Durham E-Theses Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, and Silence as the Ineable in English Cathedral Music PAULEY, JOHN-BEDE How to cite: PAULEY, JOHN-BEDE (2013) Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, and Silence as the Ineable in English Cathedral Music, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9499/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 ABSTRACT Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, and Silence as the Ineffable in English Cathedral Music John-Bede Pauley Silence’s expressive potential came to the fore in twentieth-century arts and letters as never before. Its role in Christian theology and spirituality has a much longer history, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, its expressive potential had not been significantly recognized in liturgical choral music. This study examined the relationship between twentieth-century musical silence and the expression of silence as the ineffable in Anglican choral music (referred to as English cathedral music or ECM) of the middle of the twentieth century. The oeuvres of Benjamin Britten and Herbert Howells, two composers successful in both secular and liturgical repertoires and prominent in mid- twentieth-century ECM, were analyzed. This study examined perceptions and expressions of silence in areas of thought and creativity closely related to ECM: Anglican theology, twentieth-century music, and twentieth-century literature. It found that twentieth-century Anglicanism had an ethos of restraint about expressing silence, but the High Church wing (closer to Anglicanism’s Catholic roots) was more open to expressing silence as the ineffable than the Evangelical wing. Howells’s High Church background and Britten’s Evangelical background help account for Howells’s interest and Britten’s lack of interest in silence as the ineffable. This difference between Howells and Britten also became apparent by examining the silence-related literature they selected or avoided. Howells’s oeuvre thus became the focus of the remainder of the study. Howells’s perceptions of, and techniques for expressing, silence as the ineffable—some of which are unique to him—were identified and compared with the perceptions and techniques of important continental composers interested in silence: Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Anton Webern, and Olivier Messiaen. This study analyzed Howells’s more direct expressions of silence in several secular works before analyzing the more nuanced expression of silence in his ECM. Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, and Silence as the Ineffable in English Cathedral Music by John-Bede Pauley Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music Durham University 2013 Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. vi Statement of Copyright .................................................................................................... viii Part I – The Context: Silence in Mid-Twentieth-Century Anglican Theology and Music Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 Defining Silence? ............................................................................................................................... 2 Two Levels of Silence: First-Level Silence. ...................................................................................... 3 Second-Level Silence. ........................................................................................................................ 4 On Narrowing the Scope of Silence to Contemplative Stillness ....................................................... 6 Defining “English Cathedral Music.” ................................................................................................ 6 Why Britten and Howells? ................................................................................................................. 8 Outline of this Study. ....................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter One. Silence in Anglican Liturgy and Spirituality. ............................................ 13 Introduction. ..................................................................................................................................... 13 Christianity and Silence. .................................................................................................................. 15 Silence and World-Views Ancient and Modern. ............................................................................. 16 Vetero-Testamentary Silence. .......................................................................................................... 18 Neo-Testamentary Silence. .............................................................................................................. 21 The Silence of St. Paul. .................................................................................................................... 22 Silence in the Book of Common Prayer. ......................................................................................... 23 Quiet in the Book of Common Prayer. ............................................................................................ 25 Silence and Church of England Documents: 1922. ......................................................................... 25 Silence and Church of England Documents: 1951. ......................................................................... 26 Silence and Hymnody ...................................................................................................................... 27 Defining Christian Spirituality and Mysticism. ............................................................................... 29 Silence, Mystical Theology, and Mysticism. ................................................................................... 30 Silence, Mystical Theology, and Anglican Liturgy. ........................................................................ 32 Monasticism, Silence, and Lectio Divina. ....................................................................................... 33 Anglican Liturgy and Stilling Emotions. ......................................................................................... 34 Silence and Churchmanship. ............................................................................................................ 35 Low Church Spirituality and Silence. .............................................................................................. 36 High Church Spirituality and Silence. ............................................................................................. 38 Conclusion. ...................................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter Two. Silence and Musicology ............................................................................ 40 Introduction – Defining Musical Silence ......................................................................................... 40 The Purely Musical and the Extra-Musical. .................................................................................... 41 Musical Silence and Meaning. ......................................................................................................... 42 Musical Silence as a Musical Topic or Gesture. .............................................................................. 45 An Early Musicological Exploration of Silence. ............................................................................. 46 Narrowing the Scope and Context: Stylistic Periods. ...................................................................... 48 Early Subjective Perceptions of Musical Silence. ........................................................................... 49 Gaudibert’s Taxonomic Approach. .................................................................................................. 50 Gaudibert’s Taxonomy and This Thesis’s Taxonomy. .................................................................... 51 Resisting Taxonomies: Stan Link’s “Much Ado About Nothing”. ................................................. 62 Explicitly Resisting Taxonomies: John Potter and Naomi Waltham-Smith. ................................... 63 The Importance of Context: Ellen T. Harris and Handel. ................................................................ 65 Conclusion. ...................................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter Three. Twentieth-Century Musical Silence .......................................................