Benjamin Britten said, I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t work alone. I can only work really because of the tradition that I am conscious of behind me… I feel as close to Dowland as I do to my youngest contemporary. Fragments of the songs of English Renaissance composer John Dowland emerge and dissipate as fleeting ghosts in Britten’s Lachrymae, Op. 48. Subtitled “Reflections on a Song by John Dowland,” the work unfolds …
Young Apollo, Op. 16 is blazing, exuberant music of the 25 year old Benjamin Britten. Composed in the summer of 1939 in response to a commission from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it is a striking fanfare for piano, string quartet, and string orchestra. The three disparate musical forces frolic in the bright sunshine of unending A major. The title refers to a line in John Keats’ unfinished poem, Hyperion. In his program …
English soprano Felicity Lott passed away on May 15 following a battle with cancer. She was 79. Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Lott began singing lessons at age 12. While studying at the Royal Academy of Music she met pianist Graham Johnson who would become her lifelong accompanist. Her operatic debut came with the English National Opera in 1975 when she sang the role of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Appearances at …
Today is Saint Cecilia’s Feast Day on the Roman Catholic calendar. The third century martyr is venerated as the patron of music and musicians. According to legend, despite taking a vow of celibacy, she was forced by her parents to marry a pagan nobleman. She “sang in her heart to the Lord” on her wedding day, illustrating the divine, meditative, and transcendent power of music. Fortuitously, the English composer, Benjamin Britten, was …
Benjamin Britten’s 1954 chamber opera, The Turn of the Screw, is a spine-chilling psychological thriller. Based on Henry James’ 1898 gothic horror novella of the same name, it tells the story of a young, inexperienced governess who is sent to a grand English country estate to care for two orphaned children. Their guardian has left strict instructions that she is forbidden to write to him, to inquire about the history of the house, …
The fantasia is a genre which spans more than four hundred years of English music. It flowered in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with the viol consort music of composers such as William Byrd, John Jenkins, and Henry Purcell. Emerging from the word fancy, these compositions are free in form and feature an intricate, polyphonic dialogue between instruments. A predecessor to sonata form, the fantasia grew out of madrigals and vocal motets. Twentieth …
Julian Bream, the English classical guitarist and lutenist has passed away. He was 87. Bream played a significant role in promoting the classical guitar as a solo instrument. He expanded the repertoire, inspiring new works by numerous twentieth century composers, including Benjamin Britten, Sir William Walton, Sir Michael Tippett, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Toru Takemitsu. One of the most influential works written for Bream is Benjamin Britten’s 1963 Nocturnal After John Dowland, Op. …