As posted to rec.music.opera and rec.music.classical
The other night I stupidly forgot that I had a ticket to the Prom of
Britten's Curlew River (perhaps my forgetfulness was a heat-induced aversion
to travelling...). However, I listened to it on the radio, and will tape its
televising on Sunday when I'm at Taverner (preceded by Britten's War
Requiem...).
I thoroughly enjoyed the radio broadcast. I am not familiar with the piece
so can't insert any insightful comments other than 'enjoyed'. Not full of
singaglong tunes but nevertheless musical. Clearly an eastern influence on
it. I had no problem understanding the story without recourse to a printed
libretto.
I thought that it was entirely unfamiliar but I think not. I must have heard
it many years ago as a child. As I was listening I instinctively thought of
the books of Arthur Ransome (the most famous, Swallows and Amazons was set
in the Lake District but many of the others were set on the Norfolk Broads
not so very far from Britten's Suffolk). Therefore, I deduce, the music is
evocative of the place it is set.
I then thought more that as a small child I really really liked Benjamin
Britten, but as I moved into teenage and then adulthood, and formed
independent musical tastes, he fell out of favour. It's only perhaps in the
last two years that I have re-discovered him.
I then got round to watching something I had taped a few weeks ago - a
documentary called Benjamin Britten's Boys. I had feared it would be a
prurient sneer with nudge nudge references to paedophilia. But it wasn't -
it actually, I think, was incredibly sensitive in discussing BB's delight in
being with children. And David Hemmings was interesting - at the age of ten
he spent two months living with Ben while learning his part for Turn of the
Screw and his parents weren't bothered. I think nowadays a ten year old
wouldn't be permitted to work without a fully vetted chaperone. That wasn't
the case then, evidently.
One of the themes emphasised was how well BB wrote about and for children.
Which is perhaps why I so liked him when I was a child. (Why I have come
back to him now I don't know!) And participating in performances of Noyes
Fludde and A Ceremony of Carols was wonderful!
There seems to be a fair amount of Britten at the Proms this year - one of
the themes is English composers, commemorating the deaths of Elgar, Holst
and Delius and the births of Maxwell Davies and Taverner in 1934, and to
omit Britten would be a strange lacuna.
I think it's fair to say that he was the greatest living composer of my
lifetime, and is much liked among the older generation - my neighbour in his
late 70s just called round, and he says he very much likes BB. I am not
aware of a great following for him amongst my contemporaries - (although one
friend, albeit a music graduate described her wedding, as her father-in-law
slipped into a diabetic coma during a Schubert song, as being like Death in
Venice - I just nodded, I'm afraid).
I have no sense of, objectively, how great he is deemed to be in the canon -
especially outside of England where parochialism, patriotism and chauvinism
inevitably play their part. And I think I'm going through a mini 'phase' of
English music
I realise this is a bit rambling, but I would be interested in the thoughts
of others.
I will post a permalink when Google archives it.
Update: Hyperlinks to rec.music.opera and rec.music.classical - at the time of writing, the replies have not yet been archived.
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