5 & 6 October 2013

This programme was  first broadcast in April 2009 and the theme is Seasons. There are seasonal compositions by Vivaldi (Spring from the 4 Seasons - the one they make you listen to when you call the DWP about your benefits!); Mozart, Beethoven, Handel (water music), Debussy (Jardins sur la Pluie), Eric Satie, Cesar Frank, Samuel Barber's Adagio, Granados and Rachmaninov's  Vespers. The programme opens with the Comedy Overture, by British composer Granville Bantock (1868-1946) and performed by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

As I remember, I recorded the programme 'as live' so the links are not quite as polished and professional as you're used to on this programme! (Who am I kidding?). Anyway, hope you enjoy it and the chances are we'll have a completely original programme next week - fresh from the pen of young Mike Burrows, my co-producer on Classical Break.

Don't forget, if you have any requests or you would like to make a Classical Break - we're here to help. This is a community radio station, so it's your right to bombard the airwaves with just about whatever you feel like as long as it's legal.

Take care and let's have your feedback! Just email rupertkirkham@gmail.com and make us happy.

Rupert

28 & 29 September

Musicke In The Ayre:  Crafted Consonances

A timely repeat for our programme show-casing the talents of the early-music group, Musicke in the Ayre, in advance of their concert, Time Stands Still, at the Holburne Museum, Bath, on 22 October, at 13:10

 

 

Today’s Classical Break consists mostly of a sequence of recordings from a concert – Crafted Consonances - held in the Augustan gallery of the Holburne Museum.  This very enjoyable concert of early music was given on Sunday, February the 24^th, as part of a series, Painted Pomp’,  by Helen Atkinson and Din Ghani, of the group, Musicke In The Ayre.  The music consisted mostly of lute- or viol-accompanied song by Elizabethan-born Jacobean composers.

In the deepened, almost animated presence of paintings by artists such as Gainsborough, Kauffmann, Zoffany, Ramsay  and others, one heard something of the readily communicable soul of music of a time earlier than the Age of Reason and balance.  One stepped further back still, to  a legendary time of heroic warriors, courtiers, poets and musicians; of circles of influence, conspiracy and patronage, when religion, conscience and philosophy ran in complex strata best kept hidden from spies and enemies; a time of fate and pastoral dreams written by urban politicians, personal fortunes worthy of Shakespeare’s or Jonson’s tragedies, comedies and romances,  inward and outward exploration, the passing of Gloriana and accession of the Stuart King James The First.

Music and poetry (unlike in the 18^th Century) fell into in the most natural and expressive relationship of moods of the moment.  Ancient voices sang of love and grief, declarations and mortality, in thrall to harmony; applause might have come from Bath’s Georgian and Regency heyday:  but at an historical hour, both voices – one voice, Helen Atkinson’s, that is – and applause were actually of our 21^st Century.  Music has always been in the air – and the soul of man and of his forebears and descendants will always be most potently expressed by it.  Its tremulous vibrations, in songs of life and the collective yet refined spirit, awake and converse with the world – the catgut and vocal cords are frail with distance and yet not only speak but reply to our silence;  there are no questions for us to answer.  Here are 40 minutes of this illumination:  Musick In The Ayre’s concert, Crafted Consonances.  Our thanks go to the performers, Helen Atkinson and Din Ghani, whose talents are here properly enshrined, but are also aired frequently and to the same effect in York, Oxford and London.

 

CONCERT

 

A poem written by Mike Burrows from several rows back, on the day! -

 

At Music In The Ayre – A Crafted Consonance

          To Helen Atkinson and Din Ghani

 

The voice and lutes! – and let their sober song

Be of an unkindness and barren sorrow

Of my durance in this most cruel wrong

That will not hear unless I do borrow

Such voices of harmony that have sprung

From the hearts of her preferred men:  but still,

Delights freed from throats and frets made true strungTo Musicke In The Ayre - Crafted Consonances

Prove, man or instrument, we bear goodwill.

Such love as this let her so hear and find

Aright our truth of sincere expression –

And let us not languish, as to her mind

And heart our tones reach, and supercession

Comes not late, indeed, but when that it should,

As, moved, she meets our lowered state with all good.

