The Classical Music Book

293

Britten is memorialized in a

window by John Piper in Aldeburgh

Parish Church. The Burning Fiery

Furnace, depicted here, evokes

Britten’s three “church parables.”

MODERN 1900 –1950

Music festivals

Aldeburgh Festival, launched by

Britten and his friends in 1948,

gained international status within

a few decades. It became the

latest in a growing number of

international music festivals,

including the Bayreuth Festival

founded by Richard Wagner in

1876 to stage his own operas,

and Salzburg’s festival of Mozart’s

music, founded by its citizens

in 1877. In Italy, it was the

centenary in 1913 of Verdi’s

birth that prompted the first

operas at the Arena di Verona,

where the city’s annual festival

is held in summer.

As in Europe, classical music

festivals in the US flourished

in the 1870s, though the Handel

and Haydn Society in Boston

held its first triennial festival

as early as 1858. In the 20th

century, the composer Henry

Kimball Hadley staged concerts

in 1934 that evolved into the

celebrated Tanglewood Festival.

The English Opera Group

carry props into the Jubilee Hall

for Britten’s Let’s Make An Opera

during Aldeburgh’s 1949 festival.

the next morning when, to the

mournful sound of a foghorn,

reports emerge of a sinking

vessel too far out to be rescued.

Building tension

The music of Peter Grimes has

astonishing tensile strength,

what Peter Pears called “The bare

minimum of notes to convey the

maximum effect.” Such economy

of style, already apparent in

Britten’s early works, such as

A Boy was Born (1933) and Les

Illuminations (1939), was skeletal

compared to the English pastoral

school of composition. In Peter

Grimes, the music expresses the

drama at all times. In the quartet

“Hi! Give us a hand!” in the first

scene of Act One, for example, all

four characters sing at the same

time, mimicking an argument,

while the mix of song, speech, and

laughter in the chorus’s “Assign

your prettiness to me” in Act Three

conveys the natural simplicity of the

villagers. Conversely, at the end of

the opera, the canon of the chorus

evokes the menace of the crowd.

Orchestral interludes are also

employed to great effect between

acts, especially in the Four Sea

Interludes (“Dawn,” “Sunday

Morning,” “Moonlight,” and

“Storm”), which are often performed

on their own. They serve to set the

scene, evoke the emotions of the

characters, and foreshadow the

building drama, from gentle violins

and flutes depicting a coastal dawn

to an upsurge in the brass denoting

an approaching storm.

Britten went on to write other

operas, including Billy Budd (1951)

based on Herman Melville’s novella

Billy Budd, Sailor, and Death in

Ven ice (1973), from the novel by

Thomas Mann. In addition to

carving a place for modern British

opera in the international repertoire,

Britten actively promoted music and

fellow composers. He also upheld

the traditional elements of opera,

such as a good story, evocative

atmosphere, and a large and

stirring chorus. Essentially, he

reclaimed the concept of opera

as entertainment in an age when

minimalism ruled. ■

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