britten article

8/4/2019 Britten Article

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C o m e , h e a v y s l e e p : m o ti v e ~ m e t a p h o r i nB r i t t e n 's N o c t u r n a l , o p u s 70

STEPHEN GOSS

I AN IDEAL INSOM NIA: RECEPTION

The prevailing melancholy [of Britten's Nocturnali is as natural to the guitar'ssonorities as it is appropriate in a tribute to John Dowland.

S uch summary remarks characterise what little has been written aboutBritten's Nocturnal . The reader's reaction might be one of passive agreementor mild irritation, but there is rarely dialogue because there islimited discourse:No ctu rn al a fte r J oh n Dowla nd is often passed over by Britten scholars with scantdiscussion or no mention at all. Certainly, little has been added to Evans' reli-able commentary, written only three years after Britten's death. Are these schol-ars, one asks, ignoring the music or the medium?For all its expediency, Evans' remark begs a number of fruitful questions. In

how many senses, then, is Britten's work after John Dowland? How is Noc turna lmelancholic? - in fact, what are the constructs of melancholy in music in gen-eral and in the music of Britten and Dowland in particular? And how may welocate the sonority of the guitar in the discourse?The starting point for the answers is well known. Nocturnal is a set of vari-

ations on Dowland's lutesong 'Come, heavy Sleep',delaying literal statement ofthe theme until the end to give what might be called r eve r se va ri a ti on f o rm . Itsnumbered sections are non-tonal but otherwise rather faithful to the structureand motivic material of the song. The surface workings of Britten's variationtechnique are dear enough, I feel, that it is not my intention to give a detailedaccount of them here. Moreover, Britten's reluctance to specify the genre in histitle - the work is not called V aria tio ns o n 'C om e, h ea vy S le ep ' - points to otherdriving forces in this music, and additional relationships between the lutesongand the preceding sections.In this article, then, I intend to examine melancholy as a topic (the tapas of

classical rhetoric), suggesting that it saturates the score of Noc turna l at everystructural level. I shall refer to several of the movements of Nocturnal , but thefocus of my argument will be a detailed comparison between the opening vari-ation, Musingly, and Britten's transcription of Dowland's song, 'Come, heavySleep', that appears on the final page of the score. I shall search for motivic co-herence beneath the surface of the music, and attempt to display melancholic

Stephen Goss, 2001Extracts from Britten's Nocturnal 1964, 1965 by Faber Music Ltd reproduced bypermission of Faber Music Ltd, 3 Queen Square, London wens 3AU

Peter Evans, T il e M u si c o f B en ja m in B ri tte n(London: Dent, 1979), P 333.

Benjamin Britten, No c tu r na l a ft er lohnDow/a lid f or G u it ar , op. 70 (London: Faber,1965; New York: Schirmer, 1965).

John Dowland, 'Come, h ea vy S le ep , TheF ir st B oo ke o f S o ng e: o r Ayres (1597), NO ao,See bibliography for var ious edi tions, andp 74 for a transcrip tion of the can tus andlute parts.

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Evans, T i le Mu s ic o f Be n ja l ll ir J B r it te n , p }}}.

Carpenter, Ben jam i r! B r it te n (London:Faber , 1992) , p 422.

Evans, T he M u si c o f B en ja mi n B rit te n, p }31.

Donald Mitchell, 'Mapreading: BenjaminBritten in conversation', from Christopher

Palmer (ed.), T he B ri tt en C ompa ni on(London: Faber 1984), PP 92-93.

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motivic archetypes working at several levels of compositional organisation inMusingly. In the last two sections 1turn to the implications of the reverse vari-ation form, and attempt to define how two independent idioms - Dowland's,the guitar's - become identified with Britten's. For it is one of the uniqueachievements of this masterpiece that neither idiom is pushed into the back-ground. On the contrary: the more nakedly they are disclosed in the music -the quotation of an entire song, a chord on the open strings - the more mov-ingly are we made aware that it is Britten's hand that strikes the open strings,and Britten's voice that sings Dowland to us.Despite its comparative critical neglect, Nocturnal (1963) occupies a pivotal po-sition in Britten's output. It refers back to the many works concerned with sleepand dreams, from the S er en ad e fo r T en or ,H o rn a nd S tr in gs (1943) through Noc-turne (19S8) to A M idsu mm er N ight's D ream (1960); and it looks forward to theheterophonic melodic style and melancholic atmosphere of later works such asCu rl ew R iv er (1964) and D ea th in V en ice (1973). Evans concedes that Noc turna lhas been somewhat overlooked:[The piece} deserves a far higher place in the common view of Britten'sachievement than it has yet gained.

The few Britten scholars who mention Noc turna l at all often refer to insomniarather than sleep and dreams as the psychological orbit of the piece:'Come Heavy Sleep' ... is not heard in full till the end, suggesting that sleepdoes not come for a long while. The preceding movements are undoubtedlymeant to portray the various stagesof insomnia.

Sowhen at last we achieve the simple statement, the song seems to representthe repose of sleep,and the preceding eight variations the changing, often tor-mented, moods through which the poet has groped towards it.

