figure 3.2) Britten is shown writing for a musically expert boy, specifically a chorister of Westminster Cathedral. There are technical challenges in this excerpt, for instance large intervals and a long phrase. Britten offers more support in the accompaniment than in Figure 3.1 by signalling the opening phrase in the organ, but the top notes of the subsequent accompaniment then clash with the singer’s notes. The music is more repetitive and, in the penultimate bar, employs sequence; although the detailed articulation markings call for a considerable degree of vocal flexibility. The singer is given no indication of dynamics, which arguably makes performance easier, while the regularity in the bass part makes the beat very easy to follow.

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Figure 3.3: Britten, The Little Sweep, pp. 51-52

In Figure 3.3 from The Little Sweep, the measures Britten took to support this girl’s voice are immediately apparent. The vocal line is doubled by the violins, and the pitch of her first note is anticipated by both of these instruments. The vocal line also has fewer technical demands in terms of large intervals, the modality and tonal centre of the excerpt are very clear, the vocal line is entirely syllabic, and the range is just one octave. Sophie’s total range for the entire opera when singing solo is a major ninth, a little smaller than the treble solo in Missa Brevis. By comparison, Miss Wordsworth’s total range in Albert Herring (to be sung by a professional adult) is two octaves and a major second.

The excerpts given at Figures 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 are illustrative of general trends in the technical demands Britten placed on singers of differing abilities. The full analysis of range, average pitch and pitch proximity in the following discussion shows that these particular excerpts are entirely representative of Britten’s writing for these categories of vocalists.

3.2 TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY OF VOCAL MUSIC – REPERTOIRE AND METHODOLOGY

For the purposes of this study, the vocal parts from fourteen of Britten’s works have been placed into seven different categories outlined in Table 3.1, so that the mean values for three

50 pitch-based criteria can be compared. These criteria are the same ones used by Humberstone in his study of the Cassations of Malcolm Williamson and can be used to give an indication of the relative difficulty of vocal music to learn, memorise and sing.303 These criteria are total range, mean pitch, and pitch proximity and their values will be compared and discussed in the music Britten composed for seven different sorts of singers (adult solo, adult chorus, musically expert child solo, musically expert child chorus, musically-untrained child solo, musically-untrained child chorus, audience). The vocal parts for these works were entered into Sibelius 7 music notation software and then analytical plug-in programs were applied to them. Although only pitch and duration were entered (parameters like dynamics, tempo and text were not), more than 116,000 separate inputs were made and analysed for these compositions. Table 3.1 shows which vocal categories appear in which works, which are arranged chronologically, with non poly-technical works listed in italics.

303 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 34–35.

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Table 3.1: Works with Vocal Parts Analysed in Detail

Adult Adult Musically Musically Musically- Musically- Audience solo chorus expert expert untrained untrained child solo child child solo child chorus chorus

A Boy Was Born P (trebles only) (1933)

Friday Afternoons P (1935)

A Ceremony P P of Carols (1942)

Peter Grimes P P (1945)

Albert Herring P P P P (1947)

St Nicolas (1947) P P P P

The Little Sweep P P P P (1948)

Noye’s Fludde P P P P (1958)

Missa Brevis P P (1959)

War Requiem P (trebles only) (1961)

Psalm 150 (1962) P

The Golden Vanity P P (1966)

Children’s Crusade P P (1968)

Welcome Ode (1976) P

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The three elements analysed in this fully methodical way are all related to pitch -- mean pitch, tessitura and pitch proximity.304 No such study has previously been undertaken on works by Britten. In his study of the Cassations of Malcolm Williamson, Humberstone also used a fourth metric derived from the work of Schellenberg and Narmour, pitch reversal, which is based on the frequency of the third note in a group being pitched between the preceding two notes.305 However, this only gives meaningful data in cases where the mean pitch proximity has a relatively high value (greater than three semitones). It therefore does not apply to any of the music analysed in the present study as none of the works analysed has a mean pitch proximity which exceeds this figure.306 Another significant difference is that Humberstone did not use works for adult professionals as a complete control set of data, whereas the present study analyses substantial works by Britten for professional adult singers for comparative purposes. These three criteria are not a complete indication of the relative difficulty of a vocal line. In addition, other factors are necessarily taken into account; these include musical texture, phrase length, and melodic support from instrumental accompaniment. Representative passages from the poly-technical and the control works are subject to analysis for these parameters; the criteria for this selection as such are given below. Some observations were made about durational matters like rhythm, but no systematic analysis was made because there exists no reliable instrument for measuring the relative difficulty of sung rhythm. Furthermore, prior research indicates that children experience little difficulty learning music with what may appear to be complex rhythms.307

The simplest of the three comprehensively applied criteria are mean pitch and total range. The hypothesis is straightforward: it is easier to sing a piece of music that has a narrow range of pitch. Musically expert trebles will sing, on average, higher notes than untrained children.308 Additionally, treble soloists could be expected, prima facie, to have a larger tessitura and to sing a higher average pitch than a chorus, although the results show the last idea to be false for reasons that are explored later in this chapter.

Pitch proximity is an analytical criterion introduced by Narmour and refined by Schellenbergwhich measures the average interval between pitches in a phrase.309

304 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 30–35. 305 Ibid., 34–35. 306 Ibid., 45. 307 Kathryn Marsh and Susan Young, “Musical Play,” in The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development, edited by Gary McPherson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 296–297. 308 Graham F. Welch, “Singing and Vocal Development,” in The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development, edited by Gary McPherson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 325. 309 Schellenberg, “Simplifying the Implication-Realization Model,” 308–311.

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Humberstone’s premise in using this analytical tool was that, since Narmour showed that ‘flatter’ melodic lines conform more to expectancy, the larger the pitch proximity value, the more difficult the part is to learn, memorise and sing.310 Therefore, taken as part of an overall assessment of technical difficulty, the measure can be an indicator of a vocal part’s potential ease of learning and performance.

Representative passages from the repertoire are also analysed in this study for phrase length. The hypothesis is that trained professional singers have greater control over their expenditure of breath and can therefore sing longer phrases more easily. This has been demonstrated to be true among children of the same age311 and the effect is even more pronounced in professional adult singers whose lungs and diaphragm are larger.312 Ming-Lun Lee’s study of Britten’s recordings of his own works suggest that he kept to his tempo instructions with considerable accuracy.313 As such, the phrases in question are measured in time based on the metronome markings given in Britten’s scores.

Textural analysis can also give some indication of the relative technical difficulty of sung phrases. For example, unison singing may be taken to be easier than canonic singing, which in turn is easier than block harmony singing, which is easier than singing in a free contrapuntal texture. Furthermore, instrumental support to vocal lines by doubling them at unison or octave eases the technical difficulty of singing them, as does the textural layering of accompaniment as described by Humberstone.314

As can be seen from Table 3.1 above, the works chosen for analysis were the six poly- technical pieces (plus the marginally-poly-technical Friday Afternoons), five works for musically expert children,315 (in the case of A Boy Was Born and War Requiem, only the treble lines were analysed) and two wholly professional operas for control comparison, (one of which, Albert Herring, contains parts for musically expert children).

3.2.1 METHODOLOGY FOR COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS

310 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 30–36. 311 Kenneth H. Phillips, “The Effects of Group Breath-Control Training on the Singing Ability of Elementary Students,” Journal of Research in Music Education 33, no. 3 (1985): 179. 312 Nicolas A. Barone, “Effects of Training and Lung Volume Levels on Voice Onset Control and Cortical Activation in Singers” (PhD Diss., James Madison University, 2015), 29, http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss201019/29. 313 Ming-Lun Lee, “Britten Conducting Britten: A Study of the Recordings Produced with John Culshaw” (PhD Diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 2013), 85–87. 314 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 40. 315 In the case of A Boy Was Born and War Requiem, only the treble lines were analysed.

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After the vocal lines were input into Sibelius software, each vocal line was analysed using the ‘Find Range’ plug-in. This application analyses tessitura, mean pitch and lists the three most frequently occurring pitches, although the latter data were disregarded for this study. Each vocal line was also analysed using a further two plug-in applications developed by Roman Molino Dunn to the specifications of James Humberstone.316 These applications calculate values according to Schellenberg’s principles of Pitch Proximity and for Pitch Reversal, although the latter was disregarded as explained earlier in this Chapter.

The raw data were collated on a spreadsheet for each individual or chorus vocal line in the fourteen works analysed. It was then sorted into the seven singer-type categories as described in Table 3.1. Mean values for most of the three criteria in the seven categories were then calculated. An exception was made in the matter of calculating mean pitch for solo adults, as the distinction of voice-types (alto, bass, etc,) would make this process meaningless. However, in the case of adult chorus, the mean pitch of the sopranos and was calculated, as their tessitura is more readily comparable than that of lower parts. For example, in St Nicolas and Noye’s Fludde, the chorus sing in unison far more than they do in harmony or imitation (see Table 3.7).

3.3 FINDINGS

The findings listed in Table 3.2 below are the mean values for range, mean pitch and pitch proximity for the seven categories of voice described above. They are presented in summary in Table 3.2 and discussed later in this chapter. In the case of mean pitch, the plus (+) signs indicates a mean pitch less than quarter of a tone higher than note given, and minus (-) indicates a mean pitch less than quarter of a tone lower. The adult values are for soprano and tenor only.

316 Humberstone, “Cassations,” 39.

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Table 3.2: Results Summary of Pitch Analysis of Vocal Music

Mean range Mean pitch Mean pitch (Semitones) proximity (Semitones) Adult Chorus 25.25 G#4 1.78 Adult Solo 22.77 B+ 2.00 Musically expert 20.81 A4- 1.88 child chorus Musically expert 19.72 A#4- 2.09 child solo Musically-untrained 17.25 A4+ 1.87 child chorus Musically-untrained 20.21 A4+ 1.81 child solo Audience 14.42 G#4- 2.11

3.4 DISCUSSION

The data presented in Table 3.2 requires considerable qualification and discussion. The results show a very general trend for Britten to write more difficult vocal lines for musically expert singers as opposed to the untrained streams with very little differentiation between adults and musically expert children. There is also a tendency for chorus writing appearing to be more demanding than solo writing for the corresponding group by some criteria. However, these conclusions are based on the unqualified mean data and there are more meaningful conclusions to be derived from further detailed examination.

3.4.1 RANGE

The mean range is the result that most closely conforms to expectations. The clear hierarchy of range puts professional adults at the top, followed by expert children, then musically- untrained children, and audience singing at the bottom. What defies expectation is that the range for professional parts in the chorus is significantly larger than the range for soloists. However, this can be explained by the fact that in passages where the chorus sings in unison, sections of it are expected to sing out of their normal range317 (for example in some choruses of Peter Grimes).

317 Norman Del Mar, Anatomy of the Orchestra, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 501.

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Figure 3.4: Britten, Peter Grimes, p. 194

Figure 3.5: Britten, Peter Grimes, p. 171

In Figure 3.4, the sopranos and tenors are singing in a lower register than they would normally be expected to,318 but Britten is assuming that any weakness in their sound in this

318 Ibid., 500.

57 register would be compensated by the support from the lower voices. In Figure 3.5, the same may be said for the lower voices moving out of their accustomed range. In both cases, the move out of normal range is not by a large interval, but in combination the range of these voices is increased significantly.

The range of audience singing is significantly smaller than any of the other categories. For the most part, this is because in Noye’s Fludde and St Nicolas the congregation is only expected to sing familiar hymns with ranges that are traditionally quite limited (for example, Tallis’ Canon as used in Noye’s Fludde has a total range of only eight semitones). In these two works, the audience ranges are fourteen and twelve semitones respectively. Britten’s audience songs in The Little Sweep are somewhat more ambitious, with a mean range of 17.25 semitones.

It is also worth noting that some of Britten’s solo parts were written with particular singers in mind, whose strengths and weaknesses he knew very well, none more so than Peter Pears. Pears was the soloist for three of the roles analysed in this study: Albert Herring (23 semitones), Peter Grimes (23 semitones) and St Nicolas (19 semitones). These ranges are significantly smaller than many of the other solo parts analysed, such as Lady Billows (29 semitones), Boles (28 semitones), and Mrs Herring (28 semitones). Although Pears was capable of bravura vocal virtuosity, for example in the Hymn from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Britten knew Pears’ greatest strength as a singer was more artistic than technical and wrote for him accordingly.319

3.4.2 MEAN PITCH

Of all the quantitative data sets obtained, mean pitch shows the smallest degree of significant difference, as all the groups had a mean pitch within a semitone of A4. Individual roles did show some degree of significant difference, for example in Albert Herring coloratura soprano Miss Wordsworth had a mean pitch of C5 and bass Superintendent E3. However, of the 122 parts analysed, seventy-two had a mean pitch between G flat and A, representing 59% in this narrow band. It is reasonable to conclude that Britten wrote parts that were, on average, not significantly higher in pitch for his professional singers.

319 Martin Bernheimer review in Los Angeles Times quoted in Christopher Headington, Peter Pears: a biography. (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), 271-272.

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3.4.3 PITCH PROXIMITY

These results indicate clearly that Britten tended to write melodies featuring larger intervals for more technically accomplished singers. However, there are some slightly unexpected results. For example, a slightly larger degree of pitch proximity (2.09) is found in parts for musically expert children, with professional adults having an average pitch proximity of 2.00. One factor that has had an effect on these numbers is that in Britten’s adult operatic roles there tends to be a lot more recitative than in his music for children. If the recitative features long sequences sung on the same pitch (for example, in a plot-heavy passage in Albert Herring, Florence sings the same note 22 times consecutively)320 the average pitch proximity is lowered as a result.

The pitch proximity of the audience singing seems anomalous at first glance, being higher even than the average for a professional soloist. However, it must be borne in mind that this figure comes from a relatively small data set (four original songs and five hymns). Furthermore, its high value can largely be attributed to the hymn God Moves in a Mysterious Way, which Britten uses in St Nicolas. Because this melody is built on large triadic intervals, its pitch proximity is 3.85. Its three verses comprise half of what the congregation sing in St Nicolas, thus raising the congregations overall pitch proximity for this work to 2.88, compared to 1.50 for Noye’s Fludde.

3.4.4 PITCH REVERSAL

The software plug-in developed for Humberstone generates data for pitch reversal as well as pitch proximity. As discussed earlier in the chapter, data for pitch reversal (a measure of the tendency of a melody to reverse in pitch direction after a large interval, which Narmour showed to be more expected) only becomes meaningful in cases where pitch proximity results are high (>3). This applies to none of the music analysed in this study so the pitch reversal results, which show no discernable pattern. For these reasons, data which were obtained regarding pitch reversal cannot form a meaningful part of this analysis.

320 Benjamin Britten, Albert Herring (opera), libretto by Eric Crozier (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1943), 63.

