Britten s Unquiet Pasts Examining the intersections between musical culture and a British project of reconstruction from the 1940s to the early 1960s, this study asks how gestures toward the past negotiated issues of recovery and renewal. In the wake of the Second World War, music became a privileged site for re-enchanting notions of history and community, but musical recourse to the past also raised issues of mourning and loss. How was sound figured as a historical object, and as a locus of memory and magic? Wiebe addresses this question using a wide range of sources, from planning documents to journalism, public ceremonial, and literature. Its central focus, however, is a set of works by Benjamin Britten that engaged both with the distant musical past and with key episodes of postwar reconstruction, including the Festival of Britain, the Coronation of Elizabeth II, and the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. HEATHER WIEBE is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia. A member of the editorial board of the Opera Quarterly, she has published widely on twentieth-century music, British musical culture, and opera.
Music Since 1900 general editor Arnold Whittall This series formerly Music in the Twentieth Century offers a wide perspective on music and musical life since the end of the nineteenth century. Books included range from historical and biographical studies concentrating particularly on the context and circumstances in which composers were writing, to analytical and critical studies concerned with the nature of musical language and questions of compositional process. The importance given to context will also be reflected in studies dealing with, for example, the patronage, publishing, and promotion of new music, and in accounts of the musical life of particular countries. Titles in the series Jonathan Cross The Stravinsky Legacy Michael Nyman Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond Jennifer Doctor The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922 1936 Robert Adlington The Music of Harrison Birtwistle Keith Potter Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass Carlo Caballero Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics Peter Burt The Music of Toru Takemitsu David Clarke The Music and Thought of Michael Tippett: Modern Times and Metaphysics M. J. Grant Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War Europe Philip Rupprecht Britten s Musical Language Mark Carroll Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe Adrian Thomas Polish Music since Szymanowski J. P. E. Harper-Scott Edward Elgar, Modernist
Yayoi Uno Everett The Music of Louis Andriessen Ethan Haimo Schoenberg s Transformation of Musical Language Rachel Beckles Willson Ligeti, Kurtág, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War Michael Cherlin Schoenberg s Musical Imagination Joseph N. Straus Twelve-Tone Music in America David Metzer Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Edward Campbell Boulez, Music and Philosophy Jonathan Goldman The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez: Writings and Compositions Pieter C. van den Toorn and John McGinness Stravinsky and the Russian Period: Sound and Legacy of a Musical Idiom David Beard Harrison Birtwistle s Operas and Music Theatre Britten s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction
Britten s Unquiet Pasts Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Information on this title: /9780521194679 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Wiebe, Heather. Britten's unquiet pasts : sound and memory in postwar reconstruction /. p. cm. (Music Since 1900) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-19467-9 1. Britten, Benjamin, 1913 1976 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Music Great Britain 20th century History and criticism. 3. Reconstruction (1939 1951) Great Britain. 4. World War, 1939 1945 Music and the war. I. Title. ML410.B853W53 2012 780.92 dc23 2012015504 ISBN 978-0-521-19467-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgments page viii ix Introduction 1 1 Music and cultural renewal 16 2 Today on earth the angels sing : carols in wartime 41 3 Realizing Purcell 72 4 Gloriana and the New Elizabethans 109 5 Remembering faith in Noye s Fludde 151 6 Ghosts in the ruins: the War Requiem at Coventry 191 Select Bibliography 226 Index 236
Illustrations 4.1 David Low, Cultural Addition to the Procession, Manchester Guardian, June 2, 1953 Guardian News & Media Ltd. 1953 page 119 5.1 Production photo of Noye s Fludde Kurt Hutton, 1958. Image reproduced courtesy of the Britten Pears Foundation (www.brittenpears.org) Ref: PHPN/11/1/31 173
Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to thank the many people and institutions who have helped with this project over the years. Katherine Bergeron, Richard Taruskin, Roger Parker, and James Vernon read and responded to multiple versions of this text and made crucial interventions in its planning and execution, particularly at the dissertation stage. Many others offered ideas and encouragement, including David Levin, my colleagues at the University of Virginia, and members of the Michigan Society of Fellows. At Berkeley, Martin Deasy, Laura Basini, Greg Bloch, Michael Markham, Dave Paul, Anna Nisnevich, and Mary Ann Smart also provided inspiration and support. Thanks also to Arnold Whittall, as well as staff at Cambridge University Press, for guiding this book through its final stages, and to Steven Kemper and Aurie Hsu for preparing the music examples. I m grateful for the grants, fellowships, and research time provided by the University of Virginia and the Michigan Society of Fellows, which allowed me to complete this book, and for a generous subvention from the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society. The dissertation on which it is built was also supported by the American Musicological Society, UC Berkeley, and Berkeley s Townsend Center for the Humanities, while Berkeley s Center for British Studies and Pembroke College, Cambridge made possible an invaluable year of research in Britain. My thanks, also, to helpful archivists and librarians at Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley, and Cambridge, and at the British Library, the BBC Written Archives Centre, Coventry Cathedral, the British Film Institute, the archives of King s College, Cambridge, the V&A Theatre and Performance Archives, the Glyndebourne Archive, and the Royal Opera House Collections, and particularly to Dr. Nicholas Clark and the staff of the Britten Pears Library, Aldeburgh. Finally, I m grateful to Arman Schwartz, who has seen this project through many moves, talks, research trips, and crises, offering endless ideas and encouragement on the way, as well as welcome distractions. And to my parents, Abe and Pearl Wiebe, who provided boundless support. Material from the Archive Centre at King s College, Cambridge is reproduced by kind permission of the Provost and Fellows, King s College, Cambridge. I am also grateful to the Britten Pears Foundation (brittenpears. org) for permission to print Britten s unpublished letters and Kurt Hutton s
x Acknowledgments photograph, to the V&A Department of Theatre and Performance for permission to print material from the Oliver Messel collection, and to the BBC Written Archives Centre and Royal Opera House Collections for permission to print unpublished material. Earlier versions of Chapters 4 and 5 have appeared elsewhere: Benjamin Britten, the National Faith, and the Animation of History in 1950s England, Representations 93 (Winter 2006): 76 105, copyright 2006 by the Regents of the University of California, reprinted by permission of University of California Press; Now and England : Britten s Gloriana and the New Elizabethans, Cambridge Opera Journal 17 (July 2005): 141 172, reprinted with permission. Music example acknowledgments are as follows: Exx. 2.1, 2.2: A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 by Benjamin Britten Copyright 1943 by Boosey & Co., Ltd. Reprinted by Permission. Exx. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3: Saul and the Witch at Endor arr. by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears Copyright 1947 by Boosey & Co., Ltd. Reprinted by Permission. Ex. 3.5: The Holy Sonnets of John Donne by Benjamin Britten Copyright 1946 by Boosey & Co., Ltd. Reprinted by Permission. Exx. 3.6 3.9: Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn, Op. 55 by Benjamin Britten, text by Edith Sitwell; poem from The Canticle of the Rose by courtesy of the publishers Macmillan & Co. Ltd. Copyright 1956 by Boosey & Co. (London), Ltd. Reprinted by Permission. Exx. 4.1 4.6: Gloriana, Op. 53 by Benjamin Britten, text by William Plomer Copyright 1953 by Hawkes & Son (London), Ltd. Reprinted by Permission. Exx. 5.1 5.2: Noye s Fludde, Op. 59 by Benjamin Britten Copyright 1958 by Hawkes & Son (London), Ltd. Reprinted by Permission. Exx. 6.1 6.5: War Requiem, Op. 66 by Benjamin Britten, text by Wilfred Owen Copyright 1961 by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd. Reprinted by Permission.