Benjamin Britten… An Introduction to a 20th Century Great.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you.

And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And for this one it is… an introduction to the music of the 20^th century British composer Benjamin Britten. Today he is perhaps best known for his operas which included ‘Peter Grimes’, ‘The Turn of The Screw’, ‘Billy Budd’ and ‘Death In Venice’. But I am actually going to feature more of his orchestral work. There’ll be a bit of singing today but I’m going to save up his operas for another episode.

Britten was born in 1913 and died in 1976. I’ll give you some more biography as we go along but I want to get straight into some music. Here is the opening section of his Violin Concerto written in 1939 but revised in 1950. In this recording Janine Jansen is the violin soloist and the London Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Paavo Järvi. It is about 9 minutes long and starts quietly.

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That was the opening section of Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto. Janine Jansen was the violin soloist and the London Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Britten’s musical gifts were obvious from a young age. He commenced composing as a child and at the age of fourteen took private lessons in composition from Frank Bridge. And Britten was lucky with Bridge. Unlike many teachers of the time who might have imposed strict adherence to traditional forms, Bridge introduced Britten to contemporary European music, including works by Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Bela Bartók, while also encouraging him to develop his own distinctive voice. Bridge's own pacifist beliefs and progressive political views also influenced Britten.

Britten went on to study at the Royal College of Music and once he graduated in 1933 one of the first things he composed was a four part work for strings based on melodies he had devised in his early teens. He called it his ‘Simple Symphony’. Here is the three minute second section called ‘Playful Pizzicato’. By the way, Pizzicato is a term given to the notes where composers want stringed instruments plucked rather than bowed. In this performance Britten himself conducts the English Chamber Orchestra.

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That was the ‘Playful Pizzicato’ section of Benjamin Britten’s ‘Simple Symphony’ and Britten conducted the English Chamber Orchestra.

In the 1930’s Britten found ways to support himself writing music for BBC radio productions. One of his collaborators was the poet and essayist W. H. Auden. Six years Britten’s senior and already championed by T. S. Eliot and published by Faber & Faber; Auden was for a time a strong influence on the younger Britten.

When Auden and his partner Christopher Isherwood emigrated to the US in January 1939, Britten decided to do the same. The idea of greater compositional opportunities and the sense of the impending European war perhaps contributed. But it was originally intended to be a short trip. But with the outbreak of war Britten was advised by the British Embassy to stay in the US as a cultural ambassador. But in 1942, homesickness, perhaps the sense of patriotism and in particular the inspiration for a very specific musical project made him decide to return to the UK. Which was neither an easy or a safe thing to do. He found passage on a Swedish cargo ship that over a five week journey managed to elude German U-Boats, aircraft and battleships and get Britten back to England.

On the way the ship docked briefly in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Britten found a copy of The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, compiled by Gerald Bullett, in a bookshop. The medieval and early English poems in this anthology fired his imagination to write a Christmas work. Finished shortly after arriving back in the UK and then revising it slightly a year later it was, and remains, a popular success. It is set for solo harp and boys’ voices.   

There are eleven parts and I am going to play you the one titled ‘In Freezing Winter Night’. The text is by the 16^th century English Jesuit poet Robert Southwell. Here is the Choir of Kings College Cambridge directed by Stephen Cleobury and the harp is played by Rachel Masters.

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That was ‘In Freezing Winter Night’ from Benjamin Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols’. The text was by the 16^thcentury English Jesuit poet Robert Southwell and the Choir of Kings College Cambridge was directed by Stephen Cleobury and the harp was played by Rachel Masters.

Now when Britten went to the US in the middle of 1939 he did not go alone. Joining him was a singer by the name of Peter Pears. They had met in 1937 and by the time they arrived in the US they had become lovers and would remain partners for the rest of their lives. And Britten’s writing of music specifically for Peter Pears would yield some of the most incredible vocal music of the 20^th century.