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3.4.5 EXPERT AND MUSICALLY-UNTRAINED MEAN PITCH VALUES

For the purposes of this discussion, the voices for which Britten wrote have been divided into seven categories. However, some of these data indicate that Britten’s chorus parts are, by certain parameters, as challenging as his solo parts and by the same parameters, that his music for expert children is as demanding as that written for professional adults. It is a matter of record that Britten worked his musically expert children very hard indeed and had similar expectations of them as he did the adult singers with whom he worked.321

If the singers are re-categorised as either expert or musically-untrained, taking no account of whether they are soloists or chorus, adults or children, the figures are very revealing, as shown in Table 3.3.

Table 3.3: Average Pitch Data for Expert and Musically-Untrained Singers

All Expert All Musically-Untrained Singers Singers Average Pitch A4 A4 Range 22.14 17.13 Pitch 2.01 1.89 proximity

The range and pitch proximity numbers are significantly different (particularly the range with an octave and a minor seventh being the value for the expert singer compared to an octave and a major third for the musically-untrained singers), indicating the intuitively obvious conclusion that Britten’s music for professionals is more demanding to sing. Unsurprisingly, there is no difference in the mean pitch as this was also the case when the data were divided into seven groups.

3.4.6 OTHER FACTORS AFFECTING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY – ANALYSIS OF FURTHER REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGES

If individual songs are compared, striking differences are observed in the level of technical demands on the voice. Table 3.4 compares well-known passages for all of the categories of voice examined, except audience and adult chorus.

321 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 206–210.

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Table 3.4 Analysis of Typical Examples from the Repertoire

‘In Dreams ‘O Bosun, O ‘Welcom ‘Father, I am ‘Marching I’ve Built’ Captain’ (The Yole’ (A alreadye bowne’ Song’ (The (Peter Golden Cermony of (Noye’s Little Grimes)322 Vanity)323 Carols)324 Fludde)325 Sweep)326 Professional Expert Child Expert Child Untrained Child Untrained Adult Solo Solo Chorus (first Solo Child trebles only) Chorus327 Range 21 14 17 12 14 Average Pitch C#4 A4 C#5 A4 Ab4 Pitch 2.68 1.66 2.67 2.41 1.74 proximity

Excerpts from three of these examples are given below (Figures 3.6, 3.9 and 3.10).

322 Britten, Peter Grimes, 275–277. 323 Benjamin Britten, The Golden Vanity (vaudeville) (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1967), 32–33. 324 Benjamin Britten, A Ceremony of Carols, (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1943), 3–10. 325 Britten Noye’s Fludde, 16–17. 326 Britten, The Little Sweep, 30–31. 327 Although The Little Sweep does not have a chorus in the formal sense, this song is sung by all seven children in unison, so it is chorus writing in the practical sense.

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Figure 3.6: Britten, Peter Grimes, pp. 275-6

e = 66 5 5 # œ œ ## 3 Œ‰œ œ œ#œ œ œ œ#œ œ ™ œ 4 &‹ 4 J œ œ œ 4 I've seen in stars the life that we might vlns (muted) œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ # # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ # 3 œ #œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ #œœ œ œ œ nœ #œ 4 & 4 œ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ 4 (harp) pp™ dolciss. e legato ™ {?# #3 ˙ ˙ 4 # 4 4

cresc. p 5 5 5 5 # ™ > nœ ## 4 œ œ œ œ#œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3 nœ œ œ œnœ œ œ œ œ &‹ 4 œ 4 œ share seen in stars the life we'd share fruit in the œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ nœ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ # # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ & # 4 œ#œœœ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ 3 nœ œ nœ nœ œ nœ œ œ œ 4 œ#œ œ œ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ 4 œ ?# #4 œ ˙ œ 3 ™ { # 4 4 ˙

5 5 # nœ œ ## œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ j &‹ œ œ œ œ gar- den chil- dren by the shore œ œ j œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ # # œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ & # œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ ‰ Jœ {?### œ ˙ œ J

The challenges for any tenor taking on the role of Peter Grimes are well known.328 It is a role that requires very strong acting skills and a deep understanding of the complexities of the psychological undercurrents in the drama and the music. There are also significant passages that require vocal prowess of the highest degree, including the excerpt shown in Figure 3.6. There are a number of factors other than those enumerated in Table 3.4 that make this passage technically challenging. For example, the phrase lengths and required breath control are

328 Erwin Stein, “Opera and ‘Peter Grimes’,” Tempo 12 (1945): 222.

62 extremely demanding. The first phrase (up to the word ‘share’) takes nearly eleven seconds at Britten’s tempo, has a range of fourteen semitones and contains four melismas. The melismatic writing throughout this passage also makes it challenging, particularly given the complex rhythms involved and the cross-rhythms created by the accompaniment. Furthermore, the accompaniment provides little in the way of direct pitch support to the vocal line. The tonic, then subdominant pedal points in the harp, provides some foundation for the voice but there is no doubling of the vocal line in the orchestral music. These factors add to the difficulty of this passage which, as Table 3.4 shows, has high values for difficulty in range, pitch proximity and average pitch.

3.4.7 PHRASE LENGTH AND OTHER TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The three values above (mean pitch, range, and pitch proximity) do not represent the entire extent of the analysis carried out on the relevant repertoire. Below is a consideration of other technical factors that Britten appears to have taken into consideration when differentiating his music for different vocal abilities. Phrase length is, in many instances, a clear indication of Britten’s expectations of his singers, as developing the breath control to be able to sing long phrases is one of the rudiments of a singer’s technique.329 The meaningful numerical data for phrase length is not so much the average phrase length, but the maximum phrase length, and the number of times such long phrases occur. Arguably, Britten’s simplest music is for the children in Noye’s Fludde, whose ostinati (Figure 3.12) have phrases lasting one and three seconds. The children are required to join with the company and congregation in Tallis’ Cannon which, at Britten’s given tempo of 48 beats per minute, has phrases nine seconds long. However, in practice, if a child breathes in the middle of one of these phrases, it would be unnoticeable, as the break will be absorbed in the overall texture.

Extremely short phrases are perhaps the most immediately noticeable feature of Psalm 150. The first phrase (Figure 3.7) sung by the choir may appear to be five bars (and five seconds at the given tempo) long, but each note is clipped so as to give the appearance of being an entire phrase in itself. Similarly, when Britten goes through the list of instruments in psalmist calls on to praise God, the phrases are never more than two seconds long330 and the lively canon near the end of the phrase has characteristically short phrases and a short period.331

329 Richard Miller, Solutions for Singers: Tools for Performers and Teachers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1–3, 21–26. 330 Benjamin Britten, Psalm 150 (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1963), 11–16. 331 Ibid., 18.

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Figure 3.7: Britten, Psalm 150, pp. 6-7

Britten expected a much greater degree of breath control in his professional children’s choruses. For example, in the finale of the War Requiem, the treble choir’s phrases are consecutively 12.5, 13.5, 10, 7, 10, 13, 6, 6, and 5 seconds long (average 9.22 seconds). This compounds the difficulty that these children experience in singing as part of an extremely complex texture involving three adult soloists, choir and two orchestras; although Britten does use an organ or harmonium for the express purpose of supporting their sound.332

Similar demands may be observed in the Missa Brevis, where similar practical means of ensuring the support for the singers are employed. In the , the organ supports the three- part boys’ choir, particularly at points of entry. There are six phrases in this movement, alternating between the canonic and the homophonic. Each homophonic phrase begins with a triad - a more challenging entry than Britten would typically write for a musically-untrained children’s chorus, but that triad is accompanied at unison by the organ. The phrase lengths are long, with up to 14 seconds for the final phrase (Figure 3.8) and contain quite detailed changes of dynamics. These therefore require a greater degree of breath control and are far more characteristic of Britten’s writing for expert children.

332 Benjamin Britten, War Requiem (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1964), 229–238.

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Figure 3.8: Britten, Missa Brevis, p. 2

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Figure 3.9: Britten, A Ceremony of Carols, p. 7

Accomplished breath control is also required to sing the excerpt from A Ceremony of Carols illustrated in Figure 3.9. This example of Britten writing for an expert children’s choir shows music that is technically less demanding than the solo adult example from Peter Grimes

66 above, in that the phrases are shorter (the longest phrase shown here being 3.5 seconds – although the penultimate phrase in this movement lasts for 5 seconds).333 Nevertheless, a certain degree of vocal flexibility is required for the rapid, but short, melismas.334

The vocal entries are supported by accompaniment in the harp with the opening note of each being clearly signalled. Further, harmony and textural variety is achieved by the imitative entry of the voice parts, rather than having the lower voices trying to find harmony lines in a homophonic texture. Not only do young singers find canons and rounds easier to execute than block harmonies,335 they also enjoy singing canons.336 This suggests the reasoning for the ubiquity of this sort of writing in Britten’s work for children. When a block chord does occur in the voices (in the final bar), the lower parts have very small intervals to move in order to make this chord.

333 Britten, A Ceremony of Carols, 10. 334 Chester L. Alwes, “Mastering Melismas,” Choral Journal 36, no. 1 (1995), 37. 335 Szonyi has a concise precis of how canon is used in the Kodály method of music education. See Erzsebet Szonyi, “A Summary of the Kodály Method,” Australian Journal of Music Education 9 (1971): 23. 336 Elliott, Benjamin Britten: The Spiritual Dimension, 90.

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Figure 3.10: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 16-17

The results in Table 3.2 indicate that Britten wrote less demanding vocal lines for untrained soloists than he did for untrained choruses, at least by certain measures. It is possible he realised there was ‘safety in numbers’ and could therefore afford to be more technically challenging when writing for more than one untrained child. By way of contrast, Figure 3.10 representing Noye’s Fludde is typical of Britten’s solo writing for untrained children to sing,

68 and he has gone to great lengths to ensure that the child playing the role of Sem will have the smallest possible number of technical hurdles to overcome. The writing is entirely syllabic and the phrases very short (never more than 3.5 seconds if we take the tempo to be a conservative 120 beats per minute, which is slower than in the original recording which Britten supervised).338 The beat is very steady and clearly maintained by the first piano, although it is interesting to note the considerable use of syncopation both in the vocal line and other elements of the accompaniment. Britten seems to have demonstrated an understanding of what research later demonstrated:339 that children do not find syncopated rhythms difficult to perform. The steady beat and moderate tempo here are likely to be factors that make this music easier to sing.

Sem’s solo here is firmly rooted in A major – diatonic stability being an element Britten used to ensure ease of singing, with the parallel triads in the accompaniment supporting the shape of his vocal line and adding a pleasingly naïve and archaic sound to the texture. The clearest support of all, however, is the literal doubling of the vocal line by the solo viola. This is marked pianissimo, but a practical musician could easily make this louder in rehearsal or performance if the young singer was struggling to find pitch in this passage. This type of instrumental support occurs throughout works like Noye’s Fludde, when children are singing solos,340 and in works such as Friday Afternoons.341 However, this level of instrumental support of a vocal line in Britten’s output is much less commonplace in works that are not poly-technical, as seen in Figures 3.6 and 3.8.

Significantly, Britten goes to considerable lengths in Figure 3.10 to help Sem make his first entry reliably. There are two transitional bars that establish tonality, tempo and metre, and signal Sem’s initial E very clearly. These support mechanisms can be absent entirely when Britten writes for professional adults. For example, while the baritone soloist in the War Requiem in the passage ‘Great Guns Towering’342 also has an entry on E, he is given no introductory passage at all other than a rapid arpeggio on the . This is an instrument whose pitch is often difficult to discern, particularly accompanied in this instance by fast tempi and dynamics changes.343 Although the baritone’s initial E is supported by viola and , the next pitch (a minor seventh higher), has no instrumental support. The most

338 Benjamin Britten, Noye's Fludde, with English Opera Group Orchestra, conducted by Norman del Mar, Argo ZK1, 1976, 33⅓ rpm. 339 Marsh and Young. “Musical Play,” 296–297. 340 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 16–24. 341 Benjamin Britten, Friday Afternoons, (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1936), 12, 24, 30. 342 Britten, War Requiem, 68. 343 James Blades, Percussion Instruments and Their History, (Westport: Bold Strummer, 1992), 355.

69 difficult aspect of this entry is that the preceding music ends on a dissonant chord with an E flat as its tonal centre, with the baritone singing the E flat a major seventh higher than the subsequent entry.

In a similar way, Figure 3.11 shows that Britten did not feel the need to support the vocal line for musically expert child soloists, although there are more points of aural reference here than there are in the Peter Grimes example (Figure 3.6). This comparative level of vocal support is very similar to that in Figures 3.8 and 3.9. It seems Britten understood how much support certain types of singers required to a very fine degree.

Figure 3.11: Britten, The Golden Vanity, p. 18

Another example of Britten’s solo writing for a musically-untrained child soloist is Juliet’s aria ‘Soon the Coach Will Carry You Away’ from The Little Sweep.344 Juliet is the oldest child in the opera, has the widest range and highest pitch proximity, as well as more notes to sing than any other child. By itself, this aria’s figures for these three factors are similar to Juliet’s overall data. This aria consists of thirteen phrases of between five and nine seconds long, with a mean length of 6.46 seconds – shorter than the examples for musically expert children that have been discussed in this chapter. There is little detail demanded in dynamics and expressive techniques, with the majority of phrases being marked simple p or f. Significantly, the first note of every single phrase is given to the singer both before and as she starts. In nine cases, these cues are woven into the obligato parts for solo violin and cello, the most easily discernable tone colour available.

344 Britten, The Little Sweep, 83–85.

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These kinds of techniques may also be found in Children’s Crusade. Despite its dissonance and deeply troubling subject matter, Britten makes sure his soloists are supported and the vocal parts are not unreasonably demanding. In a complex and dissonant texture surrounding his first solo, The Leader (alto) has every one of his four phrases signalled and supported either by the organ or the piano. Apart from the final phrase, the dynamics are loud throughout and no phrase lasts for more than three seconds.345 Short, syllabic phrases are very much a feature of this work, emphasising as they do the bleak nature of Brecht’s text.346 It is worth remarking, however, that Britten seems to have come to the conclusion that syllabic music is easier to sing than melismatic music,347 as long melismas are a feature of Britten’s writing for adults348 and musically expert children,349 and not of his writing for musically- untrained children.

3.4.8 DISCUSSION AND DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE CORE POLY-TECHNICAL REPERTOIRE

‘Core repertoire’ in this instance refers to St Nicolas, The Little Sweep and Noye’s Fludde, which were identified in Chapter One as the most intensely poly-technical works in Britten’s output. When taken alone, these data reveal a good deal about how Britten modified his vocal compositional style to accommodate the technical capacities of various voice types. In the following argument, the overall analytical findings will be presented first, followed by a detailed discussion connecting them with musical examples. The same structure will be followed for the analysis of texture, which features later in the chapter.

If the data for range and pitch proximity from the above three works at the core of Britten’s poly-technical repertoire are examined, the results are particularly revealing about Britten’s thinking when writing for experts and the musically-untrained in the same work.

