Crown for Britten
THE history of the arts can hardly provide another instance of a 400-page book, written by a score of contributors, being devoted to the work of a composer who has not yet reached his fortieth birthday. It is a most unusual honour for a most unusual artist ; and it may be regarded as a crown, woven no doubt by specialists but offered by universal consent to the most universally admired of all our contemporary composers. For Britten's extraordinary musical gifts were recognised from the start ; he has met with a minimum of misunderstanding ; and for many years each new work from his pen has been immediately hailed as a masterpiece of its kind. It is puzzling, therefore, to the ordinary reader to meet in several of the . essays included here a note of defensiveness, even a hint of defence by aggression, as though Britten's music were deliberately under- estimated or spitefully ignored by critics or public.
There can obviously be no absolute agreement in the estimation of his work, any more than there has ever been in that'of the composer with whom heis compared in one of these essays, Mozart. But that he or his work has ever been the object of dislike or persecution, indeed of anything less than varying degrees of admiration, seems on the face of it an extraordinarily unwarranted suggestion. It may be that, like Debussy, he has suffered from over-zealous and under- tactful admirers, whose behaviour has occasionally alienated the outside world. Indeed the present book contains passages, notably in the chapters contributed by the two editors, in which the reader is treated as a faintly hostile, rather foolish person; a poor conventional Englishman pretty well bound to like Britten's music for the wrong reasons, if he likes it at all. The English are used to being patronised on the subject of the arts, though they don't much enjoy it. What may rankle a little—and rancour easily spills over—is being patron- ised on the subject of one of their own English composers and one from whose music all pretentiousness and patronising airs are so wholly absent.
The essays observe for the most part a good balance between factual information and critical valuation. Norman del Mar's straightforward, expert treatment of the chamber operas provides some of the most satisfactory reading in the book, and it is a pity that Peter Grimes is treated in three essays;each by a different writer and one not written specifically for this book. By this arrangement one main problem has remained unanswered—not what Peter Grimes represented to the composer (that hardly needs exposition) but whether Grimes's character will in fact bear such a sympathetic interpretation.
Among the painstakingly thorough factual chapters on various departments of Britten's work those by George Malcolm on Dido and Aeneas, by Joan Chissell on the concertos, Paul Hamburger on the chamber music and William Mann on the incidental music are all admirable. A more personal note is sounded in Peter Pears's chapter on the vocal music, in Imogen Hoist's on " Britten and the young " (an unfortunate title which somehow suggests the old pictures of the Ffihrer being handed a bunch of flowers by a dimin- utive Nordic maiden) and Lennox Berkeley on the light music.
Of the temper of the two general chapters contributed by the editors something has already been said. Neither exactly invites
the reader, but each contains interesting reflections and attempts to
relate Britten's music to the contemporary, world and to the historical
past. Donald Mitchell traces the double strands of the composer's " Englisluy " and cosmopolitanism, and makes a good use of musical examples to suggest the various musical atmospheres which Britten has created with such unerring invention. Hans Keller writes with an extraordinary command of the English language ; but an unfortunate tendency to verbal pyrotechnics and an un- warranted assumption of the general reader's familiarity with psycho- analytical jargon often make his essay on Britten's musical character laborious to read. It contains many shrewd general and particular suggestions, shrewd enough to be worth translating into a simpler language and presenting with fewer grimaces, asides and general manoeuvrings for position with the imaginary hostile reader.
The book is well got up and lavishly illustrated with music examples. The practice of foot-noting has been somewhat abused by the editors, who are almost too intent on crossing the t's and dotting the i's of their contributors. --There is a complete bibliography
Previous page
