Extra Credit: The Seasonal Works of Benjamin Britten

Go beyond the program and expand your musical education with further listening.
By Maia Thielen, Events & Community Engagement Manager

(Alamy, via Smithsonian Magazine)

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In the Fall of 1932, 19-year-old Benjamin Britten pored over a book of ancient English carols, searching for the perfect text to set with his first mature religious work.  The result was A Boy Was Born: a theme and six variations setting ten 16th century texts.  This work for unaccompanied men’s, women’s, and boys’ voices would hardly be his last foray into seasonal repertoire. 
 
On December 14th and 15th, the Bozeman Symphony performs Britten’s “Men of Goodwill,” an orchestral setting of Christmas carol variations.  Men of Goodwill initially premiered as a radio performance which preceded King George VI’s 1947 Christmas broadcast, making its brassy grand opening appropriately ceremonious.  While only a single carol – “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” – forms the theme, the piece meanders through a tour of medieval English tunes and draws inspiration from non-Western music. 
 
In 1982, Robert Henderson of the Daily Telegraph described it as “…a shrewd and entertaining concert-piece, the five variations consisting of a spirited jug, a seductive andantino cast in the form of a slow, opulently lyrical waltz, a rustic dance, pompous little march and rhetorical finale. Expertly scored, as one would expect, and written in his lightest vein.”  As this weekend’s Music Director Finalist Norman Huynh pointed out in his Welcome Message, listen for how the melody is picked up by different instruments to create a “color palate” of sounds with the familiar melody. 
 
While Men of Goodwill is wordless, Britten was a master of setting texts for the voice.  The texts used in that earlier Christmas composition--A Boy Was Born­—were selected so carefully from the book of ancient carols that the work requires no narrator or staging and presents a complete narrative on its own.  The piece reflects on Jesus’ entire life rather than simply his birth story and alternates between plot and rumination.  Inspired by Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which he saw in 1933, Britten also weaved motives and text painting to describe elements like the Nativity, Mary rocking her infant, and the upward motion of Jesus’ eventual ascension.  

(Recommended listening: A Boy Was Born, featuring the Boys' Voices of the English Opera Group and the Purcell Singers, conducted by Benjamin Britten, himself.)

​Another masterful choral work to explore this season is A Ceremony of Carols: a striking composition for treble voices and harp.  Consisting of ten carols bookended by a plainchant procession and recession, A Ceremony offers a program of charming lullabies interspersed with the frantic, declamatory drama of movements like “This Little Babe,” which feature unexpected twists and turns of tonality as is typical of Britten.  In the middle of the work, the action pauses for “Interlude,” an ethereal respite for harp alone which leaves notes raining softly in the air like the drip-drops of melting snow.  

Listen to Bozeman Symphony second harpist Karen Thielen perform "Interlude:"

(Recommended listening: A Ceremony of Carols conducted by George Guest at St. John's Cambridge, 1965.)

​Lastly, for more secular, poetic listening, one need look no further than Winter Words, a song cycle for tenor featuring texts from poet Thomas Hardy’s Collected Poems.  Originally written for Britten’s life-long partner Peter Pears, the eight poems sigh with nostalgia, and the bleakness of Winter.  Listen for poignant touches like the imitation of a boy playing the violin in “At the railway station, Uppway,” and the gloom Britten evokes which echoes Franz Schubert’s Winterreise.    

(Recommended listening: Winter Words in two parts, sung by Peter Pears with Benjamin Britten on Piano; Winterreise, performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore.)

​We hope you enjoy touring just a handful of Benjamin Britten’s seasonal works and that we’ll see you this weekend at the Willson Auditorium for our live performance of Men of Goodwill during the Bozeman Symphony’s “Vivaldi’s Gloria," with Music Director Finalist Norman Huynh!

CONCERT INFO

Works referenced:

Britten-Pears Foundation, “Work of the Week: Winter Words,” Britten-Pears Foundation. https://brittenpears.org/explore/benjamin-britten/music/work-of-the-week/51-winter-words/.

Max Derrickson, “Britten — Men of Goodwill: Variations on a Christmas Carol,” Max Derrickson.  https://www.musicprogramnotes.com/britten-men-of-goodwill-variations-on-a-christmas-carol/.
 
Gordon Lamb, “Benjamin Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols,’” The Choral Journal 4, no. 1 (1963): 18-20.
 
Stephen Sieck, “Earl Signs of a Gift for Drama: Benjamin Britten’s A Boy Was Born, Op. 3,” Choral Journal 45, no. 2 (2004): 8-16.



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