345 Benjamin Britten, Children’s Crusade (ballad), libretto by Bertolt Brecht (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1970), 17–19. 346 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 286. 347 Alwes, “Mastering Melismas,” 37. 348 Britten, Albert Herring, 51. 349 Britten, A Ceremony of Carols, 15.

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Table 3.5: Range in Core Poly-technical Repertoire

St Nicolas The Little Noye’s Sweep Fludde Adult 19.00 22.75 22.00 Musically- n/a 20 20.42 untrained children solo Musically- 19.75 n/a350 9 untrained children Chorus

Table 3.6: Pitch Proximity in Core Poly-technical Repertoire

St Nicolas The Little Noye’s Sweep Fludde Adult 2.00 1.96 2.02 Musically- n/a 1.93 1.70 untrained children solo Musically- 1.75 n/a 1.63 untrained children Chorus

Figure 3.12: Animals’ Ostinato Patterns in Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp.60, 158

The limited range for the children’s chorus in Noye’s Fludde (only a minor sixth) results from the two ostinato phrases given in Figure 3.12 and taking a part in Tallis’ Canon at the end of the work. It is indicative of a desire on Britten’s part to involve as many children as possible as the animals in the ark, and to have musical material of the very simplest kind that even the youngest of them could learn quickly.

350 The data for the passages when the children in The Little Sweep sing together and are therefore a de facto chorus (see Chapter One) have not been analysed separately.

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The data for range in St Nicolas are somewhat misleading. There is only one adult part in this cantata, that of Nicolas himself, and it was written for Peter Pears. As noted earlier, compared to other adult operatic roles, Britten’s writing for Pears had a small range - two octaves in Albert Herring, and slightly less in Peter Grimes. Nevertheless these tenor parts are very challenging roles as shown in Figure 3.13 from St Nicolas.

Figure 3.13: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 19

Pitch proximity in these three works conforms exactly to expectations. In each case, the adults have the highest values, followed by solo children, followed by the children’s chorus. However, the data that most closely conform to the predicted norms are those from Noye’s Fludde. As this was the last piece in the core repertoire to be composed, it may be that Britten made technical refinements as he learned from what he had written in St Nicolas and The Little Sweep. Furthermore, of these three works, Noye’s Fludde has parts for children of even less training and experience than in the other two pieces, as shown in Chapter One. St Nicolas requires at least some rudimentary choral expertise from its singers, while the children’s parts in The Little Sweep, while not technically challenging, suggest some experience in solo singing. These factors and the data that compliment them lend further weight to the argument that the vocal writing in Noye’s Fludde forms an important part of the foundation work in the poly-technical opera genre.351

351 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 174.

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3.4.9 ANALYSIS OF TEXTURE IN THE CORE REPERTOIRE

An analysis was conducted of the musical texture of Britten’s writing for the non- professional children’s choruses in the three works at the core of his poly-technical repertoire. This analysis looked for techniques that can be employed to reduce the technical demands on singers. Specifically, these were unison singing, singing ostinato, singing in canon or imitatively, and moving to harmony from unison by gradually spreading voice leading such as that which may be seen in Figure 3.9 from A Ceremony of Carols, above.

There are passages that arguably fall into more than one of the categories listed in Table 3.7, but in most cases the type of texture Britten uses is very clear. Further, the object of this approach was to obtain a broad impression of the frequency with which he used more and less challenging vocal textures in these works. With this in mind, the number of pages on which each of the textures occurs was counted and compared with the total number of pages in the score. The Little Sweep does not have a chorus per se, but there are numerous passages where the seven children (sometimes six when Sammy is off stage) are treated as a chorus. In all three pieces, the audience or congregation are counted as part of the chorus for the purposes of this part of the analysis.

Table 3.7: Vocal Textures in Core Poly-technical Repertoire

St The Noye’s Nicolas Little Fludde Sweep Instrumental passages or 13% 46% 53% solo singing Unison chorus singing 41% 44% 22% Unison chorus spreading to 6% 0% 1% harmony Sung ostinato by chorus or 0% 1% 8% audience Canon or imitative singing 11% 5% 11% in the chorus Full homophonic harmony 30% 4% 5% in chorus

As Noye’s Fludde and The Little Sweep are fully staged, it is no surprise that they should have significantly more solo singing and instrumental music than a cantata like St Nicolas. However, the proportion of St Nicolas that is solo singing may be reduced somewhat because the only soloist (Nicolas himself, a tenor) sings in slow tempi in many of his solos, and

74 therefore his solo passages occupy more time as proportion of the whole work than they do pages in the score.

All three of these works show a remarkably high proportion of unison singing. With the exception of the Tallis’ Canon and a single page of bird ostinatos in the Night Song of The Little Sweep, all of the audience singing is in unison. It would be very hard to imagine how it could be otherwise; teaching the audience the required four new songs in The Little Sweep is an ambitious and difficult undertaking352 and would be too problematic to be practical if they were also in harmony.

At first glance, it appears that Noye’s Fludde has a much lower proportion of unison singing than the other two works. However, the ostinato passages (Kyrie and Alleluia in Figure 3.12, above) are a subset of chorus unison and when they are taken together, the proportion increases to 30%. Further, these ostinati are repeated ad libitum sometimes and therefore occupy a greater amount of time in the piece than the analysis may suggest.

There are passages that have been included in the unison category that, nevertheless, have some complicating factors. A very simple example may be found in the Alleluias in St Nicolas after his resurrection of the pickled boys. In this passage, the chorus sings just one chord but is otherwise entirely in unison (with various permutations of division by octave).353 Somewhat more complex examples occur in The Little Sweep. On occasions, the children are in unison (without instrumental doubling) while one or more adults sing a different line entirely.354 Again, Britten seems to be applying the ‘safety in numbers’ principle with the six or seven children supporting one another’s sound.

In other cases, passages have been included that involve a very small amount of the most rudimentary harmony. For example, in the Gossips’ laughing song (Figure 3.14) in Noye’s Fludde on two occasions D5 is given as a harmony note under F sharp 5. These Ds (the functional tonic) are preceded in C sharps and therefore easy to pitch.355 Also, although Britten lists the Gossips as girl sopranos,356 not all girl sopranos have a reliable high F sharp (see Table 2.2). Also, despite Britten describing the Gossips as ‘girl sopranos,’ in a community music situation like this, an able girl is not going to be turned away because she is

352 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 275. 353 Britten, St Nicolas, 63–65. 354 Britten, The Little Sweep, 67–71, 95–97. 355 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 29–31. 356 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, i.

75 a mezzo or an alto rather than a true soprano. Once more, this is an example of Britten writing for the reality of the situation.

Figure 3.14: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 30-31

3.4.10 THE CAMBIATO VOICE

Another such reality is that boys’ singing voices change and often do so without warning. Voices that are undergoing this pubescent change are known as cambiato voices (from the Italian word for ‘change’).357 This happened during the rehearsal period for the premiere performance of Noye’s Fludde. A young , playing Jaffett, changed abruptly from a treble to a tenor, causing Britten to rewrite his part.358 The published material now contains alternate parts for treble and tenor boys to play Jaffett. There is little difference in their range, or pitch proximity.

Britten was well aware of the issues surrounding the changing voice and left some of his works open to the inclusion of cambiato boys. The most notable example is Children’s Crusade written for Wandsworth School Boys Choir, a group from a South London government school who had, in Russell Burgess, an ambitious, musical and visionary director.359 The lowest chorus part in Children’s Crusade has an average pitch of E4 and spends a good deal of its time below the treble staff (C#4 occurs 119 times, for example). Their mean pitch is lower than that of any other chorus group, adult or child, analysed in this study (if adult male voices are assumed to be an octave higher than they actually sound). One of these boys takes a small solo part (The Dog) whose range is lower still. The first recording of this work, directed by Burgess and supervised by Britten has some of these boys singing unison passages an octave lower360 and are showing voices that have become ‘new .’361

357 Ashley, How High Should Boys Sing?, 48. 358 Bridcut, Britten’s Children, 213. 359 Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir. http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/WSBC.htm 360 Britten, Benjamin, The Golden vanity [sound recording]: op. 78; Children's crusade, op. 82 / Britten, London: Decca 1970. 361 Ashley, How High Should Boys Sing?, 47.

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3.4.11 THE RAGAZZO SOUND AND SINGING LOUDLY

The singing style in the original recording of Children’s Crusade is not in the English cathedral treble tradition and, given the brutality of the work, this is not surprising. It is surprising, however, to hear such a hard-edged and muscular tone in the original (1959) recording of Britten’s Missa Brevis given by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral and directed by George Malcolm. In fact, it was this hard sound, the so-called ‘continental sound’, that appealed to Britten in the first place.362 Malcolm said that singing was ‘a controlled form of shouting’363 and, despite the technical prowess and musical sensitivity of his choir’s performance of Missa Brevis, there is evidence of this approach. This type of timbre may also be found in recordings of The Golden Vanity (written for The Vienna Boys Choir whose robustness of sound was one of their best-known characteristics)364 and Psalm 150. Here is an entirely different treble sound from the ethereal world of the A Boy Was Born and A Ceremony of Carols.365 Indeed, it is possible to form an argument that Britten wrote in contrasting style for boys’ voices and for lads’ voices; and his compositional approach was entirely different because of the noticeable timbral differences in these two styles of singing.

It is debatable whether or not these two singing styles differ markedly in levels of volume, but being able to control loud singing is a hallmark of a trained singer, as it is directly related to the matter of breath control. However, obtaining any sort of quantitative data on this question is extremely difficult. Britten, like nearly all other composers, marked how loud his music was to be performed by using dynamic indications like mf and pp. Not only are these relative rather than absolute values, but also their realised level of volume is entirely contextual. That is to say, a passage sung quietly in one piece may be much louder than a passage sung quietly in another, due to the technical and artistic circumstances surrounding those passages - even though the notated dynamics may be identical. In theory, it is possible to use dynamics to measure the relative technical difficulty of vocal parts, because control of dynamics is directly related to breath control. In practice, there are no reliable data with which to form an accurate picture of the extent to which this may be true. Besides which, in musical reality, singers (especially non-professionals) may alter their dynamics (and other parameters like tempo)

362 Ibid., 59. 363 David Hill, “Training Young Boys' Voices,” The Choral Journal 33, no. 3 (1992): 19. 364 Ashley, How High Should Boys Sing?, 59. 365 Reed, P. and Wilson, P: A Britten Source Book, (Aldeburgh: Britten-Pears Library, 1987), 169-172. The discography here includes Britten’s works recorded by with both the ‘ragazzo’ sound and the ‘English cathedral’ sound.

77 from performance to performance depending on a wide variety of factors, which may or may not be under their control.

3.4.12 SPREADING TO HARMONY

Another musical reality in composing for untrained children is that singing in harmony can pose a significant challenge. Unison singing spreading to harmony is a technique Britten and other composers employ to make harmony singing easier,366 as commencing in unison is easier than some of the voices trying to find non-melodic notes at the start of a phrase. It is one of the ways Britten makes the choral singing less challenging in St Nicolas in particular, as shown in Figure 3.15.

Example 3.15: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 8

This sort of technique is one of the ways Britten eases the technical pressure on a school choir in a substantial choral work. The others include unison singing (41% of the choral texture in St Nicolas) and singing in two parts, with the sopranos doubling the tenors, and the altos doubling the basses with an octave between the boys’ and girls’ parts. The most extensive example of this in St Nicolas may be found in ‘Nicolas and The Pickled Boys’ in which the large choir is entirely written in two parts with a great deal doubled in octaves, effectively

366 Graham F. Welch, “A Developmental View of Children's Singing,” British Journal of Music Education 3, no. 3 (1986): 295–303.

78 unison (in other words the soprano and tenors are an octave apart, the altos and basses likewise).367

3.4.13 DESCANT, OSTINATO, CANON

Britten sometimes creates simple harmony by adding a descant to a hymn tune. In these cases, the entire company and congregation are singing a well-known melody with the descant being supplied by all capable sopranos and trebles.368 This harmonic device is used both in Noye’s Fludde and in St Nicolas. In the latter piece, Britten also uses the inverse effect with the melody in the upper voices, while the tenors and basses sing a counter-melody.369

Britten’s use of ostinato is restricted to the singers who may be assumed to have the very lowest ability, most notably the audience in The Little Sweep and the great of small children portraying the animals in Noye’s Fludde. Despite the precise notation of rhythm, pitch and articulation in the bird call ostinati in The Little Sweep (Figure 3.16), in practice, the audience rapidly lose sense of pitch and beat, but die away to nothing and create a fine and memorable effect.370

Figure 3.16: Britten, The Little Sweep, p. 25

367 Britten, St Nicolas, 56–63 368 Britten, St Nicolas, 134–135. 369 Britten, St Nicolas, 86–87. 370 Holst, “Britten and the Young,” 282.

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Canon and fugue, like passacaglia, were characteristic features of Britten’s music and occur in his works of all genres.371 Britten’s use of canonic writing for children was a feature throughout his career from Friday Afternoons through to his last work, Welcome Ode. In the three core poly-technical works canonic and imitative writing are used for 11% of the vocal music in St Nicolas and Noye’s Fludde, and somewhat less for The Little Sweep. This figure includes the fugue in St Nicolas372 and the strict canon at the end of Noye’s Fludde. It also includes the shanty in The Little Sweep,373 which is antiphony rather than canon, but the effect is similar as is the ease of delivery for inexperienced singers. Similarly, there are passages in Noye’s Fludde that are imitative rather than strictly canonic374 but their musical effect and technical ease are similar to strict canon. Britten’s work would strongly suggest that he was very much attached to canonic textures in his poly-technical works for strong artistic and practical reasons.

This analysis demonstrates the different measures Britten took in modifying the level of difficulty of his music for different levels of vocal expertise. Not all of the data conformed to intuitive expectations for a variety of reasons which are explained above. However, it is reasonable to conclude that necessary technical modifications to his vocal parts was part of Britten’s compositional technique, particularly when creating poly-technical works.

371 Palmer, “The Ceremony of Innocence,” 79–80. 372 Britten, St Nicolas, 37–46. 373 Britten, The Little Sweep, 21–25. 374 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 23, 92–96.

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4. POLY-TECHNICALITY IN BRITTEN’S INSTRUMENTAL

WRITING

Throughout Britten’s career, some of the finest instrumentalists of the time relished the opportunity to perform and record his work, including Julian Bream,375 Dennis Brain,376 and Mstislav Rostropovich, as discussed in Chapter One.377 It is therefore not surprising that his instrumental music could be demanding. He composed concertos for the piano and the violin, and his Cello Symphony is a concertante work with the level of virtuosity expected from the soloist that the concerto genre implies.378

Of the six poly-technical works analysed in this study, five of them have instrumental parts for non-professional players. All of these, it will be shown, have poly-technical instrumental parts. After a brief overview, Britten’s approach to instrumental poly-technical writing in each of those works will be subject to detailed analyses. This chapter will investigate the instruments in score order by family, with Britten’s poly-technical writing for each discussed in chronological order of composition. The sections on the woodwind and brass families are relatively brief because Welcome Ode is the only piece in this repertoire in which Britten asks for specifically named orchestral woodwind and brass instruments.