(The Musician’s, or My Lord Essex’s, Fond Complaint -  The voice and lutes! and let their sober songBe of an unkindness and barren so wW    owWritten at the Holburne Museum, Sunday 24^th of FebruaryOf my durance in this most cruel wrong  That will not hear unless I do borrow2013)

That was Crafted Consonances - a concert given as part of the Season devoted to Jacobean music, Painted Pomp, held at the Holburne Museum, Bath,  earlier this year.  The performers were Helen Atkinson and Din Ghani, two members of the early music group, Musicke In The Ayre.

Now, here are Edmund Rubbra’s Improvizations On Virginal Pieces By Giles Farnaby, For Orchestra, Op50.  These were written to offset costs of publishing Rubbra’s First Symphony!  They form a work that is, in fact, far from being a pot-boiler.  Farnaby (1560-1640), was born in Truro and died in London.  He composed, to a large extent, pieces for keyboard instruments – for performance in the stately home or town-house! – and, in contrast to this preoccupation - madrigals.  Much of his output is now held in the US.  Rubbra, a symphonist of the highest seriousness, and greatly inspired by the liturgical music  and polyphony of the Mediaeval and Renaissance Ages,  expanded Farnaby’s miniatures concinnately – that is, in a style appropriate to the originals – and orchestrated them with great care; his technique creating a palette of great beauty; these affectionate part-recompositions are deeply expressive, their moods ranging from the playful and capricious, to the wistful and grave.The scoring favours high to alto woodwind and the middle register of the string section (the violas lend dignity and an austere quality to more solemn measures).  The brass are light and mildly riotous or more sombre.

 Rubbra permitted himself the greatest freedom in treating the penultimate and last pieces, Loth to Depart and Tell me, Daphne, as these were popular songs arranged by Farnaby, rather than original works.  The names of the  movements are:  Farnaby’s Conceit,His Dreame, His Humour, Loth To depart, Tell me, Daphne.

This was Classical Break, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s number was researched by Mike Burrows, and we wish to thank Helen Atkinson and Din Ghani of Musicke In The Ayre for the beautiful performance-material from their concert at the Holburne Museum earlier this year, which formed the major part of our programme.  We hope you enjoyed it and will join us again soon.  Goodbye!

 

Improvisations On Virginal Pieces by Giles Farnaby, Op 50, Rubbra    

21 & 22 September

Classical Break:  Battle of Britain

Intro:  RAF March-past, Davies/Dyson

Hullo, this is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme showcases the colourful Ron Goodwin score for the feature-film, Battle of Britain, made in 1969, directed by Guy Hamilton and produced by Harry Salzman. 

The historical Battle of Britain represents one of the enduring legends of British involvement in the 2^nd World War.  Britain - and her Empire - stood alone; the salvation of civilization for the many rested on the actions of the Few.  Spitfires and Hurricanes overcame odds of over four-to-one to defeat the armadas of Dornier, Heinkel and Junkers bombers and Messerschmitt fighters, day after day flying sorties in which their only advantages were the superior cause – the chain of radar-stations positioned along the South and South-east coasts of the country,and the tightly-disciplined plotting organization behind flight-controllers who ‘vectored them in on’ the enemy.

The brave defence of these islands by an RAF Fighter Command that faced the world’s mightiest airforce at full stretch throughout  the Summer of 1940, was given popular dramatic treatment in this outstanding release.

