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Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, Volume IV, 1952-1957

A gift for friendship

Edited by Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke and Donald Mitchell
The Boydell Press, 633pp, £45,

Rupert Christiansen

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Rupert Christiansen on a selection of Benjamin Britten's letters

This magnificent edition of Benjamin Britten’s letters reaches its fourth volume under the auspices of a new publisher, the Boydell Press (despite subsidy, Faber simply couldn’t make it pay), and the first thing to say is that the standards of production, design and copy-editing have not suffered (misspellings of names such as John Lanigan, Roderic Dunnett and Geoffrey Willans were the only errors that I picked up), while the scholarly quality of the annotation continues to be quite superb — meticulous, imaginative, and illuminating.

Here we are taken through five important years, marked by the birth of the masterpieces Gloriana, Winter Words, The Turn of the Screw and Noye’s Fludde as well as the most significant flop of Britten’s maturity, the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas — a score over-weighted by the influence of the Balinese gamelan, which he had encountered on a long holiday in Asia in 1956.

‘Britten was rarely given to making statements about his own music, or his own aesthetic,’ the editors comment, and anyone seeking insight into the creative process or evidence of the dark night of the soul of genius should look elsewhere. There is no agony here, only irritation at life not allowing him to get on with the job in hand. But Pagodas seems misjudged from the start, beset by delays in the schedule and complications in the collaboration with the choreographer John Cranko and the Royal Opera House. ‘This beastly ballet’, Britten calls it in exasperation at one point, and you feel that his heart was never really in it.

‘Ben couldn’t stand people who were not loyal’ asserts Jeremy Cullum, Britten’s long-serving and suffering secretary. This is clearly true, though it raises the question of Britten’s own loyalty, both towards the boys he befriended and then dropped as they reached adolescence and towards colleagues who in some way offended or disappointed him. Here we have, for example, the unpleasant business over the sacking of Basil Douglas, manager of Britten’s English Opera Group — although one is left wondering if such situations can ever be handled without causing hurt or resentment. Britten clearly had good grounds for getting rid of Douglas, and the terms of his dismissal were scarcely inhuman.

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JohnA

June 13th, 2008 12:21am

But what explains the diminution of psychic energy in the music, from the demonic 'Sinfonia da Requiem', Piano Concerto, and other flashes of fire in the earlier works, up to and including Grimes and even the Ceremony of Carols, to the rather staid and affected operas (MN Dream, Albert Herring, Death in V) and the sheer torpor of the Parables and school pieces and later songs? Too much loyalty, no one to give the boot up b treatment.

Greg

July 30th, 2008 10:24am

Is this saying that Britten knew and probably was capable of being pyschic and communicating psychic"ness" Where the mind goes? Everyones' mind will go? ''''''''''''''in a performance or hearing?

anyone that wonders about this composer and: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner, ...... contact me. I want to discuss music with people.