375 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 330. 376 Kennedy, Britten, 37. 377 Matthews, Britten, 129. 378 Ibid.

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Table 4.1: Britten’s Works with Poly-Technical Instrumental Parts

Year Professional Instrumentalists Non-Professional Instrumentalists

St Nicolas 1948 Piano One or more Percussion Organ String quintet Percussion [‘Preferably’ string quintet]379 Noye’s 1957 Treble recorder Descant recorders I and II Fludde String quintet Treble recorders Piano duet Bugles (at least 4) Organ Handbells in Eb (6 players) Timpani Percussion (at least 6) Violins I, II and III Violas I and II Double Basses Psalm 150 1962 A keyboard instrument At least one treble instrument and one Percussion. Published parts are: Treble instruments in C I and II in Bb I and II in Bb Harmonica or (in the absence of a trumpet) Horn in F 2 Percussion Viola Bass instruments Children’s 1968 Two Pianos, ‘Percussion’380 Crusade Organ, six Percussion Welcome 1976 Full orchestra Ode [2.2.2.2/4.2.3.1/Timp&3/pno/strin gs]381

Excluding the Simple Symphony (1934),382 St Nicolas (1948) was Britten’s first attempt to introduce elements of poly-technicality into his instrumental writing. It is clear from his approach that the idea of poly-technical parts had not yet fully crystallised in his imagination, and the levels of technical expertise he requires from his players is not as clearly discernible as it was in the subsequent four works listed in Table 4.1.

379 Britten, St Nicolas, i. 380 A very loose requirement in this instance will be discussed below. 381 The table contains the full orchestration with the ad lib. instruments. Minimum orchestration is [2.1.2.1/2.2.2.0/Timp&2/archi] 382 See Chapter One for justification in this regard.

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In St Nicolas, the string instruments have music that Britten described as ‘not very sophisticated and can be played by amateur players.’383 However, they are ideally to be led by a professional quintet whose music is exactly the same as the amateur parts. Similarly, the piano duet is only ‘of moderate difficulty’.384 Nonetheless, given the ensemble and accompaniment skills these pianists require, and their importance to the cohesion of the musical texture, a lack of technical difficulty in their parts does not necessarily make their task an easy one. This is particularly evident in the difficult accompaniment rhythm in ‘He Journeys to Palestine’385 or the rapid arpeggiation executed in time with the chorus during ‘The Death of Nicolas’.386 Of the instrumentalists listed, only the first percussionist and the organist need be professionals, according to Britten’s instrument list.387 Britten uses as many non-professional percussionists in St Nicolas ‘as there are instruments,’388 the first example of his all-inclusive approach to percussion writing that was to become such an important part of Noye’s Fludde, Psalm 150 and Children’s Crusade.

In Noye’s Fludde, there are three levels of difficulty for the singers; the adult soloists (Noye and Mrs Noye), the teenagers who play the roles of Noye’s children and the untrained gossips, animals and congregation.389 Similarly, the instrumental arrangement calls for multiple levels of skill. There are parts for professional players - a piano duet, an organist, a timpanist, a treble recorder and a string quintet - although competent young players can cope with the timpani and recorder parts.390 The keyboard and string quartet parts require professional or at least adult players. This is not so much due to technical difficulty but because those players are required to lead instrumental sections that contain musicians of extremely limited experience, and to support singers. The ripieno string parts, which are analysed in detail below, were composed with three levels of difficulty.391 The bugles are in four parts and have a part for a leader who is required to play solo and needs to produce a high B flat (the seventh partial). Britten specifies six ripieno percussions and an unspecified number of ripieno recorders, all of whom are assumed to be able to read music notation. The handbells require a further six players and are something of a special case in terms of musical skill and knowledge required, which will be explored fully later in this chapter.

383 Britten, St Nicolas, i. 384 Ibid., i. 385 Ibid., 20–22. 386 Ibid., 76–84. 387 Ibid., i. 388 Ibid., i. 389 “Congregation” in this instance is defined in see Chapter Three. 390 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 190–196. 391 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, iv.

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In Psalm 150, the minimum required instrumentation is ‘a treble instrument… a drum… and a keyboard instrument.’392 Britten provided parts for an extensive list of instruments that may or may not be available. This includes most standard orchestral instruments (except and harp) and certain traditionally non-orchestral instruments (such as the recorder and harmonica).393 It is interesting to note the omission of , given the stated spirit of ‘the more the merrier’394 evident in this work. It suggests the conclusion that Britten did not imagine any kind of saxophone would become popular with young people. Rather, like his choices of instrumentation in Noye’s Fludde and St Nicolas, this is a decision that seems firmly rooted in its time and place. This could be been as the result of Britten’s commitment to occasionality.395

Children’s Crusade has instrumental writing remarkable for its textural complexity (requiring more than one conductor) and for its extraordinary range of percussion opportunities for young players of some ability, or virtually none. This is evident through the inclusion of six solo percussionists and a tutti section limited only by the criterion that their sound does not 396 overwhelm that of the singers.

The final work in this category, Welcome Ode, is Britten’s last work and contains many of those elements associated with Britten’s music. Specifically, it is an occasional piece, involving young people, and finishes with a lively canon. It was premiered posthumously in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and is Britten’s only work that is written exclusively for young people to perform.

The next stage of this chapter turns to analysis of Britten’s poly-technical writing in these works in greater detail. This analysis will demonstrate the variety of techniques Britten used to create instrumental parts with deliberately varying degrees of technical difficulty.

4.1 WOODWIND

Britten’s poly-technical writing for woodwind instruments is found in Noye’s Fludde (recorders only) and Welcome Ode. However, there is an option to use woodwind instruments in Psalm 150 because the score provides the choice to use any available instruments. The

392 Britten, Psalm 150, i. 393 Ibid., i. 394 Ibid., i. 395 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 11. 396 Britten, Children’s Crusade, viii-ix.

84 significant passage in this work that may be taken by ‘oboe or harmonica’397 is clearly preferred as a trumpet solo and will be discussed in the brass section below, however Britten’s statement on the use of harmonica for this solo appears to prioritise flexibility in this regard.398

Noye’s Fludde has significant parts for recorders, and their musical and dramatic function deserves a closer examination. The work requires one professional player and an ensemble of musically-untrained children playing descant and treble recorders. The professional recorder player is faced with some technical and musical challenges, but the part is not virtuosic. The main musical functions of the solo recorder are to support voices (by doubling one or two octaves higher) in certain sections, for example Mrs Noye’s drinking song399 and the family’s song of thanksgiving for their safety in the Ark.400 Another important function for this player is to act as leader of the recorder section. Not only does this have great value for matters such as ensemble and making confident entries, it also can be an inspiration for the young players who get to be part of the same ensemble as adult professionals.401

The major solo for the treble recorder occurs in a waltz where the dove flies about in search of dry land (Britten, with a characteristic wish to include, adapted the characters of the Raven and the Dove from the story to create roles for two young solo dancers). The solo itself presents little technical difficulty and Britten even provides trills as alternates to his preferred flutter-tonguing402 in case the player is physically unable to execute the former technique. The main body of the solo is almost entirely built on scale passages and repeated notes with plenty of breathing opportunities provided (Figure 4.1).403 Given this evidence, it appears Britten had no high expectation that a truly professional recorder player would be found for most productions of Noye’s Fludde.

397 Britten, Psalm 150, i. 398 Ibid., 11. 399 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 57–58. 400 Ibid., 106–107. 401 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 68. 402 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 149. 403 Ibid., 150–151.

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Figure 4.1: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 150-151

The ripieno recorders are divided into three parts; two groups on descant recorders and one on treble. It is reasonable to surmise that the reasons for choosing these types of recorders are that the larger instruments lack the tone-weight to penetrate a large ensemble and that the smaller models are cheaper to buy. The relative affordability of the recorder is one of the reasons for its popularity as a pedagogical instrument in the post-war years. It was vigorously promoted by music educators and instrument manufacturers, notably the Dolmetsch family.404 By 1958, small recorders were common in British schools.405

Nannestad406 suggests that these instruments present a problem in contemporary American performances as they are only used at an elementary level as a foundation activity before students start playing concert band instruments. It is worth noting that concert band instruments are now cheaper than they have ever been,407 and inexpensive recorders are no longer an economic necessity in developed economies. Nannestad goes on to claim that the ripieno recorder parts in Noye’s Fludde are too difficult for the average high school musician,408 highlighting the passage shown at Figure 4.2 as being a particular challenge.409

404 Margaret Campbell, Dolmetsch: The Man and His Work (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), 281–2. 405 Arnold Bentley, “Music Education in England,” Comparative Education Review 9, no. 2 (1965): 186–194. 406 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 93–196. 407 Gary E. McPherson, and Jane W. Davidson, “Playing an Instrument,” in The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development, edited by Gary McPherson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 333–335. 408 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 196. 409 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 136.

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Figure 4.2: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, p. 136

The difficulty of the ripieno recorder parts lies in the very high writing for first descants in the loud tutti passages. Britten understood that the recorder is an instrument for which pitch and dynamic level are linked, being an enthusiastic amateur recorder player himself and President of the Society of Recorder Players of England.410 It is difficult to play low notes loudly or high notes quietly. Therefore, Britten not only used these very high notes colouristically, such as in ‘The Panic of the Animals’ during the storm,411 but also on melody lines to penetrate loud tutti sections.412 The principal difficulties with passages this high are that the fingerings can be awkward and seemingly illogical (although Britten keeps these passages at a relatively slow tempo) and that intonation, especially on cheaper instruments, is extremely unreliable. However, it must be borne in mind that Britten was not expecting accurate intonation for much of the playing in Noye’s Fludde. Indeed, it is noted that he preferred the unpolished sound of young players to that of professionals in this work.413

The woodwind writing in Welcome Ode contains no great technical demands. Although the flutes and first clarinet play towards the top of their ranges, there is a great deal of doubling and no solos at all. Indeed, a passage such as Rehearsal Figure 8414 in the ‘Jig’ could easily have been a or a clarinet solo, but Britten has them in unison. This could be partly because of the extra security inherent in doubling and/or partly because these blended timbres give a more co-operative, less soloistic sound.

410 Dale Higbee, “The Recorder and Its Literature,” Music Journal 23, no. 4 (1965): 56. 411 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 120. 412 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 130. 413 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 234. 414 Benjamin Britten, Welcome Ode (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1977), 15.

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4.2 BRASS

Considering all of Britten’s compositions in this study, Psalm 150 has the least prescriptive instrumentation, described on the title page as a work for ‘Voices and Instruments.’415 Although Britten stipulates a minimum instrumentation of one treble instrument, one percussionist and a keyboard (implicitly the only professional musician in the ensemble), there are passages that are clearly written with particular instruments in mind. For instance, at bar 133 when the voices sing ‘Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet,’ it is clear that the trumpet is Britten’s first choice, although the solo is cued in the treble instrument in C part and Britten includes a rare footnote, ‘at the first performance a boy played these passages most effectively on a mouth-organ.’416 The trumpet solo here (shown in Figure 4.3) is relatively demanding, being both muted, quiet and lying quite high in the register of a trumpet in B♭, the most frequently encountered student trumpet.417

Figure 4.3: Britten, Psalm 150 p. 11

This passage would be easier to play on a trumpet in C, but these were even less frequently encountered as student instruments in 1963 than they are today.418 Also in this passage, Britten writes some of his most characteristic open string sounds for the violins, with an atypical direction ‘Only Vl. (pizz.)’419 evoking the sound of lute and harp.

In Noye’s Fludde, Britten calls for a ‘boys’ bugle band,’420 which has proved to be the required instrumental ensemble whose popularity has declined the most. For example, a

415 Britten, Psalm 150, i. 416 Ibid., 11. 417 Ibid., 11. 418 Anthony Baines, Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (New York: Courier Corporation, 1993), 240. 419 Britten, Psalm 150, 11. 420 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, iv.

88 single bugle band appeared to be surviving in Australia in 2016421 although they were common enough in post-war England for Britten to take such an ensemble for granted in Noye’s Fludde. The bugle parts may be, and often are,422 played by trumpets with no significant change in timbre in the musical context. There are four parts and Britten recommends eight players.423 All the buglers are required to play the standard five notes of bugle calls (the second to sixth partials on the instrument). The leader (and sometime soloist) is also required to play the seventh partial, (notated as B flat and sounding a little flatter than that – an intonation Britten also used memorably in the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings), which is not considered part of standard bugle music. Considering these features, innovation and poly-technicality may be observed in every facet of this Noye’s Fludde.

The brass parts in Welcome Ode are straightforward with little in the way of rhythmic complexity, extremes of range, difficulty of ensemble or intonation and they are mostly used in an accompaniment role. Combined with the percussion, the brass instruments supply accompaniment and rhythmic incisiveness without stretching the players’ technical resources, as shown in Figure 4.5.

Figure 4.5: Britten, Welcome Ode p. 23

421 In Wooroolin, Queensland. Ross Kay, “Regional Queensland Primary School Bugle Band May be Only One of Its Kind in Australia,” ABC News, June 22, 2016, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06- 22/regional-queensland-primary-school-bugle-band-may-be-only-one/7533498. 422 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 190. 423 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, iv.

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4.3 PERCUSSION

In each of these five works, Britten takes a different approach to writing for non-professional instrumentalists, with some containing multiple levels of difficulty, while uniquely Welcome Ode involves no professional players at all. The studied works only share the common factor in that they all involve percussion instruments. In common with Kodály (whom he admired)424 and Orff, Britten grasped the accessibility of percussion instruments and often wrote for them in a way that demanded far more enthusiasm than skill from young percussionists.

All of the studied works contain percussion parts with differentiated levels of technical difficulty. In the cases of St Nicolas and Noye’s Fludde, the ‘professional’ percussionist (Britten’s term) plays the timpani. There are timpani also in Welcome Ode, although the part is not noticeably more difficult than those of the other percussionists, and the writing in Psalm 150 strongly suggests timpani are the preferred choice for the principal percussionist as discussed below. Children’s Crusade is exceptional in that it has six ‘solo’ percussionists (as well as a battery of tutti players), none of whom play timpani.

The percussion writing in St Nicolas presents numerous practical difficulties even though they are prima facie the most poly-technical of the instrumental parts. The professional player has the usual technical difficulties that confront any timpanist: grace notes, rolls, pitch changes - but the part is far from virtuosic. The remaining percussion parts contain some passages that require a significant level of technique such as rolls.425 There are occasionally more difficult rhythms, but these are always doubled by other sections of the ensemble, as shown in Figure 4.6. The true poly-technical nature of these percussion parts must by inferred by an imaginative conductor and percussion principal from Britten’s notes on the score,426 from the percussion parts themselves and from the pool of available and willing percussionists, irrespective of their technical ability.

