D Rusak
Jedi Council Member
This isn't a recent article, but it's something I came across researching Britten (a 20th century British composer) that I thought was interesting. Britten left the UK during the early years of WWII to avoid serving in the war.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,999907,00.html
I hope anyone else who reads this finds this refreshing and inspiring.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,999907,00.html
"Paul Kildea said:In his own words
His refusal to fight in the war, his passion for opera in English, his lifelong love of the sea, his trouble with critics... Paul Kildea introduces a series of rare writings and broadcasts revealing the intimate side of the great Benjamin Britten
Paul Kildea
Friday July 18, 2003
Guardian
'I do not easily think in words, because words are not my medium," Benjamin Britten said in 1962. But words were his medium. Long before he showed his engagement with English text in his great opera of 1945, Peter Grimes, Britten had started a love affair with English prose and poetry.
Though it may have been a strait-laced and conventional affair at first - Longfellow and De la Mare, Kipling and Constable caught the young composer's eye - it soon blossomed, with the encouragement of WH Auden, into a far less adolescent interest in modernist poetry. And from this grew the most extraordinary marriage of English words and music since Purcell.
In his songs and operas, Britten was able to hide behind functionality: words were there to be pressed into action, given a musical context, and they could remain ambiguous. Without the crutch of music, self-doubt menaced him, and he was a reluctant public communicator. But his writings, interviews and speeches are far more revealing than they seem.
His profound social conscience ensured that topics close to his heart, from pacifism to the social duty of artists, were aired. Moreover, while his music was always the result of careful planning, his writings were often more spontaneous - and more likely to catch him off guard as a result.
Spats with journalists, historians, Russian scholars and critics were fuelled by Britten's many hurried articles and speeches; the prickly side of his character, subsumed or displaced in his music, was exposed in his prose.
Although the sound and shape of Britten's prose remained consistent throughout his life - a sturdy, knockabout style befitting an intelligent former public schoolboy - its function changed dramatically. Unlike his letters, which were never conceived as public proclamations, the tone of his published articles illustrates his evolving reputation.
The street-fighting nerve of his earliest essays, when he had little reputation and much ambition, would have been out of character for the "Establishment" composer of Gloriana, his opera commemorating the Queen's coronation.
Certainly his approach to writing was very different from that of fellow composer Michael Tippett, who could not help but be candid about music, philosophy and sexuality, and who perhaps found it easier to compose when he had argued his musical ideas in prose.
But as Tippett said of Britten in his obituary: "It seems to me that certain obsessions belonged naturally to the works of art which he produced. I don't think it matters at all that they may not in any way have belonged to his personality. I refer to a deep sense of cruelty upon people, cruelty as a suffering. A sense, I think, also of the fragility of all existence, leading him to a sense of death."
And although Britten did not write or talk explicitly about this cruelty or this fragility, knowing that they drove his creativity suggests that we must treat the layers and ambiguities of his written words with the same care with which we approach his music. In his words, as in his music, Britten trod the finest of lines between expressing and repressing his conscience.
In early 1942, Britten returned to England from America, where he had lived since 1939. His long-held pacifist beliefs were tested in an appearance before a conscientious objectors' tribunal on May 4 1942. This is part of his testimony.
"Since I believe that there is in every man the spirit of God, I cannot destroy, and feel it my duty to avoid helping to destroy as far as I am able, human life, however strongly I may disapprove of the individual's actions or thoughts. The whole of my life has been devoted to acts of creation (being by profession a composer) and I cannot take part in acts of destruction. Moreover, I feel that the fascist attitude to life can only be overcome by passive resistance... I believe sincerely that I can help my fellow human beings best by continuing the work I am most qualified to do by the nature of my gifts and training, ie the creation or propagation of music. I have possibilities of writing music for MOI [Ministry of Information] films, and for BBC productions, and am offering my services to the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Art. I am however prepared, but feel completely unsuited by nature & training, to undertake other constructive civilian work provided that it is not connected with any of the armed forces."
Britten's rehabilitation as a patriotic Englishman was completed only with the stunning success of his 1945 opera, Peter Grimes. In a programme note for the Sadler's Wells premiere, he wrote of the opera's development, little prepared for how his life, and the fate of English opera, was to change in the wake of his achievement.