A large cast of British (also Commonwealth, Polish and French) and German film-stars and fleet of Spitfires, Hurricanes, CASA bombers  and Hispano Buchon fighters - Spanish licence-built Heinkel He 111s and Messerschmitt Bf109s – did battle in the air.  Action was placed in a strong context of personal stories and a presentation of tactics and strategies on both sides.  A well-recreated mise en scene on the ground gave more meaning to  dogfights  filmed from a converted B25 bomber of wartime vintage.  Owing to vicissitudes of time and history, there were no still-flying examples of Dornier 17 – the Flying Pencil – and Junkers 88s, the other main Luftwaffe twin-engined medium bomber; no Messerschmitt 110 Destroyer escort-fighter – a twin-engined aircraft that, although heavily-armed and faster than a Hurricane, was so unmanoeuvrable and fragile that it, itself, came to need escort...  The infamous Stuka – Ju 87 – dive-bomber was not available in the alloy, so to speak, and proved impossible to fabricate; however, it was shown attacking radar-stations and being hacked down by British fighters, thanks to the skills of a special-effects team, who were also responsible for fibre-glass models of all aircraft that were shot down or bombed on the ground in the course of this latterday campaign...  On the British side, there are no Boulton-Paul Defiants – the Defiant was a vulnerable single-engined fighter with four-gun turret for armament; no Bristol Blenheim bombers either, though the Blenheim raided German general shipping and invasion-barges throughout the Battle, and became the first radar-equipped British nightfighter during the Blitz.  No seaplanes or air-sea rescue craft were shown on either side.  Even with these omissions, the film has considerable claims to authenticity.

Two stunt-pilots were killed during filming the aerial sequences, which emerged as possibly the most thrilling ever achieved  in movie-history, marvels of formation and milling movement, all requiring  split-second timing.  It seemed as though no holds were barred.   More about that anon.

Here’s the official Battle of Britain Theme, which you will hear at many points of the soundtrack, standing for squadrons of the RAF.

Track One:  Battle of Britain Theme

Next, the Luftwaffe March, Aces High. This accompanies an inspection of bombers made by a Luftwaffe Airfleet-commander; a French airfield notable for the immense ranks of Heinkel twin-engined bombers drawn up wing-tip to wing-tip and standing on either side of the runway; guards take the salute as the band plays and  the staff-car moves by.  All the arrogance of spotless Teutonic

discipline, knife-edge creases and technical competence are on show, orders barked, the show dominated by inanimate power given life by one shared mind. 

Track Two:  Aces High

Right at the outset of the score, then, we have the music of two national sides.  Also, we have a marvellous evocation of the air, military aggressiveness  and gunfire, manoeuvre in a big, blue white-clouded sky.   In the Theme, The RAF are identifiable with the bowmen of Agincourt – though they fly, and their aircraft carry eight Browning machine-guns in the wings.  In Aces High, the Germans have a pastiche Bavarian-style march that possesses immense, tuba-grounded confidence and verve.  Goodwin was a past-master at blending latino rhythms with timeless, English- sounding melodies, and a dab hand at counterpoint.  His writing for the British showcases  noble trumpets and horn,  the rat-at-tat of snare-drum and high strings imparts a skip or skid of agility as certainly as it represents the bark or crash of machine-guns.    The Luftwaffe Aces High March isn’t merely a matter of solid scoring and two  Bier-kellerish tunes.  You notice the economical piccolo, clarinet and deep brass running accompaniments – very decorative – and appoggiaturas that scrunch; the trio that bellows male fanfares.  A pattern of two against three enlivens the rhythm.  The blend of woodwind and brass is more than able, the harmonies are strong and the percussion, glockenspiel and side-drum, as splendidly confident:  the return after the trio is adroit rather than to the same standard, but the effect remains strong.    The third cue represents the sun-drenched day at dispersal on one of the main airfields of Eleven Group  – where a flight from one squadron sit reading or chatting in deck-chairs, awaiting an alert.

After anxious string chords, the clear sky of leisurely strings swaying above pedal notes, and flecks of woodwind, is blue, the clouds drift:  it is an almost yawning variation on the Theme ; it is as though a bird flies as the flute leaps high and warbles - this glassy effect of crystal fresh air is repeated as part of the aforegoing pattern;  a more purposeful quality enters on cellos, a matter of a few stubborn, near-fanfare- like notes, only to subside in a reprise of dreamy leisureliness.  The Lull Before The Storm.