424 Britten, Letters from a Life, vol. 5, 602. 425 Britten, St Nicolas, 34. 426 Ibid., i.

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Figure 4.6: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 28

In Noye’s Fludde, there are two distinct percussion groups, those playing orchestral and home-made instruments and those playing handbells. The handbells appear at the very end of Noye’s Fludde when the rainbow is revealed. Their shimmering sonorities illuminate the moment of reconciliation between God and humanity. Britten has this passage in his reconciliation key of G major427 and the inclusion of these bells in Eb adds another plane of tonality to this complex, yet deeply moving passage of music.428 The effect of Balinese Gamelan Music on Britten after his visit to Bali in 1956 is well documented429 and Noye’s Fludde was the second work he composed that contained the tintabular element (the first was The Prince of the Pagodas (1956)) that was to become such an important aspect of his mature music. Despite their effectiveness, Britten’s decision to include handbells at all is somewhat surprising. Handbell ensembles were comparatively rare in England in the 1950s and have never been as popular there as they are in the United States of America.430 Britten added the handbell part late in the composition process after a chance encounter with young people who were playing them in an ensemble.431 Their particular chime of bells was pitched in the

427 Mellers, “Through Noye’s Fludde,” 157. 428 Rupprecht, Britten's Musical Language, 22–28. 429 Matthews, Britten, 120–124. 430 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 233. 431 Ibid., 233.

91 unusual key (for handbells) of Eb hence the tonality of the bells in Noye’s Fludde.432 American handbell ensembles are accustomed to reading from a slightly modified version of staff notation, with each player having a copy of the full score. Britten uses a numerical notation more common in England.433 Figure 4.7 is an excerpt from the handbell part as Britten notated it for the players, with a transcription to staff notation as it appears in the full score.

Figure 4.7: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, p. 169 GRADUALLY GETTING LOUDER

-1 3 2 6789 OT O8 97 8765 41 35 24 6789 OT O8 97 8765 5 4

9 E T

This notation has the advantage of being easily comprehensible by those who do not read staff notation or have come to the conclusion that reading staff notation is difficult. This is because each of the six players sound the same two bells each throughout the work and only play when they see their respective numbers. In this notation, dynamics are indicated verbally and rhythms graphically. It is also reasonable to surmise that the rehearsal process would involve a degree of aural learning of this material too. Thus, any six people with slight musical knowledge, and who are capable of grasping an apparently more intuitive style of notation can form the handbell group for Noye’s Fludde without any prior experience.

The other percussion parts in Noye’s Fludde are among Britten’s most colourful and inventive writing for the instrumental family he did so much to promote. The percussion leader plays the timpani exclusively in a part that, from the outset, is dynamically challenging for the player and motivically is at the very centre of the music-drama. The opening E-B-F motif which establishes the discord between God and humanity is timpani-led.434 There is little in the timpani part that is rhythmically difficult (in terms of complex duplets, cross rhythms, syncopation, etc.), but the detail of dynamics and articulation requires a high level of skill.

432 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 92. 433 Dolores Anderson, “Adaptive Notation Devised,” Music Educators Journal 84, no. 6 (1998): 48. 434 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 274.

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Furthermore, there is a clear responsibility for this player to lead the large group of ripieno percussionists.

These ripieno players have simple rhythms to play, but the parts nevertheless require careful counting to find their entries accurately, despite the heavy text cuing in their parts.435 On other occasions, Britten uses multiple ostinato figures in the percussion for rhythmic effect.436 However, a good deal of the percussion writing is primarily colouristic, which is particularly true in the storm sequence. In this passage, Britten introduces a number of instruments that he claims can be home-made.437 These are slung mugs, sandpaper blocks, wind machine and whip. The last two of these are available commercially and have been used in some standard orchestral repertoire in the Twentieth Century, including the Ravel in G438 and Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica.439 It is questionable whether an effective wind machine can truly be manufactured at home, and Nannestad points out that the wind machine is scarcely audible in the clamour of the storm in any case.440 The whip (known as a slapstick in America) is a simple construction: two pieces of wood hinged together whose ringing crack appears elsewhere in Britten’s output, for example in The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1946). Sandpaper blocks are highly effective at producing a focussed rhythmic scraping sound. The slung mugs (ordinary tea mugs suspended on a string) ‘approximating a scale’441 is an inspired device that suggests raindrops effectively. This passage is not without rhythmic difficulties for novice percussionists but Britten, in typical style, doubles them with the piano for security of rhythm and to add clarity to the pitch shape. Like his use of the solo viola to support a voice in Figure 3.10, the piano here is marked at a softer dynamic than the mugs, but with the inferred option for the pianist to play louder if the percussionists err.

435 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 137. 436 Ibid., 42–45. 437 Ibid., iv. 438 Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto in G (London: Kalmus, 1934). 439 , Sinfonia Antarctica (London, Boosey and Hawkes, 1953). 440 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 185. 441 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, iv.

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Figure 4.8: Britten, Noye’s Fludde pp. 107-108

The most extreme example of instrumental freedom in Britten’s poly-technical works is Psalm 150, and this great latitude extends to the percussion section. The percussion parts are not difficult to play, but are featured a great deal throughout the piece. They are used dynamically and rhythmically. The first, and indispensable, percussionist plays ‘a drum of some sort.’442 It is reasonable to infer that Britten’s preference was for two timpani, as they are notated as the tonic and dominant and therefore help to support the bass line. As many other percussion instruments as are available may be accommodated in this work, but should preferably include a that has a solo towards the end of the piece, and that solo may be improvised.443 Britten clearly understood that there are some young musicians who thrive on this sort of opportunity.

Children’s Crusade has percussion writing that requires more players than any other work in this repertoire, or indeed in any of Britten’s published works. This is a difficult work, because of its confronting subject matter of wandering children perishing of cold and hunger during wartime, realised in Brecht’s arid text, and maintained in the translation by Hans Keller.444 According to Evans, Britten’s harshly dissonant music derived from a modification of dodecaphonic pitch serialism to which Britten was drawn for some of his more confronting music.445 In spite of Britten’s attempts to ease the technical demands on the singers (as shown in Chapter Three), this is a difficult work to perform. These are the dissonant harmonies used throughout (see Figure 4.9), and it also features multi-planar use of duration. This is so

442 Britten, Psalm 150, i. 443 Ibid., 15. 444 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 292. 445 Ibid., 289–292.

94 disjunct that two conductors are necessary and Britten often employs the ‘curlew’ notation device so that there can be moments when rhythmic unity can be re-established. This notation was invented by Britten to indicate a point of temporal unity when two or more elements in the music have been in metres and/or tempi independent or one another.446

Figure 4.9: Britten, Children’s Crusade, pp. 85-86

In contrast to these challenges, the one element of technical straightforwardness in Children’s Crusade is the writing for the tutti percussion players. Britten spends two full pages explaining his intentions in the preface, one of the longest such explanations in his entire compositional output.447 This work contains parts for six solo players each assigned to between two and six specified percussion instruments. Each solo player has exposed obligato lines throughout the work, and the percussion writing is occasionally of rhythmic and dynamic complexity with at least four types of articulation specified for each player. This includes both extreme and subtle changes in dynamics, and rhythmic challenges such as off- beat playing in fast tempi and semiquaver quintuplets.

The tutti percussion parts have very little to do with rhythm and much more to do with dynamics, colour and drama. There is a passage where the players on the second part need to learn a simple ostinato rhythm and to play it antiphonally. Britten sets up this entry to avoid mistakes; after a fermata and a linking refrain passage from the chorus, he has one bar in

446 Britten, Children’s Crusade, vii. 447 Ibid., viii-ix.

95 tempo with the solo snare drum playing a pattern that establishes beat, feel and dynamics. This makes the entry of the tutti percussionists as easy as it possibly can be.448 Shortly after this, some of the second players play the crotchet beat in time on a . Although not a literal doubling, this is supported by the solo bass drum which has a sufficiently similar rhythm to ensure that the tutti players do not lose the beat and to ensure that nothing much is lost if the tutti players miss their cue entirely.

Everything else that Britten wrote for the tutti percussionists in Children’s Crusade is rhythmically free, dynamic, and starts and ends on a clear cue from one of the conductors (see Figure 4.10). Indeed, these parts probably need the smallest amount of technical skill of any instrumental parts Britten ever wrote.

Figure 4.10: Britten, Children’s Crusade, pp. 1-2

Britten divides the tutti percussion into three groups, which he labels ‘tuned, rhythmic and clashed.’449 There is an unspecified (and unlimited) number of players to each part, involving as many percussionists as possible, however Britten does warn that the percussion should not

448 Ibid., 45–46. 449 Ibid., viii.

96 drown out the voices, otherwise there should be as many percussionists as possible.450 These three groups are reasonably self-explanatory as far as their potential constituents are concerned, but Britten lists seventeen instruments as examples.451 When the tuned group play, they are given specific pitches to choose from (usually in the form of a dissonant three-note chord). The music for the clashed group (for example, , triangle) is virtually identical to that of the tuned group, with the obvious difference that no pitch is notated.

The rhythmic group has a somewhat more complex task. On those occasions when all the tutti percussion are called on to make a cataclysmic noise, the rhythmic group improvise patterns independently of one another which then become sparser and quieter until they finish on the next cue from a conductor.

The exceptional passage of percussion writing in Children’s Crusade starts at figure 12 where nearly all the percussionists (tutti and solos 2, 3, 4 and 6) play a semiquaver pattern with piano 1. In the case of the tutti percussion, Britten specifies glockenspiel, vibraphone, , suspended cymbal, triangle and cowbell. For the pitched instruments, he gives a set of four notes on which they are to improvise.452

450 Ibid., viii. 451 Ibid., viii.

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Figure 4.11: Britten, Children’s Crusade, p. 37

This pattern continues until the conductor’s cue to stop.

One of the remarkable things in this passage is the way in which Britten uses the professional musicians to support and guide the non-professionals. For example, the semiquaver pattern is always played in rhythmic unison with four professional percussionists and a pianist. The singers, confronted by multiple simultaneous tempi and polyrhythms are supported either by the organ or, to give greater rhythmic precision, the tenor drum. The remaining professional percussionist is assigned to the bass drum, whose almighty blow is a signal to the tutti percussionists that their passage of improvisation is over. This is particularly useful if some of the children forget to look at the conductor in their excitement – how well Britten knew the minds of children!

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4.3 KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS

Britten’s score notes imply that the two pianists in St Nicolas need not be professionals, but the organist and timpanist should be.453 However, examination of the full score reveals no discernible difference in the technical capacity required by those four players. The parts are by no means for beginners, but all seem well within the grasp of competent non-professional players. Indeed, the organ seems more straightforward than the first piano part, doing little more than accompanying recitative and congregational hymns and adding bulk to loud tutti sections. This is in contrast to the first piano part, which has passages of figuration that require strong pianistic technique (see Figure 4.6) as well as very secure ensemble skills.454

The truly essential instrumental element in Psalm 150 is the keyboard, which doubles every other instrument including the unpitched percussion. Even the trumpet, violin and cymbal solos are written as cues in the keyboard part. Britten does not specify which keyboard instrument, although most of the writing is pianistic.455 Herein is the poly-technicality in the instrumental writing for Psalm 150. The keyboard part is not particularly challenging technically, although it is harder than the other instrumental parts, but it does require a musician who can lead, who can fill in for missing lines, and who can take charge of a musical situation. This enables the piece to be successfully performed with the conductor leading from the keyboard. However, the way some of the chords build (Figure 4.12) seems more characteristic of Britten’s organ writing, for example in the “Gloria” movement of the Missa Brevis456 despite the lack of a notated part for the pedals.457

Figure 4.12 Britten, Psalm 150 p. 16

The orchestration required to perform Welcome Ode is flexible, a trait born out of experience working with amateur orchestras. The dispensable instruments (those marked “ad lib.”) are

453 Britten, St Nicolas, i. 454 Ibid., 108. 455 Although Britten does give tremolos as ossia cues, as they are not idiomatic on the organ. 456 Benjamin Britten, Missa Brevis (mass) (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1959), 4. 457 Britten, Psalm 150, 16.

99 those most likely to be missing in an amateur or children’s orchestra: oboe, , horn, trombone and tuba. Additionally, the piano part is marked ad lib, but is a unique case as Britten often uses the piano to hold together more difficult passages or to add tone weight to potentially weaker sections. For example, the piano can help to overcome the ensemble difficulties of the string block chords in the “Roundel”458 or support the cellos and in rapid, soli passages.459 To accomplish this fully, the pianist must not only be technically adept, but must also be able to lead assertively. On these grounds, it is possible to argue Welcome Ode is a poly-technical work because the pianist needs a broader range of skills than the other instrumentalists.

4.5 STRING INSTRUMENTS

This family of instruments receives more analytical detail than any of the others. The reasons for this is that Britten used them in more poly-technical works than the woodwind and percussion sections and showed more levels of differentiation in his poly-technical string writing. Furthermore, Britten learned the violin and viola as a boy460 and therefore had a more personal connection with early-stage pedagogy on these instruments than he did with woodwind and brass instruments.461

In St Nicolas, Britten attempted for the first time to extend his poly-technical ideas to instrumental writing. However, its nature as an early effort in this area is evident, particularly when the instrumental parts are compared with those of the four later works discussed in this chapter. Britten’s idea that the amateur and young players were to be led by professionals is, nevertheless, an important one. It is this solidarity and comradeship in ensemble playing that is so inspiring to young players.462 There is a small degree of poly-technicality in the string writing in St Nicolas in that the leader of the violin section has significant solo work, some of which is technically challenging. However, this is the only substantial evidence of poly- technicality within the string section.463

458 Britten, Welcome Ode, 31–34. 459 Ibid., 41–42. 460 Oliver, Benjamin Britten, 18. 461 The only one of which he played was recorder and he was self-taught. 462 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 67–68. 463 Britten, St Nicolas, 3.

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Figure 4.13: Britten, St Nicolas, p. 3

4.5.1 BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL STRING WRITING IN NOYE’S FLUDDE

The function of the professional string quintet in Noye’s Fludde is similar to that of the professional recorder, being used to provide support to solo vocal lines,464 to lead the ripieno players,465 and play the occasional solo. The most notable of these solos is the cello used to portray the raven.466 This is among the most technically challenging instrumental writing in Noye’s Fludde with its lively tempo, chromatic intervals and high range, ascending to E5 in ninth position.

The ripieno strings represent the fullest extent of poly-technicality in instrumental writing anywhere in Britten’s output. Since multiple levels of skill are required and because of Britten’s explicit claims that the third violin and second cello parts are “very elementary” and “have only the simplest music,”467 a deeper analysis of this material has been undertaken. This analysis was focussed on metrics that can be interpreted as measures of the relative difficulty of string writing: the proportion of notes in low fingering positions, the proportion of open strings, and the proportion of double stops. As will be shown, these results are consistent with string pedagogy with which Britten was familiar.

