britten – This Week's Music

Hello all,

We’re only a couple of weeks away from Christmas, so its time to start listening to Christmas music! This is not, however, what most people think of when they think of Christmas music. In fact, it’s not even the usual set of popular Christmas carols that cycle through the radio stations this time of year. Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten is nonetheless a true Christmas masterpiece.

Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, wrote Ceremony of Carols in 1942 when he was only 29 years old. It is written for three-part choir, solo voices, and harp and incorporates 11 Middle-English Christmas carols. Britten composed it while on board a ship from New York to London. When the ship stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Britten purchased a book of medieval poetry that happened to include a number of 14th and 15th century English carols. Before he stepped off the ship in London, he had written Ceremony of Carols.

This piece is unique in several ways. First, note the use of a single instrument – a harp – as the accompaniment for the choir. Most choral works are accompanied by a small orchestra, but Britten uses only the harp. Second, note the way the choir is a sort of call-and-response partner with the solo voices. This creates a lovely echoing effect. Third and finally, listen for the simple, roaming unison lines that individual voices sometimes present. This is Britten’s imitation of Gregorian chant, a kind of choral singing that was popular in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Enjoy!

Hello all,

Our music for this week is “Variations on the theme of Frank Bridge” by Benjamin Britten.

British composer Frank Bridge was Britten’s childhood teacher and lifelong musical mentor. Britten wrote that he would often spend entire days in composition lessons with Bridge, who was an unrelenting perfectionist. Yet he also credited Bridge as the most formative influence on his musical development. Britten wrote the variations you will hear today as a musical tribute to his teacher.

This composition is written for string orchestra and contains one introductory theme followed by nine variations on the theme. Each movement depicts a different aspect of Bridge’s character. Britten even wrote in the score which personality trait he wanted each variation to reflect: “his integrity…his energy…his charm…his wit.” The original theme, as the title suggests, is taken from one of Bridge’s string quartets, titled Three Idylls for String Quartet.

Listen for the different musical influences in this music. If you listen closely, you can hear a bit of Schoenberg’s experimentation, a bit of Elgar’s grandeur, a bit of a Rossini opera, a bit of a Viennese waltz, and a bit of Ravel’s harmonic genius. Perhaps Britten had taken to heart T.S. Eliot’s notion that true art is the result of an arduous, lifelong process of synthesizing the art that has come before you. It is in this sense that a truly great work of art may be, as Eliot says, one in which “the dead poets . . . assert their immortality most vigorously.”

Enjoy!