Track 3:  The Lull Before The Storm  

Speed and punch open the next cue:  Work and play begins with a brassy staccato - abrupt, savage machine gun fire.  A lone British pilot is missing:  he has gone up for an instruments or engine-check,

but really to encounter the enemy.  A Messerschmitt 109 has accounted for him; it passes over a prone body left floating, still attached to an open parachute, in the channel.  The Jagdflieger joins his friends after landing and taking a bath in the substantial surroundings of his comfortable requisitioned billet.  The gemutlich tune that accompanies his return and hurry to get ready is a soulful, deeply German song without words; there is a slightly maudlin feel to its caressing, intertwining sounds of woodwind and sliding massed violins, the square-cut phrasing softened nigh unto bonelessness.  It has been developed from the trio of the Luftwaffe March, of course.  The victorious pilot and a friend are summoned with trumpets and Aces High-peremptoriness from professional discussion in a local bistro to a briefing .  To get there, they’ll employ the locally-commandeered car in which they were about to go out on the town.  

Track 4:  Work and Play

Death and Destruction – the aftermath of a bombing-raid on an RAF Station:  a very frequent scene during the Battle.  RAF and WAAF personnel on the ground suffered fearfully.  It is a little-known fact that the Aircraftmen – maintenance staff -  at Manston struck, refusing for 15 days to come out of their shelters, when the Luftwaffe onslaught was at its height.  The music here is as is due:  no heroics.  Jagged violins and violas, ostinato scalic figure of low woodwind and possibly a marimba, interspersed with fanfares –a brassy climax of horror – accompanying a rank of WAAF corpses lying under blankets in the film - and more sustained cello-deep emotion of shock and endurance.

Track 5:  Death and Destruction   

Briefing the Luftwaffe.  Preparations for mounting any air-raid are intense:  crews must know the likely weather-conditions, expected wind-speeds at the heights at which they must operate, the areas of most enemy activity on the flight-path, besides the other all-important details of formation, rendez-vous points between bombers and escorts – and target.  Having shrugged off the brazen Aces High motto in short order, this cue is no more than a close-harmonied, narrow-themed ostinato, stiff, stalking, remaining until the louder close at mezzo-forte:  warning brass, mainly horns and harsh trumpets, punctuate it and end it with a crotchet and triplet.  The pit of one’s stomach knots to take that curt blow.

Track 6:  Briefing The Luftwaffe

After a brassy but hollow chord dissonant with what follows, The Prelude to Battle juxtaposes the leading motif of the RAF, dropping or rising scalic figures, the dropping figures with harp, a climbing bass urging excitement higher, a sense of the Briefing music now mounting with bursts of trumpeting aggression from the British.

Track 7:  The Prelude To Battle

Victory Assured.  Based in Norway, which the Allies had lost to the Nazis a few weeks before the collapse of France, the bombers of Luftflotte Links made one confident daylight raid on the North of England.  They ran escortless into the delighted arms of Fighter Command in spite of Luftwaffe Intelligence’s joke that “Even a Spitfire can’t be in two places at once.”  The bombers were met  as they moved in stately formation and high assurance over the North Sea.  Slaughter ensued.  Deutschland uber alles, one feels, is in Goodwin’s themes of gemutlichkeit and Aces High, march and trio; they move in solemn certainty – to meet an upward scale and sudden rat-tat-tat cadence.

Track 8:  Victory Assured

Defeat.  Here, like the CD, we conflate two scenes.  A lone Heinkel bomber labours home, streaming smoke from an engine,  its wounded gunner-bomb-aimer writhing in the fully glazed nose of the plane.  Often, it was possible to get home on one engine, so long as one had plenty of height.  Luftwaffe medium-bomber crews were all grouped, pilot, navigator and gunners, in the front of their aircraft for the sake of morale.  All the armour-plate was concentrated to the rear of the cockpit save for a strip in the undernose gondola from which a gunner, prone, fired the ventral gun (his position was known as the deathbed).  Under frontal attack, four men could be killed or wounded in a single burst of accurate fire through Perspex no thicker than household glass.  One had a magnificent view of what killed one.  In Goodwin’s music, the downward trajectory of the bomber as it crosses the sea is caught with a repeated falling figure and, derived from the Briefing music, checked sequences relentlessly repeated, violins screaming, oboe and clarinet writhing, the onward flight sustained intermittently by the same now menacing phrase of Aces High.  At last, the plane crash-lands behind the defences of Fortress Europe.  The pilot, a shocked bystander, watches as fire-crew try to cut his wounded friend free of the wrecked cockpit of their aircraft – and finally turns away.