464 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 17. 465 Ibid., 118–133. 466 Ibid., 146–148. 467 Ibid., iv.

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The ripieno string parts that were entered into Sibelius software consisted of a total of 7616 notes. Analytical plug-in programs in Sibelius were then used to determine the proportions of open string notes for each part, the highest left hand position for each part, the percentage of notes for each part in first position and the number of multiple stops. In the three hymns used in Noye’s Fludde, the ripieno strings often play the melody, so further calculations were performed on the proportion of open strings that were used if the hymn passages were excluded. The results are presented in Table 4.2. These figures thoroughly reinforce Britten’s expressed intention. There are three levels of difficulty for the string instruments, including parts that are indeed “very elementary.”468

Table 4.2: Analysis of Ripieno String Parts in Noye’s Fludde

Total Number of Highest Percentage Percentage Percentage notes multiple- left hand of notes in of open of open stops position 1st position string notes string notes if hymns are excluded Violin I 1455 159 3rd (D6) 89% 42% 44% Violin II 1441 165 1st (B5) 100% 53% 55% Violin III 1039 122 1st (Bb5) 100% 68% 76% Viola 1316 125 2nd (F5) 99% 44% 47% Cello I 942 4 3rd (E4) 94% 27% 27% Cello II 789 150 1st (D4) 100% 68% 74% Bass 634 0 4th (E3) 99% 26% 28%

As previously notes, Britten played violin and viola at school and was familiar with the pedagogy and progression associated with learning those instruments.469 He was also confident enough with the virtuosic capacities of the violin and the cello to write concertante pieces for both of them. The most popular violin primer in England in the post-war period was The First-Year Violin Method by Eta Cohen.470 Cohen’s progressive steps in her first book match certain aspects of Britten’s violin writing. For example, Cohen introduces more complex rhythms relatively early, including triplets.471 Double-stops with one open string are

468 Ibid., iv. 469 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 50–54. 470 Erika A. Schulte, “An Investigation of the Foundational Components and Skills Necessary for a Successful First-Year String Class: A Modified Delphi Technique Study” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2004), 22. 471 Cohen, The First-Year Violin Method, 22.

102 introduced earlier still,472 but notes above the staff only appear in scales at the very end of this book.473 This is entirely consistent with how Britten imagined and realised the violin parts in Noye’s Fludde.

The parts for third violin and second cello are, by their own criteria, the easiest pitched instrumental parts Britten ever wrote: these can be played by a child who has been learning the instrument for only a very short time. Further, as Table 4.2 shows, if a child playing third violin or second cello were to sing rather than play the congregational hymns, they would be able to play three quarters of the required notes without engaging the fingers of the left hand at all. This extraordinarily high proportion of open string notes does not exist solely because they are the earliest notes young string players learn. There is also this issue of intonation, as in an early stage string student they are the only notes likely to be in tune.

The number of double- and triple-stopped notes is also of interest and the conclusion that may be drawn is the opposite of what one might intuitively suppose. Britten appears to have understood that for many string learners, playing a single string is more difficult than playing two. This situation is presumed to improve when the learner’s bow control gets better. Therefore, the more double- and triple- stops present in a string part, the easier the technical requirements. This somewhat counter-intuitive conclusion is shown to be accurate as in each case, one or more of the notes is an open string (which is consistent with Cohen’s violin pedagogy).474 There are other factors that work on this generalisation, the principal one being the need for additional tone-weight in the treble register, which suggests why the first violins have nearly as many multiple-stops as the seconds and thirds, whereas the first cellos have virtually none.

Britten was explicit that first violins and first cellos should be able to play to third position,475 and the parts in Noye’s Fludde do require this, although they very rarely leave first position. Indeed, the first violin and first cello parts are in first position for 89% and 94% of the music respectively. It is possible to envision a situation where players who cannot play beyond first position could still cover enough of these parts to make a valid musical contribution. By the same token, players with the ability to only play open strings could still make themselves useful playing most of the notes in the third violin and second cello parts. Whether or not Britten had these expedients in mind for future performances is a matter of conjecture,

472 Ibid., 20. 473 Ibid., 25. 474 Ibid., 20. 475 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, iv.

103 nevertheless these measures can be taken to allow children to participate despite insufficient instrumental skill and is characteristic of Britten’s approach in these matters.

As is so often the case in analysing string writing, exceptions must be made for the double basses. This is principally because this very large instrument has its strings tuned in fourths rather than fifths. As a result, this makes its fingering patterns quite different from those of other orchestral strings and, along with its very low pitch, makes double-stopping a less common technique. In Noye’s Fludde, Britten has no double-stops for the ripieno basses. He does employ a lower proportion of open string notes, at least partly because of the necessity for these instruments to play the harmonic bass of the music. However, Britten does (somewhat curiously) distort the shape of the ground in the storm passacaglia for the ripieno basses, presumably so they can play the open string G2, instead of the fingered G1. The curiosity here lies in the fact that Britten uses G1 for the ripieno basses more than any other note (129 times) and that the line is no more difficult to play with G1 than it is with G2. Specifically in the case of G1, the left hand position does not need to change as the note is on an adjacent string which allows for easier bowing. By way of explanation for the choice of G2, it is possible that Britten had a particular wish for this note to sound in tune, functioning as it does as a dominant in a highly chromatic passacaglia ground.476

The question of left hand position is somewhat more complex in the case of the double bass because its long strings make half positions a necessary part of its technique. The figure in Table 4.2 above gives the proportion of first position bass notes at 99%, but this includes notes in half position. The apparent use of a relatively high position (fourth) on the basses is also unusual. Britten has isolated (written) middle Cs on three occasions and one brief four note passage in the opening hymn that ascends to two ledger lines above the bass clef, however this is doubled by solo cello and bass and ripieno first cellos. If a bass player with more rudimentary skills were to omit these notes, that player would still be playing 99% of the ripieno bass part and the remaining 1% is unlikely to be missed.

Britten sometimes made differentiations between his ripieno string parts for rhythm, but more frequently this is not the case. He realised that rapidly repeated notes (such as those towards the end of the storm sequence)477 are one of the first skills young string players master.478 He also did not shy away from relatively complex rhythms for these players, 479

476 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 278. 477 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 137–138. 478 Cohen, The First-Year Violin Method, 14. 479 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 111–112.

104 seemingly with the understanding that young players are likely to be confused by notation, rather than the rhythm itself. 480

All of these ripieno string parts have a very detailed level of articulation notated, including more bowing directions than the parts for more experienced players, but also a very large number of tenuto, staccato and staccatissimo notations, among others, as shown in Figure 4.14.481 This evidence suggests that Britten was determined to obtain the maximum colouristic, rhythmic and dynamic effect possible from a section whose lyrical playing was not likely to be the strongest aspect of its technique.

480 Marsh and Young, “Musical Play,” 296–297. 481 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 166–168.

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Figure 4.14: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, pp. 166-168

The zenith of Britten’s poly-technical instrumental writing came with Noye’s Fludde. This work contains six instrumental groups (keyboards, percussion, handbells, recorders, bugles and strings) ranging from parts that are within the means of the most inexperienced musicians, to others that require professional levels of skills and musicianship. The critical point, however, is that there are levels in between these extremes. There are violin parts, for example, available for four distinct levels of skill and as has been shown above, players of

106 even more rudimentary ability are still able to be included by further simple modifications of the most straightforward part. As with the vocal parts, there are musically satisfying and eminently performable options available for beginners and professionals and, critically, for different levels of skill between these two extremes. This idea, first fully realised in Noye’s Fludde, became very influential on the work of subsequent composers of poly-technical works, explored in Chapter Six.

4.5.2 BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL STRING WRITING AFTER NOYE’S FLUDDE

Britten’s choice in Psalm 150 to use any available violas as de facto bass instruments played an octave higher is an interesting one. In young people’s music where the presence of violas may not be relied upon, they are often given the same music as third violins - this is the case in much of Noye’s Fludde, with the violins’ part modified to allow for the absent C string. The reasons for Britten’s unusual deployment of violas here may well include the resonant sonority of the open C string, which is such a welcome ingredient to the robust opening and closing passages of this work.

The string writing in Welcome Ode is inventive and colourful with the use of techniques such as tremolo, pizzicato and multiple stopping occurring on a frequent basis. Britten is detailed in his bowing instructions, some of which are imaginatively unorthodox, for example the second violins at the start of the ‘Jig’ (Figure 4.15).482

Figure 4.15 Welcome Ode 13 (2nd violins)

Britten still makes considerable use of the open strings, notably in the pizzicato accompaniment to the ‘Roundel.’483 This is a characteristic of Britten’s writing for young string players, and is also a feature of the ripieno string writing in Noye’s Fludde (as has been noted) and Psalm 150.

482 Britten, Welcome Ode, 13. 483 Britten, Welcome Ode, 25–34.

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There is technical differentiation evident in the string parts, in that the second violins are not required to play as high in pitch as the first violins. Indeed, apart from two A5s, the second violins do not play above the staff, and thus stay in first position, whereas the first violins move to A6.

It is true for many composers that the principal difference between first and second violins is that the firsts sometimes play at a higher pitch; therefore there is no real difference in the level of difficulty.484 This is borne in Britten’s own orchestral violin writing as Figure 4.16 from The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra demonstrates.485

Figure 4.16 The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra 27 violin parts only

This lack of technical differentiation between first and second violins may be more true in the professional world. For the student violinist, however, not having to move above first position, as is the case in Welcome Ode, makes a part significantly easier, thus making the working poly-technical as far as violins are concerned.

There is evidence of a poly-technical approach evolving in Britten’s instrumental writing in these works, tempered by the occasion of each piece. The great flexibility shown in Psalm

484 Walter Piston, Orchestration (New York: W.W. Norton, 1955), 61. 485 Benjamin Britten, Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1947), 27.

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150 and, to a lesser extent, in Welcome Ode also indicates that Britten wanted to make these pieces as accessible as possible for future performances in which the ideal instrumentation may not be available. It is in Noye’s Fludde, however, that this wish to include as many instrumentalists as possible reaches its greatest expression in Britten’s output. This does not only mean that he included some very easy parts; the four levels of technical difficulty for violinists is strong evidence of a thoughtful approach to including musicians of all levels of technical ability. The question of whether or not this involved a loss of individual voice as a composer, or represented any artistic compromise on Britten’s part will be explored in the following chapter.

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5. BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS: INTEGRITY AND

AUTHENTICITY

Having examined the ways Britten made technical alterations to his music when he intended it to be performed by non-professional singers and instrumentalists, it is also pertinent to try and establish whether or not Britten made artistic compromises in these works. Critical to this effort is the idea of a composer’s ‘voice’. Were Britten to make artistic compromises then the music would correspondingly lose compositional integrity, for example by ‘writing down’486 when composing for children. This chapter will demonstrate the critical concurrence that such a loss of authentic ‘voice’ does not occur in this repertoire. The importance of Britten’s poly- technical works also depends on them possessing the weight and substance of Britten’s professional-level works. This will be examined from two angles, namely: What did Britten say about the importance and artistic authenticity of his poly-technical works? And how can critical evaluation of these works help to understand their place in Britten’s ouvre?

5.1.1 PUBLIC STATEMENTS BY BRITTEN ABOUT HIS POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS

By Britten’s own standards, the first of the above two questions is less important. It was he who said: ‘Artists are of course the last people who should talk or write about art, especially their own.’487 Nevertheless, in the small number of published statements Britten made about music (scarcely more than 100 throughout his entire career)488 the need to engage with community, be relevant, appeal to people (particularly the young), and write for specific occasions are constant themes. Also notable was Britten’s insistence that his music for children is in no way inferior, claiming he was ‘trying to pour into these restricted bottles my best wine.’489

The most complete example of Britten’s views on these matters is the speech he gave at Aspen in 1964, as introduced in Chapter One. He was the first recipient of the Aspen Award and traveled to Colorado to accept the prize.490 The address that he gave was the longest piece of public discourse of his entire life and is therefore highly revealing about Britten’s artistic priorities. Its significance is such that it was published as a small book, which is still in print.

486 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 259. 487 Benjamin Britten, Britten on music, ed. Paul Kildea (Oxford University Press, 2003), 236. 488 Ibid., 5. 489 Ibid., 109. 490 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 9.

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From a man who said, ‘I am a very bad speaker,’491 this is a remarkable achievement. The reason for the continued significance of this speech is that it is the nearest thing Britten ever published to a manifesto; it sets out his artistic priorities and his view of the place of the composer in society. As Donald Mitchell points out in the foreword to the published version of this speech, this was ‘the only statement of its kind Britten made.’492

In this speech, Britten proposes an ideal social compact that firmly establishes the place of the artist in society. He argues that society should support, encourage, nurture and fund their artists.493 In return, artists have an obligation to serve society, meet its needs, and remain relevant. As noted in Chapter One, Britten may first have seen a model of this in Walter Greatorex, whose society was a small one - a school. By 1964 the society Britten was serving was national and, arguably, global.

It was important for Britten that any commissioned work he wrote matched the occasion for which it was commissioned. For example, Children’s Crusade for the Fiftieth Anniversary of Save the Children Fund, Welcome Ode for a royal visit during the 1977 Jubilee, and Psalm 150 for the centenary of his former preparatory school. The one failure in this sense was Sinfonia da Requiem, which is discussed in Chapter One. All these works, indeed most of Britten’s output, were written with specific performers in mind as well as a specific audience. It was this strong sense of each composition being firmly attached to time, place, performers and audience that led Britten to say: ‘I do not write for posterity.’494 Nevertheless, this statement must be taken with a degree of sceptical caution. By 1964, all of Britten’s works were published and recorded and many of them were receiving multiple performances around the United Kingdom and overseas. Further, his habit of keeping all his sketches, letters, diaries and juvenilia is evidence of a life-long look in the direction of posterity. It is clear Britten was aware he was leaving a musical legacy.

Therefore, a specifically occasional work such as Psalm 150 is very firmly rooted in time and place but has the capacity to be performed, and even adapted within Britten’s own terms, on later occasions. If this were not the case, there would be no need for Britten’s use of flexible instrumentation. It is precisely this sort of regard for both occasion and posterity that is one of

491 Britten, Britten on Music, 101. 492 Britten, On Receiving The First Aspen Award, 7. 493 Ibid., 14–16. 494 Ibid., 22.

111 the most engaging features of Britten’s poly-technical works and gives justification for Nannestad’s arguments about the adaptability of Noye’s Fludde (1958).495

Flexible instrumentation is a clear reflection of Britten’s comments on the place of the composer in society. Throughout his life, he promoted the idea of the ‘servant-artist’ and, in doing so, firmly rejected the Romantic notion of the ‘superman-artist.’496 This Romantic self- image persisted into the 20th century and was, to Britten’s mind, the self-justification for those ‘Ivory tower academic composers’497 who failed to engage their audience or their performers. He clearly set himself aside from the composers of the ‘academic avant-garde.’498 These composers, sometimes referred to as the European mainstream, seemingly disregarded Britten’s accomplishments as a composer, largely because he sought to serve, include, edify and entertain his community; achievements they regarded as superficial.499 These accusations only have weight if the works in question are, in and of themselves, superficial. It is therefore important to determine the weight Britten gave to his poly-technical output and to form a critical view of them. For reference, Table 5.1 gives the commissioning body and premiere performance details of the poly-technical works appraised in this study.