One was written the year after the Ceremony of Carols I just played you an excerpt from. Britten called it Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. He set six English poems spanning three centuries to music… from anonymous Elizabethan verse to William Blake, creating a meditation on evening, night, and sleep. Here is ‘O soft embalmer of the still midnight’ the text of which is from John Keats’ sonnet ‘To Sleep’. It is about four minutes long and it is performed by the men in question,  the tenor Peter Pears, with the composer and his partner Benjamin Britten conducting  the horn player Barry Tuckwell and the Strings of the London Symphony Orchestra.

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That was the tenor Peter Pears, with his partner, the composer Benjamin Britten, conducting  the horn player Barry Tuckwell and the Strings of the London Symphony Orchestra… with ‘O soft embalmer of the still midnight’ from Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

I mentioned a little while back that one of the reasons that Britten and Pears returned to the UK in 1942 was the inspiration for a very specific compositional project.

In 1941, Britten read an article in The Listener magazine by the novelist E.M. Forster about the Suffolk poet George Crabbe and his work “The Borough”, set on the Suffolk coast… close to Britten's birthplace. He and Pears tracked down a copy of the poem in a bookshop in Los Angeles and the work awakened in Britten longings for England and he decided to write an opera based on one of Crabbe's characters, the fisherman Peter Grimes. It would become Britten's first great operatic success and it seems to make sense that to create the opera, immersion in the world of Peter Grimes required a return to the UK.

As I said at the start of the episode I’ll save up the full opera experience for another episode but in his opera Peter Grimes Britten wrote several orchestral interludes that connected the episodes of the opera and supported the moods of the various scenes. I have in the past jokingly described them as ‘the best set change music in the history of opera’ but there is maybe a grain of truth in that. While composers like Richard Wagner had written substantial orchestral interludes in their operas, Britten was bringing this level of orchestral sophistication to English opera for the first time since the operas of Henry Purcell… who had been dead for over two centuries.

With the success of Peter Grimes in 1945 Britten quickly took the interludes and grouped them for the concert hall into what is known now as the ‘Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes’. And as they are really remarkable uses of music to describe moods and places I’ll give you the four titles… ‘Dawn on the Beach’, ‘The Storm’, ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘Evening’. They are about four minutes each and here is the composer Benjamin Britten conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

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That was the ‘Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes’. The composer Benjamin Britten conducted the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have another couple of pieces coming up but before I get to them I want to give you a little information that I hope you find useful… If you would like to listen to past episodes, of which there are more than forty, or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes.

I hope you have enjoyed this Benjamin Britten focused episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts.. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

Alright, to finish this episode I have an excerpt from Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ from 1962. This was written to be performed to open the newly constructed cathedral in the city of Coventry in the West Midlands… whose original cathedral had been destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. For the words, Britten took the poetry of Wilfred Owen who had been killed in battle in the final days of World War One and combined it with the Latin text of the catholic church service… the Mass for the Dead and created an incredibly powerful statement on the futility of war that is also some remarkable music. He featured parts for three singers… a tenor, a baritone and a soprano. His intention for the first performance was that the roles each feature a member of the principal European combatant nations… Germany, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. It didn’t quite work out for the premiere but for the recording Britten got his wish… Galina Vishnevskaya is the soprano, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is the baritone and the tenor is… Peter Pears.

The whole work is about 90 minutes long and I have a feeling might get its own episode further down the track but for now here is just the ‘Dies Irae / Lacrimosa’ section. It is about 6 minutes long and the composer, Benjamin Britten, conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and & Chorus and the Highgate School Boys' Choir. And I just want to say a quick thank you to my friend Peter Pitcher who played this to me in 1980. He’s been gone for a long time now. But still loved and still remembered.

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That was the ‘Dies Irae / Lacrimosa’ section of Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’. The composer conducted the London Symphony Orchestra and & Chorus and the Highgate School Boys' Choir. The soloists were Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,  baritone and… Peter Pears, tenor.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’. This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… This is the final three minutes of Britten’s ‘Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra’ from 1945. Perhaps never has such a frankly prosaic, but to be fair entirely accurate, title been given to a work of such fun and exuberance. I’ve put the whole thing on the Spotify playlist accompanying this episode. And I seriously encourage you to have a listen if you get the chance. But for now, just a morsel. Benjamin Britten conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

Thanks again for listening.