Track 9:  Defeat   

Hitler’s Headquarters.  Berlin.  A brief, melodically and colouristically self-explanatory cue.

Track 10:  Hitler’s Headquarters

There follows a qualifiedly romping return for the victorious Few – ending in uncertain strings tremolando .

Track 11:  Return To Base

Life in Berlin goes on – without blackout:  until the first British night-raid – a retaliation for the accidental bombing of London.  From now on, cities, especially Great Britain’s capital will be the target, and wiped-out.

Track 12: Threat

Hitler’s revenge in turn was the beginning of the Blitz.  Evacuations limited the death-toll among civilians only a little.  The film shows that some families stayed unnecessarily, and were killed.  Goodwin depicts the human cost and fire and rubble, the efforts of ARP and Fire-Brigade units to save people and buildings in spare, daunted strings-lyricism, baroque string-runs shaking themselves out over darkness and destruction, a discord tutti, malign harp caresses and a detached whimper from twinned flute and oboe that seems to stand for the eternal last exclamation  one did not hear from one’s child... 

Track 13:  Civilian Tragedy

The Blitz was one of the two great blunders that saved Britain – the repeated bombing of radar-stations and airfields (and as not shown in the film, factories) was increasing the disorganization and demoralization of the RAF:  now the Germans attacked the civilian population instead.  Offensive Build-up is a cue that begins with a brief trumpet-fanfare: at Fighter Command Headquarters:  looking out on the glow of London burning, Air Marshal Dowding, Commanding  Officer, comments, to warm major- and upward-tending sequences coloured by the strings, that the RAF may now regroup and survive:  for the first time, German efforts will be predictable and limited in the main to their assault on London.  The whole remaining weight of Fighter Command numbers can be concentrated on intercepting large but localized formations.

This vision is followed by the aerial mixture as before:  climbing orchestral measures punctuated by RAF fanfares – and the triumphant statement of the Battle of Britain Theme, percussive edge honed.  It ends abruptly.

The other great blunder?  The Messerschmitt 109 had swooped down on climbing attackers, hunting freely in advance of their bombers – the Frei-jagd, the German fighter-pilots  called it.  Now, they were ordered to stick by the bombers – in practice, this meant that their Schwarme – or swarms of four aircraft - kept to a fixed height above their charges until engaged  in the battle below them, zigzagging  in flight as this was the only means of flying at the bombers’ cruise-speed.  Fighter-pilots knew  that acceleration, preferably in a dive, was the key to attacking aircraft of similar sprint-performance.  The Messerschmitt was fast, but not that fast.  The initiative was lost, the vital couple of seconds.  At the heights most combats now took place, the 109 had very slight edge in acceleration or no edge at all, and both the Spitfire and Hurricane could out-turn it:  to pounce had been its pilots’ best hope of destroying RAF interceptors – knocking down perhaps a section of unwary climbers in a single firing pass before zoom-climbing to gain height and attack again...     

Track 14:  Offensive Build-up

Attack!

Track 15:  Attack

Fire killed and injured horribly a great many fliers on both sides.  The science of the treatment of burns and skin-grafting made huge strides – in the terms of the day.  One of the film’s chief  characters, a Canadian pilot, is seen  to bale-out – allright...  But his aircraft was a flamer.  In Personal Tragedy, his Wife, a WAAF-officer is told that “they can do miracles these days.”   There is a

shortened reprise of Civilian Tragedy.