Table 5.1: Occasion for Britten’s Poly-Technical Works

Title Year Commissioned by Occasion Premiere St Nicolas 1948 Choirs and ensemble of Centenary celebrations of Aldeburgh Lancing College, Sussex Lancing College, Sussex Festival The Little Sweep 1949 Aldeburgh Festival Aldeburgh Festival Noye's Fludde 1957 Aldeburgh Festival Aldeburgh Festival Psalm 150 1962 Children of Old Centenary celebrations of Aldeburgh Buckenham Hall School Old Buckenham Hall Festival (formerly South Lodge School (formerly South School, Lowestoft) Lodge School, Lowestoft) Children's 1968 Wandsworth School 50th Anniversary of The St Paul’s Crusade Boys’ Choir Save the Children Fund Cathedral, London Welcome Ode 1976 Suffolk Schools Choir and HM the Queen’s Silver Corn Orchestra Jubilee visit to Ipswich Exchange, Ipswich

495 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 154–157. 496 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 446. 497 Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 328. 498 Britten, Britten on Music, 328. 499 Kennedy, Britten, 78.

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5.1.2 PROMINENCE GIVEN TO PREMIERES OF POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS

Of these six works, four were entirely occasional, written to commission and premiered at the event for which they were composed. The remaining two, St Nicolas and Psalm 150, would fall into that category too, however they were technically performed at the Aldeburgh Festival before the commissioning school performed them. This is significant, as the Aldeburgh Festival was an important part of Britten and Pears’ life.500 Of Britten’s ninety-five works with opus numbers, twenty-five were premiered at Aldeburgh.501 This proportion is significantly higher when one excludes the forty-one works composed before the Aldeburgh Festival began in 1948, as well as those which were commissioned to be premiered elsewhere and/or those works it would be impractical to perform at the Aldeburgh Festival.502 Effectively this means that the majority of possible Britten premieres occurred at Aldeburgh. It is important to note that the festival was not just a vehicle for premiering Britten’s music; he was intensely involved as Artistic Director and with the practical minutiae of organisation, raising funds and committee work.503 For an internationally-renowned composer, conductor and pianist this was a highly significant investment of time and creative energy.

The first work ever to be performed at the Aldeburgh Festival was St Nicolas. Britten obtained permission from the commissioning organisation, Lancing College, to give the premiere at Aldeburgh504 as this type of work was of great importance to him. 505 Britten conducting St Nicolas, this poly-technical work, with its choirs of young people at the first concert of the Festival is as clear a statement as any of Britten’s view of his place in society and of the core purpose of composer and music. The Little Sweep and Noye’s Fludde also received their premieres at the Aldeburgh Festival. Thus the three works at the heart of the poly-technical repertoire, as established in Chapters Three and Four, were given a level of programming prominence equal to many of his most difficult and demanding pieces, such as the , (1973) and all three of the Church Parables.506

500 Ibid., 50–60. 501 Paul Kildea, Selling Britten: Music and the Marketplace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 182. 502 A debatable figure, but conservatively ten works fall into this category. 503 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 255. 504 A similar situation would arise eighteen years later with the premiere of Psalm 150. 505 Matthews, Britten, 95. 506 Kildea, Selling Britten, 182.

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5.1.3 PUBLISHING AND RECORDING POLY-TECHNICAL WORKS

When it came to publication and recording, these works were also given the same standing as purely professional pieces. The three core poly-technical works were all published within a year of their premieres, consistent with Boosey and Hawkes’ practice of Britten’s opus- numbered works.507 Furthermore, in the first recordings of these works to be released, Britten not only ensured that many musically-untrained children were involved, but also that the adult musicians he use were those whom he trusted with many of his non poly-technical pieces. These included singers Peter Pears and , conductor Norman Del Mar and instrumentalists , Ralph Downes and James Blades.508

The Little Sweep presents an interesting case in that Britten had intended it as part of a television entertainment program called Let’s Make an Opera. Despite this television program seeming highly dated to the more modern viewer (as discussed in Chapter 2),509 it is noteworthy that Britten considered exploiting this new medium with a poly-technical work he had in mind. In 1948 it was an innovative step to consider television as a medium for any sort of art in the post-war climate of Britain. Although the technology existed at this time, very few homes had a television set. It was not until the Royal Coronation in 1953 that the number of domestic televisions increased to more significant numbers.510

In both word and practice, Britten demonstrated that he viewed his poly-technical works as equal to his other pieces. At the heart of this is his stated idea that a composer must not compromise his own voice when writing for children. In his reply to a young composer who sent him some scores to review, Britten said ‘I suppose you were deliberately trying to ‘write down’ to a certain occasion. That is not at all a bad thing to do, but it takes experience not to lose individuality in doing so.’511 This remark reveals a very high level of self-knowledge on Britten’s part. It suggests he knew that he must write to the technical limitations of his young performers but also that he should avoid losing his sense of individual artistic voice when doing so. To verify the application of this statement is at the core of the present thesis; did Britten, in making technical compromises in his poly-technical work, also make artistic compromises?

507 Ibid., 62. 508 www.fabermusic.com/composers/benjamin-britten/discography 509 Matthews, Britten, 110. 510 Jennifer Barnes, Television Opera: The Fall of Opera Commissioned for Television (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 15. (See also 42–53 for a fuller discussion of Britten’s interest in television as a medium for opera) 511 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 259.

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5.2 CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF BRITTEN’S POLY-TECHNICAL REPERTOIRE.

The question of artistic compromise in this case is not the question of whether or not the studied works are great music. Indeed, some of them show no sign of aspirations towards greatness in any sense of the word, such as Friday Afternoons, discussed in Chapter Two. The question, rather, is to what extent did Britten maintain the integrity of his musical and artistic voice in these poly-technical works? Voice, in this sense, is not the voice described by Cone, ‘the persona of each composition is uniquely created by and for that composition,’512 rather the habitual musical idiolect of an individual composer. This is characterised by the gestures that form a composer’s individual musical style; that is, the gestures that are typical of his or her work. In Britten’s case this list would include such devices as canon and passacaglia, the use of the Lydian mode and abrupt moves to remote major tonalities. Analytical works such as those by Rupprecht513 and Evans514 are particularly helpful in discerning these characteristic gestures. Britten’s artistic idiolect may also be described in terms of his extra- musical preoccupations, the themes that permeate so many of his works - particularly the loss of innocence, the persecution of outsiders, the sea, and reconciliation between God and man. Critical and analytical appraisals of Britten’s poly-technical repertoire will now be evaluated in chronological order of their composition.

5.2.1 FRIDAY AFTERNOONS

Friday Afternoons shows some musical moments highly characteristic of Britten, and others less so. In it, Britten seems to adopt something of a jazz style in the song ‘Jazz Man’ and, like a good deal of the music in Paul Bunyan (1941) it comes across as forced and artificial.515 However, Friday Afternoons shows ‘the ability to invent unselfconscious melody… [that] was his most precious gift.’516 These unselfconscious melodies in Friday Afternoons are in a variety of moods; folksy, lilting, rollicking. Perhaps the best known of them is ‘Old Abram Brown’ which Evans describes as ‘a piece of cannonic artifice;’517 a phrase which could be applied to many other passages in Britten’s works. There is, in these songs, a sense of the joy of singing together,518 a shared delight in communal music that is a realisation of the principal aims Britten set forth in the Aspen address. Despite their modest ambitions and their marginal

512 Cone, The Composer’s Voice, 18. 513 Rupprecht, Britten's Musical Language. 514 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten. 515 Kennedy, Britten, 149–151. 516 Matthews, Britten, 30. 517 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 257. 518 Oliver, Benjamin Britten, 50.

115 status as poly-technical works under the terms of the present study, these songs are fully representative of Britten’s voice as a composer, with their simple but interesting melodies and their witty and resourceful piano parts.519

5.2.2 ST NICOLAS

When the cantata St Nicolas was premiered at the very first Aldeburgh Festival, the audience reaction was extremely positive. White quotes E. M. Forster as saying ‘It was one of those triumphs outside the rules of art which only the great artist can achieve.’520 In addition, Donald Mitchell enthused ‘I was so confused by its progressively overwhelming impact that all I could find to say was ‘this is too beautiful’.’521 Though these were statements made in the heady atmosphere of the opening night of the festival by two close friends of Britten, they nevertheless demonstrate that poly-technical music can have an affect and impact equivalent to that of masterpieces for professional musicians.

Despite these appraisals, St Nicolas is a problematic work to some critics. Carpenter for instance considers the storm music ‘naïve’522 while Kennedy states that the music owes too much to Fauré and Elgar and criticises the congregational participations as derivative and ineffectual.523 Evans admires the work in many ways, despite calling some of the choral writing ‘pedestrian,’524 and questioning the method of execution of the congregational singing. Specifically, he considers the hymn settings to have crude harmonies, a brash descant and needlessly complex choral texture supporting them.525 It is difficult to refute these points. For example, the descant in the ‘Old 100th’ takes the girls in the semi-chorus singing soprano up to top B, which is likely to sound shrill coming from anyone but a professional chorister.526 It is important to note that this was the first of Britten’s works to use congregational participation. Even though this technique had been pioneered by Bach and had been used by Britten’s friend Michael Tippett before 1948,527 Britten clearly wished to find his own way of managing such a musical texture. It is reasonable to suggest that, with St Nicolas, he had not found the ideal way to do this but was able to learn from the experience and use the congregation far more effectively in The Little Sweep and Noye’s Fludde.

519 Kennedy, Britten, 124. 520 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 63. 521 Donald Mitchell quoted in White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 109. 522 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 265. 523 Kennedy, Britten, 176–177. 524 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 258. 525 Ibid., 261. 526 Britten, St Nicolas, 69. 527 Kennedy, Britten, 177.

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In terms of Britten’s musical idiolect, St Nicolas contains the compound time rhythms, the Lydian mode, fugue, plainsong, and canon. Uniquely for a poly-technical work, it also contains a part written for Peter Pears. This part contains the lyrical, expressive music one would expect, as well as occasionally robust, heroic writing. Like all of Britten’s parts for Pears it is complex and requires thoughtful characterisation in addition to vocal skill.528 It is significant that Nicolas is a hero to the outsider, to children and to mariners and as a result becomes a hero to Britten. Whatever flaws arose from the integration of the congregation into a musical texture in St Nicolas, it remains a work with great power to move its audience because it is characteristic of Britten’s output and remarkably sincere. It exemplifies the observation made by Andrewes that ‘Britten makes no artistic concessions whatsoever when writing for children.’529

5.2.3 THE LITTLE SWEEP

Critics have also noted deficiencies in The Little Sweep, which out of all Britten’s works for children has aged the most. As outlined earlier, this is due to the fact that it is set in the domestic English setting of 1810, which contributes significantly to its stilted, anachronistic atmosphere, and is firmly attached to the mores of the English upper class.530 As described in Chapters One and Two, the eponymous little sweep, Sammy, is certainly a victim protagonist similar to Billy Budd, Peter Grimes and the Cabin Boy from The Golden Vanity. However, Sammy is entirely dependent on his social ‘betters’ to rescue him from a life of danger and abuse. There is no outrage from Britten or librettist Eric Crozier about a society that permits small children to climb and sweep chimneys. Not only does this fail to align with Britten’s personal and deeply held beliefs, it also caused some consternation in the audience at the premiere.531 The Little Sweep was intended as a play within a play, as part of a larger entertainment called Let’s Make an Opera. These two elements were then recorded as a television program. The first part of this entertainment has had its share of detractors too, and librettist Eric Crozier later withdrew it, leaving The Little Sweep to stand alone.532

528 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 262. 529 John Andrewes “The Composer as Young Person’s Guide,” Tempo New Series 66/67 (Autumn/Winter 1963): 37–38. 530 Matthews, Britten, 110. 531 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 168. 532 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 265.

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Despite these problems, this work retains considerable popularity. Kennedy, writing in 1981, claims it was Britten’s most performed opera.533 Evans claims that one of the work’s strengths is that it ‘breaks down misunderstanding as to the nature of operatic experience.’534 This is done partly by having dialogue instead of recitative, by avoiding bel canto vocal virtuosity and by involving the audience. The four audience songs are not only a wonderful means of engagement535 but they also perform the theatrical function of overture, unseen action, scene change, and finale.536

The music in The Little Sweep contains elements that are typical of Britten (passacaglia, pedal point, counterpoint made from counter melodies) as well as a shanty. In the case of the latter it is curious that in this most landlocked of works, Britten remains inspired by nautical themes.537 As easy as it may be to perform, there is certainly a degree of distinction in The Little Sweep. Holst observes that the instrumental music for Sammy is convincingly pathetic and moving without resorting to cliché, and his vocal material is in a strong operatic tradition.538 Evans points out that it would have been easy for Britten to fall into hackneyed devices in a work such as this, yet he does not. This is noticeably the case for the atmospheric music during the hunt for Sammy and, in particular, for the audience songs.539 The other major strength of this work is consistent with all of Britten’s music for children; he does not patronise them nor write down for them.540 Britten himself, very tellingly, said about The Little Sweep that it was ‘possibly not very distinguished – and also it’s easy.’541 Critically, in Britten’s mind the distinction and ease of performance run along two entirely separate paths and are effectively unrelated. In doing so he implies that a very distinguished, yet easy work was certainly a real possibility.

5.2.4 NOYE’S FLUDDE

There is broad consensus among critics and scholars that Noye’s Fludde represents the pinnacle of Britten’s poly-technical work. Not only is it inclusive of so many performers encompassing a vast range of musical experience and expertise, all of whom have a musically satisfying and artistically meaningful role, but it is also a composition of serious intent and it

533 Kennedy, Britten, 54. 534 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 270. 535 Holst, “Britten and the Young,” 282. 536 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 265. 537 Britten, The Little Sweep, 21–25. 538 Holst, “Britten and the Young,” 282. 539 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 268–270. 540 Kennedy, Britten, 181. 541 Britten, quoted in Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 275.

