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Myth in the Early Collaborations of Benjamin Britten and William Plomer

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Myth in the Early Collaborations of Benjamin Britten and William Plomer MYTH IN THE EARLY COLLABORAT IONS OF BENJAMIN BRITTEN AND WILLIAM PLOMER Kevin M. Salfen, B.M., M.M. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2005 APPROVED: Margaret Notley, Major Professor Cindy McTee, Minor Professor Deanna Bush, Committee Member Lester Brothers, Chair of the Department of Theory, History, and Ethnomusicology John Scott, Dean of the College of Music Sandra L. Terrell, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Salfen, Kevin M., Myth in the Early Collaborations of Benjamin Britten and William Plomer. Doctor of Philosophy (Musicology), August 2005, 246 pp., 1 table, 20 musical examples, bibliography, 101 titles. Although the most well-known collaborations of William Plomer and Benjamin Britten are the three church parables (or church operas) – Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace, and The Prodigal Son – by the time of the completion of Curlew River in 1964, the librettist and composer had been working together for well over a decade. During that time, they had completed the opera Gloriana and had considered collaborating on three other projects: one a children’s opera on Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mr. Tod, one on an original story of Plomer’s called “Tyco the Vegan,” and one on a Greek myth (possibly Arion, Daedalus and Icarus, or Phaëthon). Far from being footnotes to the parables, these early collaborations established Plomer and Britten’s working relationship and brought to light their common interests as well as their independent ones. Their successive early collaborations, therefore, can be thought of as a conversation through creative expression. This metaphor of conversation can be applied both to successive collaborations and to the completed Gloriana, in that the libretto and the music can be seen as representing different interpretations of both major and minor characters in the opera, including Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. In Gloriana, Britten employed at least three specifically musical methods of challenging the meaning of the libretto: instrumental commentary, textural density, and dramatically significant referential pitches. Plomer and Britten’s conversation, carried out through these early collaborations, touches on the function of art, activism, and modern morality, but it is best circumscribed by the concept of myth. Two divergent and very influential interpretations of myth – Matthew Arnold’s “sweetness and light” and primal liberation (deduced from Nietzsche) – can be usefully applied to Plomer and Britten’s unfolding conversation. The implications of Plomer and Britten’s adoption of myth as the topic and language of their collaborative conversation are vast and must be considered in order to understand more fully their work together. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... v LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES..............................................................................................vi Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: OPERA AND CONVERSATION ....................................... 1 2 FINDING A MYTHIC SUBJECT...................................................................... 14 2.1 Making a Librettist of Plomer................................................................. 14 2.1.1 Plomer before Britten.................................................................. 15 2.1.2 The Circumstances of Britten’s and Plomer’s First Collaboration ..................................................................................................... 18 2.1.3 Britten’s Reputation with His Librettists .................................... 23 2.2 “A most alarming evening’s entertainment”: Mr. Tod’s Amoral Universe ................................................................................................................. 27 2.2.1 The Tale of Mr. Tod for Beatrix Potter ....................................... 29 2.2.2 Categories of Meaning Shared between Potter, Britten, and Plomer ..................................................................................................... 35 2.2.3 A Proposal for Plomer’s Reception of Beatrix Potter................. 43 2.3 “I think it’s enchanting”: “Tyco the Vegan” and Activism through Performance ............................................................................................ 49 2.3.1 A Project in Outer Space............................................................. 51 2.3.2 Concerning the Identity of Tyco the Vegan................................ 54 2.3.3 Setting “Tyco the Vegan” Apart from The Tale of Mr. Tod....... 59 2.3.4 Activism through Actual and Metaphorical Performance in Britten ..................................................................................................... 62 2.3.5 A Second Project Goes Unfinished............................................. 68 3 GLORIANA AS THE THIRD BRITTEN-PLOMER COLLABORATION: THE INTERPLAY OF SOURCES IN PLOMER’S GLORIANA LIBRETTO......... 71 3.1 Chronology, Context and the Audience’s Responsibility in the First Act Libretto.................................................................................................... 73 3.2 Choosing Sides in the Act II Libretto ..................................................... 82 3.3 The Centrality of Elizabeth in the Act III Libretto ................................. 90 ii 3.4 A Final Omission: Hiding Francis Bacon............................................. 103 4 GLORIANA AS THE THIRD BRITTEN-PLOMER COLLABORATION: BRITTEN’S MUSICAL REDEFINITION OF PLOMER’S GLORIANA ....... 108 4.1 Britten’s Redefinition of Plomer’s Libretto through Instrumental Commentary.......................................................................................... 110 4.2 Britten’s Redefinition of Plomer’s Libretto through Voice Relationships ............................................................................................................... 117 4.3 Britten’s Redefinition of Plomer’s Libretto through “Magic Notes” ... 129 4.3.1 A Theory of Magic Notes: Definition and Methodological Problems ................................................................................... 130 4.3.2 Essex and the F-sharp-B-E Trajectory...................................... 136 4.3.3 Elizabeth and the D-G-C Trajectory......................................... 141 4.3.4 Other Magic Notes: C/F as Public/Private, B-flat/E-flat as Indecision/Judgment ................................................................. 151 4.3.5 The “Flexible System” at Work: Magic Notes at the End of Act III ................................................................................................... 159 4.3.6 The Limitations and Advantages of Magic Notes .................... 163 4.4 Categories of Meaning in Gloriana: The Conversation Continues ...... 165 5 GREEK COLLABORATIONS: BRITTEN, PLOMER, AND THE MORALITY OF MYTH......................................................................................................... 174 5.1 Finding the Right Myth......................................................................... 174 5.2 The Myth of Greek Myth in the Postwar World................................... 182 5.2.1 Greek Myth as the Language of Didacticism ........................... 183 5.2.2 The Doubled Mythic Significance of Ancient Greece.............. 186 5.3 Ancient Greece as “Sweetness and Light” and Primal Liberation ....... 189 5.3.1 Defining Matthew Arnold’s “Sweetness and Light” ................ 190 5.3.2 Defining Primal Liberation in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy.... 193 5.4 Britten and Plomer as Interpreters of the Greco-Roman World ........... 197 5.4.1 Plomer’s Greece: The Apollonian and Dionysian in Conflict.. 197 5.4.1.1 The Taint of the Dionysian in Plomer’s Greece ........ 198 5.4.1.2 The Desire for the Dionysian in Plomer’s Greece..... 203 5.4.2 The Apollonian/Dionysian Binarism in Britten’s Use of Greece and Rome .................................................................................. 209 5.4.2.1 Apollonian/Dionysian Conflict in Britten’s “Hymn” 210 iii 5.4.2.2 The Dionysian and Condemnation in The Rape of Lucretia...................................................................... 217 5.4.2.3 The Importance of Binarisms for Britten’s Mythic Language.................................................................... 226 6. CONCLUSION: THE MORALITY OF MYTH.............................................. 230 6.1 The Morality of Myth ........................................................................... 230 6.1.1 Scholarship as Myth; Scholarship is Myth ............................... 230 6.1.2 Britten and Plomer’s Attraction to Myth .................................. 232 6.2 The Later Collaborations ...................................................................... 237 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 240 iv LIST OF TABLES Page 4.1 Table of Magic Notes in Britten’s Gloriana....................................................................159 v LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES Page 4.1 Singling out Essex’s line ([Gloriana] rehearsal 99 +2mm.)............................................111 4.2 The Queen follows the “crooked as her carcass” contour ([Gloriana] rehearsal 106)....113 4.3 Coranto undermined by Essex’s “crooked as her carcass” ([Gloriana] rehearsal 109 +13mm.)...........................................................................................................................114
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