Track 16:  Personal Tragedy

We reach possibly the greatest-ever  evocation of air-combat in all music.  Sir William Walton was the first choice of composer for The Battle of Britain.  At the age of 66, he proved unable to create a viable score, even with the assistance of that great composer for concert-hall and films, Sir Malcolm Arnold.  Sad, this, given his brilliance in providing the music for Lesley Howard’s film, First of The Few, of 1942.  Remember Spitfire Prelude And Fugue?  His music for The Battle of Britain was largely rejected.  You must take on trust from us, that it is too lacking in breadth or real engagement, stuck in a groove of waspish portrayals of aircraft, Façade-like attempts at popular music (surely anachronistic in 1940), and interminable repetitions of Siegfried’s horn-call from Wagner’s Ring.  It is too small-scale, too scherzando-ish.  And yet, how to describe his Battle In The Air?  This cue was used to accompany combat on the Battle’s climactic day – September The Fifteenth, now Battle of Britain Day.  It accompanies a scene that is otherwise almost entirely mute, during which individual fates on both sides are summarily sealed.   All the unfortunate score’s mannerisms save ‘20s giddiness are concentrated in it, this nightmare, stabbingly fearsome, unnervingly complex piece, which, possessed of razor-sharp wit, portrays in full the split-second timing and terror of this form of war.  It begins in hollow deep woodwind and string tremolandos of irresolution, succeeded by oscillation in cello-harmonics – contrails above one? –into which swoop the measures that prove to be a refrain; an accelerando hastes one into the fight; jerking bursts like gunfire bring on more feverish panic.  Flutter-tongued trumpets and horns, rapid Elgarian runs on trombone and stabbing wasplike sounds, strings and brass – and off one goes into the refrain – and so on for four minutes.

Imagery stays in one’s mind – aircraft swooping, rolling, firing, white glycol-vapour or fire streaming from an engine.  Two sprog pilots go down, one drenched in sweat and shaking in terror as he tries to slide back his canopy – it sticks fast, the Spitfire, wreathed in flames, explodes - the other wincingly unable to leave his diving aircraft as he has been shot through the thigh, a WAAF voice from the control-room trying to raise him on the radio till the moment that his Spitfire hits the sands below...  A German pilot peers as his windscreen fills with black oil thrown back from a damaged engine – his Messerschmitt banks and blows up.  Another RAF pilot turns his aircraft upside-down (textbook, this), to bale out – he trails a long, glaring white ribbon of harness and goes on falling...  A Heinkel is hit in both engines; goggles down, the crew hastes to leave it – the last man struggles, straining every sinew as the dive deepens, to reach the escape hatch.  He fails as all is ending in a terrific rising minor scale, a tutto expressing the awfulness of this death, all death in war – it is a climax that loses none of its force from being the single most famous mannerism of Sir Malcolm Arnold in comedy film-music mode.  The Heinkel breaks up on the sea.   

Track 17:  Battle In The Air, Walton

Garlanded gaps at the dinner-table cause weary silence among Luftwaffe fighter-pilots.  The arrangement of Aces High, shorn of trio and played slowly on trombones-dominated brass speaks volumes, becoming something like one of those solemn Aequali for brass-ensemble and cathedral-performance, at which German composers of the 16th and 17^th centuries excelled.

Track  18:  Absent Friends

The Battle of Britain ends for the film as the Luftwaffe fail to show up one bright morning.  There is no rejoicing, only a sense of personal exhaustion.

The Plum, spam and Raspberry Jam march written for the end-credits by Walton is sometimes used before the end-credits in prints of the movie.  It sounds like the trio of Orb and Sceptre and is undoubtedly rousing so far as it goes, but curiously detached in context, like a book of remembrance that leaves out the Sergeant-pilots.  1960s Welfare State idealism is brought to bear by Goodwin.    After Luftwaffe fanfare and shocked Somewhere-in-England string chords dug in deep, a superb crescendo builds and  his reprise of his Battle of Britain theme in full panoply seems near to bursting with due brazen pride and considerable folk-songish heft – the New Elizabethan expression?  - the woodwind carolling in old-world, bowmen-and-yeomen exultancy, vying whirlingly with rich, sustained brass,  the staccato, latino drive of his Browning machine-gun-music breaking out, and brought to heel before the unstoppable, percussion-based close!