"During the summer of 1941, while working in California, I came across a copy of the Listener containing an article about George Crabbe by EM Forster. I did not know any of the poems of Crabbe at that time, but reading about him gave me such a feeling of nostalgia for Suffolk, where I had always lived, that I searched for a copy of his works...
A few months later I was waiting on the east coast for a passage back to England, when a performance of my Sinfonia da Requiem was given in Boston under Serge Koussevitsky [sic]. He asked why I had not written an opera. I explained that the construction of a scenario, discussions with a librettist, planning the musical architecture, composing preliminary sketches, and writing nearly a thousand pages of orchestral score, demanded a freedom from other work which was an economic impossibility for most young composers. Koussevitsky was interested in my project for an opera based on Crabbe, although I did not expect to have the opportunity of writing it for several years. Some weeks later we met again, when he told me that he had arranged for the commissioning of the opera... In January 1944 I began composing the music, and the score was completed in February 1945.
For most of my life I have lived closely in touch with the sea. My parent's [sic] house in Lowestoft directly faced the sea, and my life as a child was coloured by the fierce storms that sometimes drove ships on to our coast and ate away whole stretches of the neighbouring cliffs. In writing Peter Grimes, I wanted to express my awareness of the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livelihood depends on the sea... One of my chief aims is to try and restore to the musical setting of the English language a brilliance, freedom, and vitality that have been curiously rare since the death of Purcell."
By 1951, when he was asked by Eric Walter White to contribute an introduction to his new book, The Rise of English Opera, Britten was both impresario and composer. He had six operas behind him, and was soon to present his seventh, Billy Budd. He was also director of the English Opera Group and Aldeburgh festival. In this introduction, he argued passionately about opera in English - an argument that continues to this day.
"Who cares if there is English opera? We are told so often that Italian and German, even Russian and French, opera is superior to ours (true, in spite of [Purcell's] Dido and Aeneas), and people have been known to say that the English language is ugly when sung (quite untrue, although it is more difficult to manage than, say, Italian). All the same, if we continue to perform opera, and to perform it in a language that most of the audience does not understand, one of the essentials of opera is lost. It is not enough to know roughly what is happening at a particular moment; if one thinks with what infinite precision a Mozart or a Verdi points the smallest word or tiniest shade of emotion, that will be clear. For this reason I am an unrepentant supporter of the regular seasons of opera in England being sung in English. But, however brilliant the translators' work may be, obviously it is not ideal; the composers' prosody must necessarily suffer, and the character of the opera change.
So ideally then we must have English operas, settings of English libretti by English composers. Although [there have been] hundreds of such operas, it seems either that the composers were not very gifted, or that the more gifted were not wisely encouraged. Precious few of their operas are still in the repertoire. All the same, one wonders whether there may not be one or two satisfactory ones among them all.
One final point, a selfish one, because I am going to speak for the composer. Writing operas is a very tricky business; only a great gift coupled with hard-won experience can produce enduring masterpieces... Therefore, let the managements and the public (not to mention the press) be a little lenient about their early efforts... Do not let us entirely crush them with damning criticism, and let us resist the oppor-tunity for brilliant wit at their expense."
Stung by (and oversensitive to) criticism since his 20s, Britten in March 1952 contributed the following article to Opera magazine. The Manchester Guardian theatre critic to whom he refers is Philip Hope-Wallace.
"Who are these serious critics to be? At the risk of appearing Irish, I say at once - not critics. There should be no such profession as criticism... Criticism must be a sideline. To go through life living off other people's work clearly has too degrading an effect. Therefore let the composers, the performers, the publishers, the concert promoters, the musical administrators, the intelligent amateurs, too, perhaps, take time off occasionally to write reasoned judgments on the work of their colleagues. I have no fear that it will lead to undue bias or jealousy... There is much less risk of bias here than in the sourness of the failed artist who has had to turn to criticism to live. Again, in giving judgments, the all-important thing is "truth", and that can often fly out of the window if the critic is worrying about his career, about his editor's or seniors' reactions to his writings, about the memorable or witty quality of his phrases. Again, his reactions must remain fresh; he must continue to love the art he is writing about (my doctor has ordered me to give up the Manchester Guardian because of the lowering effect reading its London dramatic critic has on me; he clearly hates the theatre...)."
Two outstanding artists were of the greatest influence in Britten's life: the composer Frank Bridge, who taught Britten as a boy, and the poet WH Auden, whom he befriended in 1935. In a relaxed radio interview with his friend the Earl of Harewood, broadcast on the BBC Home Service in 1960, he spoke frankly about these giant figures.
