At its first airing the phrase is accompanied by a bitonal accompaniment that sets up the conflicting keys of B-flat major and E major (residing a tritone apart, the farthest possible harmonic distance from each other) as pivotal mechanisms of the cycle’s harmonic structure.īritten’s cycle ranges through various shades of vigor and mystery. The line “ J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage” (“I alone hold the key to this savage parade”) stands as a recurrent motif: the soloist declaims it first in the opening fanfare movement (boldly), and reprises it during the interlude between “ Marine” and “ Being Beauteous” (sounding rather bewildered) and again at the end of the penultimate song, “ Parade” (at last infusing it with triumphant confidence). THE MUSIC Given the obscurity of some of the poems, Britten was probably wise to approach the text-setting as an exercise in finding musical equivalents to specific words or phrases. While in America he continued with his Rimbaud settings, eventually crafting a nine-movement cycle. Britten embarked on voice-and-orchestra settings of two of Rimbaud’s poems, “ Being Beauteous” (with a text in French, despite Rimbaud’s deceptive English title) and “ Marine.” Britten did not hear Sophie Wyss premiere them, in 1939 in London, as he was then living at a freewheeling artists commune in New York City. These were cryptic poems, admittedly perplexing in their odd combinations of thoughts. The composer has taken seven of these poems, six in prose and one in verse, and has made them into a cycle. The word ‘Illuminations’ suggests both the vision of a mystic and a brightly coloured picture …. short life as a poet was an erratic and turbulent one, generally near starvation and often homeless, sometimes with his friend Verlaine, sometimes alone, and much of it was set in the most sordid surroundings, in Paris, Brussels, and London but throughout it, the boy’s inspiration remained radiant and intense. Britten had recently been struggling with the challenges of setting English texts in the cycle On this Island (to texts by Auden), and he was a ready candidate to try text-settings in foreign languages-at first French, then Italian (in his Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo)- before returning to his native language to perfect his distinctive style. Auden suggested that he take a look at the phantasmagorical poetry of Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91), Verlaine’s one-time lover (though their affair had ended badly, in an attempted murder for which Verlaine spent two years in jail). In fact, Les Illuminations was not Britten’s first foray into French just after graduating from high school, he had composed an orchestral song cycle on French texts by Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine (the Quatre chansons françaises, 1928). Not many English composers had previously shown an interest in setting languages other than their own (Delius being a rare exception), and Britten took some fire from British critics who felt that setting French texts was at least suspicious and perhaps even unpatriotic. The earliest of these was the Swiss soprano Sophie Wyss, who premiered such entries in the Britten catalogue as Our Hunting Fathers (1936) and On This Island (1937), and was also the inspiration for his arrangements of French folksongs (1942) and for the orchestral song cycle on this program, Les Illuminations (1939). Among these, the tenor Peter Pears was Britten’s chief partner (both artistic and spousal), but other singer-collaborators were also important. Britten often wrote vocal works with specific singers in mind over the years, an identifiable “Britten circle” of singers dependably premiered and championed his works. THE BACKSTORY Though Benjamin Britten was an instrumentalist, having been trained as a string player and excelling especially as a pianist, singers flocked around him throughout his career. INSTRUMENTATION: String orchestra with solo high voice (soprano or tenor-here the former) Soprano Jessica Jones was soloist with Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting SFS PERFORMANCES: FIRST AND ONLY-March 2003. WORLD PREMIERE: The movements “ Being Beauteous” and “ Marine” were introduced on August 17, 1939, at the London Proms at Queen’s Hall, by soprano Sophie Wyss with Sir Henry Wood conducting Wyss was also the soloist when the complete song cycle was premiered on January 30, 1940, at Aeolian Hall, London, with the Boyd Neel Orchestra. BORN: November 22, 1913, in Lowestoft, Suffolk, EnglandĭIED: December 4, 1976, in Aldeburgh, SuffolkĬOMPOSED: Begun March 1939 in Suffolk, completed October 1939 in Amityville, Long Island
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