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme, based on the soundtrack of the United Artists film, The Battle of Britain, was researched and written by Mike Burrows.  We hope you enjoyed it and will join us again soon.  “This is Red Leader, I see ‘em!  Tally-ho! -Attacking, now!” 

Track 19:  Battle of Britain Theme – End Title

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 7 & 8

 By popular demand, a second chance to hear. ...

Classical Break - Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten 1913-1976

Hunt the Squirrel – 1.20

Hello and welcome to Classical Break. I’m Rupert Kirkham.

Today’s programme features music  by one of England’s finest composers, Benjamin Britten.

November 2013 sees the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Britten, in Lowestoft, on the Suffolk coast, the coast where he lived and composed for much of his life, where he built an opera house and a festival, and where he died in December 1976.

The son of a dentist, he studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. He was a brilliant pianist and had a phenomenal understanding of the capabilities and limitations of all the instruments in the orchestra.

One of the last pieces of music Britten composed, he undertook in 4 weeks between October and November 1974 – two years before his death. This was the Suite on English Folk Tunes, opus 90, from which our opening piece today was taken. Subtitled, “A time there was,...” after a phrase in a poem by Thomas Hardy, the Suite draws from a number of English folk songs and tunes. We heard ‘Hunt the Squirrel’ – an appropriate little number I felt as we ponder the rights and wrongs of the badger-culling experiment in Somerset that has just begun. There’ll be more from Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes later in the programme.

But  let’s hear next, a piece of music originally written by the man to whom the Suite on English Folksongs was dedicated – a collector of folksongs himself, the Australian composer, Percy Grainger. Molly on the Shore.

Molly on the Shore - Percy Grainger – 3.49

Molly on the Shore, by Percy Grainger. That came from a collection of Grainger’s tunes re-set by Britten called ‘Salute to Percy Grainger’.

Next, we have one of Britten’s most well-known works, from his Variations and Fugue on a theme of Purcell, also known as ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’, here’s the fugue.

Fugue from Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra – 2.40

Scene from Peter Grimes

Like most artists, Britten drew his inspiration from life. He lived, as I mentioned earlier, on the Suffolk coast – a wild and desolate place, so it’s not surprising that some of his music reflects the strength and beauty of the sea. In his opera, Peter Grimes,  Britten  chooses a story that is not only  set in a coastal fishing village, but also features a character with some of the problems faced by Britten as a homosexual in a country that for much of his life, could have incarcerated him.

He says of the Opera ‘(It is) a subject very close to my heart – the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.'

Set in the early 1800’s Peter Grimes is a fisherman who is accused of killing not one, but two young boy apprentices. The action is broken up by 4 ‘Sea Interludes’ The climax of the action takes place during a huge storm.

Here’s the Storm interlude. 

Storm interlude from Peter Grimes – 4.13

The Storm from Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes.

You’re listening to Somer Valley community radio on 97.5 FM and online at somervalleyfm.co.uk. I’m Rupert Kirkham and this is Classical Break. If you want to hear this programme again, or get your friends to listen go to the website and click LISTEN AGAIN. It’s that simple.

Today in the 100^th anniversary year of his birth, we’re listening to music by Benjamin Britten.

Let’s head inland now for another number from Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes. Something  one assumes good country folk used to knock back whilst watching the morris dancers do their stuff outside the village pub in days of yore  – cakes and ale.

Cakes and Ale from English Folk Tunes – 2.24

A Ceremony of Carols

When I was a lad, I was lucky enough to sing as a treble in the Choir at New College, Oxford. It was undoubtedly an incredible way to learn about music, and whenever we saw that we were to perform something  by Britten our spirits rose. There’s only so much Palestrina and Gibbons you can handle in a week of evensongs!

Our next pieces come from one of the magical experiences Britten gave me as a chorister – the singing of his Christmas collection, ‘A Ceremony of Carols.’

Here are three carols from the piece, Wolcum, There is no Rose and Deo Gracias.

