Britten: Illuminations

Description

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Orchestral Song-Cycles 1Les Illuminations Our Hunting Fathers Quatre Chansons Fran?ºaisesThe medium of the orchestral song-cycle is one thatmuch attracted Britten. His concept of an anthology ofsometimes diverse texts, unified by a common literary orpoetic theme was a favourite device to which hereturned several times. Although there had been severaldistinguished precedents in the genre - by Berlioz, Raveland Elgar among others - it seems likely that Britten'smain influence was Mahler, whose own examples of theform Britten is known to have greatly admired. To thefour mature song-cycles with orchestra - Our HuntingFathers, Les Illuminations, Serenade and Nocturne -should also be added a fifth, the very early QuatreChansons Fran?ºaises, unpublished and unperformedduring Britten's lifetime, but posthumously unearthedrevealing a work of astonishing technical assurance andan impressively mature and sensitive approach to wordsetting.These songs, 'dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. R.V.Britten on the twenty-seventh aniversary [sic] of theirwedding', as the title-page of the manuscript scorereads, were composed during the summer of 1928 whenBritten was a schoolboy of just fourteen. In October ofthe previous year he had begun private compositionlessons with Frank Bridge, whose cosmopolitan musicaloutlook, unusual among elder British composers of thetime, opened the young Britten's ears to the latestmusical trends coming from the continent. In any case itis perhaps understandable, given that the texts are inFrench, that the young composer should appropriate thetextures and sonorities of contemporary French music,Debussy and Ravel in particular. Britten's youthfulenthusiasm for Wagner is also revealed at the end of thefourth song, Chanson d'Automne, whose closing barsvirtually paraphrase the ending of the Liebestod fromTristan und Isolde. The harmonic idiom of the first song,Nuits de Juin, shows another more unexpected and yetmore lasting influence, that of Alban Berg; but in thelight of the composer's subsequent development, it isperhaps the third song, L'enfance, that is the mostnotable: Hugo's poem tells of a child playing outside thehouse while inside his mother lies dying. The theme ofchildhood innocence in the context of death is familiarfrom many later Britten works and the quasi-dramaticsetting (the child's play is represented by the solo flute'sfragments of a traditional French nursery tune, Ah! tusortiras, Biquette) suggests the opera composer to come.The world premi?¿re of the Quatre ChansonsFran?ºaises was not given until June 1980, when HeatherHarper performed them at the Aldeburgh Festival withSteuart Bedford conducting the English ChamberOrchestra. That they were never performed during thecomposer's lifetime is perhaps not surprising. Britten'sstyle was developing at such a rate at this time that hemust have felt that the derivative (if highlyaccomplished) musical language of these songs wasquickly redundant. Indeed, d