118 was composed with the highest level of skill; arguably some of Britten’s ‘best wine,’ irrespective of the shape and size of the bottles.542 Noye’s Fludde deals with some of the most important and most frequently explored themes in Britten’s works, including the implacable power of the sea, redemption, purity and reconciliation between God and humanity. As with other works, Britten uses tonality symbolically to represent certain of these ideas.543 The opening E minor is Britten’s penitential key, with the addition of the prominent F natural indicating conflict. Its final resolution to G major suggests reconciliation.544

Despite these weighty matters, Britten did not hesitate to involve children in an artistic exploration of them. As Evans puts it, Noye’s Fludde ‘is not adult music patronisingly watered down.’545 And, as the detailed analyses of Evans and Nannestad demonstrate, the level of musical sophistication in Noye’s Fludde is equal to any of Britten’s other compositions and certain parallels with Peter Grimes (1945), an acknowledged masterpiece, are inescapable.546 Evans identifies that instruments in Britten’s music are occasionally associated with a limited pitch set, often with little overlap between them.547 In Noye’s Fludde for instance, the bugles are inescapably in B flat major, the handbells in E flat major and the open strings on the violins based around D or A. The way Britten weaves these apparently contradictory elements together is masterly, such as in the parade of animals sequence.548

The Storm sequence attracts the most analytical attention, being a passacaglia. Its ground is somewhat dodecaphonic, in that it uses all of the notes of the chromatic scale, but does not employ strict serial procedures.

Figure 5.1: Britten, Noye’s Fludde, p. 105

542 Britten, Britten on Music, 109. 543 Mervyn Cooke, “Be Flat or Be Natural? Pitch Symbolism in Britten’s Operas,” in Rethinking Britten, edited by Philip Rupprecht (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 102–127. 544 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 295. 545 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 11. 546 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 276–279. 547 Ibid. 548 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 73-76.

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More significantly, Nannestad points out that this ground is structurally related to the opening hymn.549 Alongside others,550 he strongly argues for the significance of Britten’s use of passacaglia in this sequence, claiming:

The central role of the passacaglia in this opera confirms Britten’s regard for Noye’s Fludde as a legitimate piece to stand with Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, The Turn of the Screw and Billy Budd, all of which feature important passacaglias, too.551

An analysis of the storm sequence shows the ground as a unifying factor while the Ark moves through a sequence of dangerous and alien situations, symbolised by a variety of dissonant tonalities. At the height of the storm, the entire assembly sing a hymn imploring God to ‘still the restless wave.’552 The instrumental music at this point is at its most complex; the ground continues, the organ manuals support the hymn (but with no reassuring harmony), its pedals produce dissonant rumblings to add to those of the wind machine and other rolling percussion. Further, the strings scratch out high, dissonant triplets553 while the recorders shrill chromatically in the uppermost register.554 In the second verse the texture is thinner, the hymn tune more prominent but harmonised in an unfamiliar555 and disturbing way, particularly to any well-churched people gathered in 1958.556 It is only in the third verse, as Evans eloquently points out, that we are ‘brought indoors’,557 when the storm has abated, both literally and figuratively, and those on the Ark can think about making their peace with God. Because all those gathered have joined in singing this hymn through the storm, they too are emotionally involved, they too have weathered the literal and the figurative storm. The power of Britten involving his gathering in this way is considerable, as Robert Saxton observed, ‘everyone’s in tears … and there’s not a note of Britten being sung.’558 While the emotional affect behind this quote may be accurate, nevertheless it is Britten’s masterly command of the elements at his disposal that make this work so powerful.

549 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 105–111. 550 See also Darrell Handel, “Britten's Use of the Passacaglia,” Tempo 94 (1970): 5. 551 Nannestad, “Benjamin Britten's Noye’s Fludde,” 112. 552 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 125–126. 553 Given the standard of players Britten had in mind, their intonation is likely to be inaccurate - an intentional effect as discussed in Chapter Four. 554 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 124–130. 555 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 130–133. 556 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 272. 557 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 279. 558 Robert Saxton, quoted in Bridcut, Britten's Children, 239.

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Britten’s religious sensibilities were complex and changed throughout his life,559 however his close associate Imogen Holst said that all his music contained hope of redemption.560 It could be argued that Children’s Crusade is an exception, but Britten deeply felt the need for his music to reflect a message of peace and reconciliation.561 This is why the finale of Noye’s Fludde is so sincere and so moving, as God makes a promise of peace to humanity at the end of the story and symbolises that promise with a rainbow.562

The rainbow itself is represented by the first appearance of the handbells563 as the sole accompaniment to the Voice of God and they soon form part of a rich musical tapestry that is polytonal and well as polyphonic. The bugles add their calls in B flat, the other instruments offer complex accompaniment figures in C and G major, and some of the ripieno strings suggest tonal centres of D and A. Adding to this texture, the entire gathering, Noye and his family, all the animals and the congregation sing Tallis’ mighty G major canon in eight parts. John Culshaw, as producer for Decca, famously said this music will ‘shake normally impervious men to their foundations,’564 suggesting a deeply human connection artfully achieved, and characteristic of a composer at the peak of his powers.

5.2.5 PSALM 150

Compared to Noye’s Fludde, Psalm 150 is a work of more modest dimensions and ambitions. Nevertheless, it is highly characteristic of Britten’s mature writing; this work is occasional, poly-technical and inclusive. As Roseberry states, ‘whenever Britten addresses himself to writing music to be sung or played by the young we may be sure that his aural imagination will be kindled by the technical limitations of his players.’565 The harmonic language in this work is derived from long pedal points, scalic melodies and harmonies derived from thickening these melodies. Bridcut observes that the short rests separating vocal phrases in this work are a characteristic of Britten’s music when he wants to sound energetic.566 Less easy to define, but still characteristic, is the way in which Psalm 150 is so occasional. In spite of its open orchestration it is clearly and characteristically a Britten piece for young people to perform on a celebratory occasion and its inclusivity is very carefully calculated. It has been stated by Skempton that ‘the glory of Britten’s setting of Psalm 150… is its wild

559 Elliott, Benjamin Britten: The Spiritual Dimension, 3-5. 560 Ibid., 125. 561 Matthews, Britten, 128. 562 Gen. 9:12–17. 563 Britten, Noye’s Fludde, 168–169. 564 John Culshaw, quoted in Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 266. 565 Eric Roseberry, “Britten's and Psalm 150,” Tempo 66–67 (1963): 40–47. 566 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 13.

121 imprecision… it should never sound rehearsed.’567 Part of this imprecision is inevitably through the use of musically-untrained children as performers, and Bridcut points out that Psalm 150 needs children to work; professional performances are lacking the essential quality.568 In this sense, not only did Britten refuse to write down for children, in a certain sense he wrote up, as professionals are in some ways inferior performers of the work.

5.2.6 CHILDREN’S CRUSADE

In assessing Children’s Crusade Bridcut observes ‘it is remarkable how many of his own unwritten rules of composition [Britten] seemed to break in this piece,’569 without listing those rules nor how they have been broken. Children’s Crusade contains some of the more challenging musical gestures of Britten’s later works. These include the poly-tempo and indefinite repeats of ostinato figures under unrelated textures570 and a brand of fierce tintinnabulation571 that creates a sound world similar to that of the Church Parables and even, arguably, Death in Venice. In this light it can therefore be identified as one of Britten’s late works, which refutes Bridcut’s somewhat vague claim. Britten’s sympathy for the hopeless plight of the children in this work strikes to the very core of his personal philosophy and gives voice to his pacifism.

For some writers, this is a problematic work. Kennedy finds it ‘uncharacteristic’ of Britten’s output because it ‘lacks conviction,’572 although he emphasises that this is merely a matter of his opinion. Evans goes deeper in his evaluation,573 and opines that Children’s Crusade is ‘not related to the rest of Britten’s output either in genre or in the manner of the musical discourse.’574 However, the most in-depth analysis of this work by Donald Mitchell is also the one that praises it as a work of genius.575 However, he makes some very telling points. Mitchell analyses Children’s Crusade as a theme and set of variations, a form Britten used in many of his other works.576 He goes on to highlight both the musical complexity and yet relative ease of performance for the children involved.577 Due to the dissonant nature of this work, the music appears difficult for the children to sing. However, according to the criteria

567 Howard Skempton. “Britten and Cardew” in Beyond Britten: The Composer and the Community, edited by Peter Wiegold and Ghislaine Kenyon (Woodbridge: Brewer and Boydell, 2015), 25. 568 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 14. 569 Ibid., 141. 570 Britten, Children’s Crusade, 61–69. 571 Ibid., 37–41. 572 Kennedy, Britten, 215. 573 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 285–292. 574 Ibid., 285. 575 Although as part of Britten’s inner circle was likely to be biased in this regard. 576 Mitchell, Donald “Small Victims,” 166–167. 577 Ibid., 168–169.

122 used to measure vocal difficulty in Chapter Three of the present study, Britten made the task of learning and performing this music as straightforward as he could without compromising the confronting dissonance which is so central an element of this work. Tables 5.2 and 5.3 demonstrate the measures Britten employed to this end.

Table 5.2: Solo Singers in Children’s Crusade and All Britten’s Untrained Children’s Solo Vocal Music

Children’s Crusade All Musically-untrained Solo Children in Britten’s Works

Range 18.78 19.74

Pitch proximity 1.40 1.68

Table 5.3: Chorus in Children’s Crusade and All Britten’s Untrained Children’s Chorus Music

Children’s Crusade All Musically-untrained Chorus Children in Britten’s Works

Range 23 17.25

Pitch proximity 1.34 1.87

Nevertheless, the Wandsworth boys found learning the vocal music in Children’s Crusade very challenging, despite Britten’s technical expertise in mitigating this.578 However, with the absolute inclusivity of the percussion parts (see Chapter Four), the use of extended theme and variation structure and the work’s pacifism and plea for victims, Children’s Crusade sits at the heart of Britten’s output, despite the questions raised by Kennedy and Evans. These characteristics are exemplars not only of the poly-technical repertoire, but also of many of Britten’s general works and thus support the argument about voice and authenticity that is being advanced in this chapter.

5.2.7 WELCOME ODE

578 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 139.

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Britten’s last work, Welcome Ode, contains many musical features typical of his output; rhythmic liveliness, pitch organisation based on extended modality, multiple stops with open strings and the use of devices such as pedal point and canon. As music, it is ‘joyously unpretentious;’579 a piece for a celebratory occasion in Britten’s own community, Suffolk. The fact that the piece was written for a royal occasion is emblematic of the fact that Britten was serving a larger community – the nation. Britten did not survive to hear the premiere of this work. He was ill and frail when he wrote it and had some notion he would compose no more,580 and yet ‘he was ready to devote some of his last working hours to this wholly unpretentious piece.’581 This speaks eloquently about Britten’s attitude to writing music for children, young musicians and non-professional musicians, suggesting these works are at the core of Britten’s identity as a composer.

579 Palmer, “The Ceremony of Innocence,” 83. 580 Kennedy, Britten, 106–110. 581 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 293.

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6. CONCLUSION

This study demonstrates that Britten frequently made technical compromises when writing pieces for musically-untrained children to sing, occasionally in unpredictable ways. This is particularly true when comparing chorus and solo lines. In many cases the chorus have, prima facie, more difficult music to sing. However, these data are distorted in many cases by unison chorus singing which takes some groups out of the normal range, with the implicit justification for this being that their sound will be supported by groups who are stronger in this range. The second major complicating factor on these data is that any recitative will tend to depress the results for pitch proximity. The data set obtained for this study is very large and it is hoped that it can be used for further analytical work on Britten’s vocal music.

When writing for musically-untrained instrumentalists, Britten’s technical compromises are also readily evident. Indeed, they have been described to some extent by previous studies, including major works such as those by White, 582 Evans583 and Rupprecht.584 The present study has examined these instrumental parts in greater detail, describing precisely how Britten’s instrumental parts for musically-untrained children are technically easy to play. However, these technical limitations are linked with one of the great strengths of these works, with polished and professional performances lacking this essential quality.585 Britten himself claimed to be dissatisfied when he heard the bugle parts in Noye’s Fludde played tightly and accurately by professional trumpeters.586 Further, he revealed his musical intentions when he said ‘even when they get it wrong, it doesn’t sound too awful – where the polish of the performance isn’t the immediate aim.’587 This not only shows how the lack of instrumental polish is precisely the sound he imagined for these works, it also shows a great deal of insight into the minds of children.

This study concurs with previous work that claims the poly-technical works of Britten are equal to any of his other works.588 Much of the musical style in them is shown to be unmistakeably that of Britten, where he does nothing to dilute his natural language with its advanced modality, use of passacaglia, fugue and other sophisticated devices; and with its often-complex time signatures and syncopated rhythms. It could be said that the intentions of

582 White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas. 583 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten. 584 Rupprecht, Britten's Musical Language 585 Bridcut, Britten's Children, 14. 586 Ibid., 234–237. 587 Britten, quoted in Bridcut, Britten's Children, 234. 588 Mellers, “Through Noye’s Fludde,” 154.

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Britten when composing these pieces is evident in the important and characteristic themes present, such as the loss of innocence, peace and reconciliation, the sea, and sympathy for the outsider. To Britten, the weightier of his poly-technical pieces were substantial works of art. Evans, in his comprehensive and detailed analysis of Britten’s entire output, described Noye’s Fludde as ‘one of his major imaginative achievements; the many imitations that have followed his example do nothing to temper one’s admiration for the original.’589

As Evans suggests, Noye’s Fludde is not only the acme of poly-technical opera, it is also the foundation work of an entire genre. It is evident that the two earlier poly-technical works at the core of this repertoire (St Nicolas and The Little Sweep) have technical and artistic problems. Britten was breaking entirely new ground with them and certain flaws are bound to arise in these circumstances. For example, in St Nicolas the hymns do not seem entirely congruent with the rest of the music and the soprano descant is shrill and jarring coming from young voices. The Little Sweep has a libretto that sounds extremely stilted to modern ears and a scenario which is not entirely consistent with Britten’s world-view. However, it is clear that Britten learned from the experience of composing and performing these pieces and produced, in Noye’s Fludde, a work that uses the young musicians’ technical weaknesses as a source of strength. It is also a piece that is among the most moving and inspired operas of the entire 20th century590

Since Noye’s Fludde was premiered in 1958, a number of composers have written poly- technical operas that specifically involve large numbers of children. In the United Kingdom, these include Peter Maxwell-Davies, Jonathan Dove, John Barber and Malcolm Williamson. The method by which these works are created often differs substantially from how Britten composed, but the musical and artistic intention is the same.591 Discerning the precise influence of Noye’s Fludde on these later operas would be an extremely fruitful area of further study.

As this study has outlined, Benjamin Britten managed to make great art from improbable and unpromising ingredients. It is remarkable he did so with completely untrained children’s voices, violinists who have only learned how to play open strings, percussionists whose enthusiasm outweighs their skill by a large factor, and by inviting the people gathered, young and old alike, to be part of these extraordinary works.

589 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 273. 590 Mellers, “Through Noye’s Fludde,” 154 591 Barber, “Finding a Place in Society,” 120–122.

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