"[When] I was at my private school. I used to disconcert the other children by writing music in the dormitory and all that kind of thing; but my serious composition lessons started when I was about 12, I think it was, when I had the very good fortune to meet Frank Bridge... I'm most grateful to him for having taught me to take infinite trouble over getting every note quite right. He used to perform the most terrible operations on the music I would rather confidently show him. He would play every passage slowly on the piano and say, "Now listen to this - is this what you meant?" And of course I would start by defending it, but then one would realise as one - as he went on playing this passage over and over again - that one hadn't really thought enough about it.
[Later] I was very much influenced by Auden, not only in poetry but in life too; and politics, of course, came very strongly into our lives in the late 30s. He went to America, I think it was late 38, early 39, and I went soon after. I think it wouldn't be too much oversimplifying the situation to say that many of us young people at that time felt that Europe was more or less finished. There was this great Nazi fascist cloud about to break at any moment and one felt that Europe didn't - nor did it have the will to - resist that."
In March 1963 the Daily Telegraph published an article by Martin Cooper strongly criticising Britten for his naivety in his dealings with and reaction to the Soviet regime. Cooper implied that Britten was an apologist for it, not least because of his trips there and links with the formidable Madame Furtseva, the Soviet minister of culture. Britten drafted a response about the role of the artist in society, intended for the Observer, but never published.
"I do not deny that there is much in the greatest of art that can transcend circumstance, & we would be silly, just because our conditions are different, to give up trying to perform the masterpieces of other ages. But the communication cannot be complete. So I do not see how we could please everyone, all kinds & conditions of man, even if we wanted to. But should we want to? Have we, as artists, a social duty? I think we have, or to put it differently, I think we all fundamentally have a wish to take our part in society. I really cannot believe that even the oddest of composers seriously wishes to be ignored or neglected. After all a score is only a plan for a work, & until it is realised in sound it cannot be said to exist...
Although it is impossible to please everyone all the time, I hope I have made the point that, as a composer, I wish to play my part in social life & to try to communicate my ideas in this way. I am heartily against the Ivory Tower which has become a very real danger. But I suppose we are all two-sided, & I have to admit that there are moments when I crave for such a building. There are moments when I want to say something subtle & intimate, which will possibly be only understood by people who feel about things the way I do. This is when one wants to write a string quartet, or for an odd collection of instruments, or to write songs or song cycles. And sometimes, by accident, this kind of work can slowly amass quite a public. The Winterreise [a Schubert song cycle] is not for a great auditorium; but for those who like intimate song recitals there is no work that is more loved than this highly personal, introspective, & devastatingly pessimistic document... There is no doubt that finally one treasures the private rather than the public work of art. But both are necessary, both for the public & the composer, and the greatest figures have produced both, and the public work of these great figures can be good & of more than just temporary use, because of their "gift"."
In February 1969 Britten recorded an interview with his old friend Donald Mitchell for the CBC. He talked simply and eloquently about many issues - the symbolism of night, his own reluctance to teach - and finally touched on the power, not burden, of tradition.
"Not long ago there was a young composer who had a first performance of an opera not far from here [Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy]. And at the same time there were other operas being performed in the neighbourhood. I know it was probably because of the tightness of time, and the absorption in his own job, but it seemed to me very strange that he didn't want to go and see how Mozart solved his problems. If he were setting out, from here to Newmarket, to drive, naturally he would use maps to find out how to get there. Why, if he used maps to get to Newmarket, didn't he use maps which show how to write an opera?
I know he was trying to say something different, just as we are probably driving a different car to Newmarket from the mapmaker's, but after all, there are many similarities between all works presenting dramatic ideas to audiences, and I would think, even though he may have rejected it - just as one can find a new way of going to Newmarket - that it's useful to know how someone else has gone there. And actually, as far as we can know, achieved getting there. And I think that I would be a fool if I didn't take notice of how Mozart, Verdi, Dvorak - whoever you like to name - had written their Masses. I mean, many people have pointed out the similarities between the Verdi Requiem and bits of my own War Requiem, and they may be there. If I have not absorbed that, that's too bad. But that's because I'm not a good enough composer, it's not because I'm wrong.
I hope anyone else who reads this finds this refreshing and inspiring.