Ceremony of Carols: Wolcum, There is No Rose, Deo Gracias – 5.00

Peter Pears, Tenor

We’ll hear some more music for choirs later, but first I want to play you part of Britten’s song cycle, The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

The libretto is a series of poems by British poets on the subject of night. It was written in 1943 when Britten and his partner, Peter Pears – had just returned from 2 years in America and Britten was preparing his first  large scale opera – Peter Grimes – which we heard about earlier. It’s scored for horn and small string ensemble and the piece has become a central work in both Tenor and Horn repertoire.

In three of the songs, Prologue, Pastoral and Hymn, Peter Pears is the Tenor, Barry Tuckwell plays the Horn and the band is the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer, Benjamin Britten in a recording made in December 1963.

Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings – 7.00

Now we’re going back to the chapel to hear another of Britten’s choral works. It’s his Missa Brevis in D and he dedicated it to George Malcom and the boys of Westminster Cathedral Choir. It was first performed in 1959 on the occasion of Malcom’s retirement as organist and choirmaster.

Actually, this  performance is by the boys of King’s College Cambridge, with Ian Hare at the organ and Sir David Willcocks conducting.

Missa Brevis in D – 10.05

Britten and Pears

This is Somer Valley FM and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today the programme features music by Benjamin Britten.

Now it’s back to the song cycles. Britten’s texts for his song cycles operas and other works came from various sources. The text for his song cycle, Les Illuminations – sung in French – probably came from the library of WH Auden, who was a friend of Britten’s with whom he collaborated on a number of projects.

Les Illuminations is based on a set of rather risqué poems by the French poet Rimbaud, written, some say, under the influence of mind-altering substances. They certainly are pretty wierd, but quite advanced for around 1873 when they were written.

Arthur Rimbaud was one of the most important precursors of modernism in poetry although his entire output was created in the space of 3 years and it was probably this that attracted Britten. Rimbaud was also ...er ‘connected’ to a fellow poet Paul Verlaine and following a series of rather public scandals involving Verlaine, Rimbaud put away his quill and set off for Asia and Africa as a travelling salesman, never to be heard of again. Britten would have liked that too!

Set for Tenor or Soprano and strings, we’re going to hear 3 ‘Illuminations’ – Fanfare, Ville, and Marine. There’s that sea again. The first and third are sung by a tenor, Peter Pears, in fact, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer and the second by the soprano, Felicity Lott on a 1989 Chandos CD with the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson.

Les Illuminations: Fanfare - Ville - Marine  – 5.15

In 1940, just before they bombed Pearl Harbour, the Japanese government commissioned a series of works to mark the 2,600^th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire. The next piece was one of those commissions.

Sinfonia Da Requiem is a symphony written when Britten was 26. It’s in 3  movements, and is probably Britten’s largest orchestral work for the concert hall.

Anyway, the Japanese rejected it because he used Latin titles for the movements taken from the Catholic Requiem and because it was too sombre for them. To be fair, it’s not something you’d play at a children’s party. I remember when I was at school, I used it as interval music for our touring  production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It was just about long enough for the interval and suitably demonic for the kind of capers to come in the second half of the play.

Some say that the tone of this piece was influenced by the recent deaths of his Mother and Father.

Here’s the second movement, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Richard Hickox.

Dies Irae.

Sinfonia da Requiem - Dies Irae – 5.27

I hope I’ve shown you some of the diversity of music produced by this outstanding English composer, Benjamin Britten. He was truly an icon in the musical 20^th century. His music is edgy, but accessible and it takes risks. Some of his music doesn’t get played much these days, which is a shame, but in this 100^th anniversary year, you are likely to find performances of all kinds from musicians at all levels around the country honouring his contribution to the English musical heritage.

In this programme we haven’t even touched on his contribution to the education of young schoolchildren through his school operas – Noye’s Flood, for example. I hope that in Classical Breaks to come this year we can play you some of this fine music which so many schoolchildren have experienced and which, one hopes, has inspired them to not only tolerate, but actually take an interest in ‘classical’ music amidst the cacophony of sounds and images that are thrown at them every second of the day.

Lecture over. We leave you with Jubilate Deo, a good example of Britten’s simpler writing. It’s a short anthem, written in 1961 at the request of the Duke of Edinburgh for St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Goodbye.

Jubilate Deo – 2.21