Insomnia giving way to sleep: a tempting programme, so long as the song at theend is heard without the words ( Com e, h ea vy sle ep ... ). But Britten's own state-ments about the piece and about dreaming in general are ambiguous. Brittenadmitted, in a 1969 interview with Donald Mitchell, that Noc turna l 'had somevery, to me, disturbing images in it'. He did not say what they were but went onto link these images with 'the Dowland song, which of course itself has verystrange undertones in it. Dowland was a person who perhaps even consciouslyrealised the importance of dreams.' Elsewhere in the interview, Britten empha-sised the importance of dreaming in his creative work: 'it gives a chance foryour subconscious mind to work when your conscious mind is happily asleep...if!don't sleep, I find that ... in the morning [I amJ unprepared for my nextday's work.' However, he warned that dreams 'release many things which onethinks had better not be released',Evidently Britten depended on dreams in two ways. In the first place, sleep

and dreams provided a wellspring of unconscious activity and imagery thatkept his composing fresh and vital. In the second place, he depended to someextent on dreaming, rather than waking life, to keep the creative source at bay:some images might be disturbing, but they remained the province of his un-conscious mind, to be sublimated in pieces like Nocturnal but never spoken ofSTEPHEN GOSS


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in words. Indeed, Britten reserved some of his most imaginative and obscuresonorities for his dreamscapes. The dream music of Oberon in A M id su mm erN ig ht 's D r eam combines the otherworldly sound of the countertenor voice withharp, harpsichord and celesta to evoke the supernatural. The nightmarish im-agery of Nocturne led Britten to predict that the piece would not 'be madly pop-ular because it is the strangest and remotest thing - but then dreams are strangeand remote'.It might be best, then, to speak of Nocturnal not so much as an evocation of

insomnia, as in Bartok's own genre of n ig ht mu si c, as of the unconscious mind.The extent to which this is the world of sleeping or waking depends on the sub-ject. Hardly surprising, on this view, that guitarists are so often tempted to turnto the models of depth psychology in forming an interpretation of the work.

I [ SEMPER DOLENS: MOTIV IC CONSTRUCTS OF MELANCHOLY

Dowland : c la s si ca l rh et o ri cC om e, heavy Sleep, the im age o f true D eath,A nd close up these m y weary w eeping eyes,

W ho se spring o f tea rs doth sto p m y vita l b rea th,A nd tea rs m y heart w ith Sorro w's sigh-sw oll'n cries.

C om e an d possess m y tired thou ght-w orn so ul,T ha t livin g dies, till thou on m e be sto le.

By displaying the first stanza of Dowland's song as an epigraph to his score,Britten emphasises the importance of the relationship between the text and hismusic. It is evident that he thought that the performer should be fully familiarwith the text, even though it is never sung aloud in Nocturnal , and, by implica-tion, its melancholic mood and meaning.The text is emotionally charged and saturated with dark, melancholic im-

agery. This reflects not only the contemporary vogue for melancholy, but alsoDowland's own melancholic disposition:Dowland certainly cultivated a melancholy public persona. He signed himself'Io: dolandi de Lachrimae', gave his pieces titles such as 'Semper Dowland,Semper Dolens', 'Melancholy Galliard' and 'Forlorn Hope Fancy' and pep-pered his publications with Latin mottoes such as 'The arts which help allmankind cannot help their master' (the title page of Th e Firs t Booke) and'whom Fortune has not blessed, he either rages or weeps' (the title page ofLachrimae [1604]).... it must be remembered that 'melancholy' was such a common complaintand'so grave a problem at this time that it occupied a large part of the atten-tion of both physiciansand philosophers. who attempted to find its cause andto prescribe remedies either physical or spiritual.

In his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) Robert Burton identifies no fewer thaneighty-eight 'degrees' of melancholy. He goes on to suggest various conditionsthat contribute to the Elizabethan melancholic state - social change, politicaluncertainty, challenges to religious and intellectual certainties. frustrated ambi-

COME, HEAVY SLEEP

The part of Oberon that Britten wrote forAlfred Deller is very much informed byDeller's performance of early music, partie-ularly Purcell , and Brit ten would have heardDeller s ing Dowland with the lutenis tDesmond Dupre.From a letter to Marion Harewood, zothAugust 1958, quoted in Carpenter, BenjaminBritten, p 387.

In private conversation, for example,Ricardo Iznaola has outl ined a 'Jungian'interpretation of Nocturnol, identifying foreach section in turn one of rung's arche-types of the collective unconscious.

'Come, heavy Sleep' is quoted here as itappears in Britten's score on the verso of theti tle page, Bri tten drew his text f rom E.H.Fellowes' 1920 edition of the F i rs t Book 0 /S on gs o r A yr es (London: Stainer & Bell); butin la/III Dowland (London: Faber, rnd ed.1982), Diana Poulton argues convincinglythat l ine 5should read, as in the original,'t ired thoughts, warne soule', the word an dbeing understood: 'If the line as i t stands isspoken aloud with that idea in mind ...both the adjectives tired and lVom will beslightly stressed, which agrees completelywith the musical setting. Since." the samereading was carr ied through to the edi tionof 1613, though other texts were emended, itwould seem that [Dowland] was sat is fiedwith the words as they stand and had nowish to change them: (pp 242-244)In part nr, it will be evident that to sing

the final section, as is very occasionally doneby guitarists competent to do so, is to mis-represent the work. But it is tempting toimagine the effect of a recitation of th is six-l ine stanza just before playing. In that case,Dowland's song would be heard as it ispresented in the score: once without themusk, and once without the text.

Peter Holman, Do will l i d: La chr imae (16t}4}(Cambridge University Press, 1999), P 51.

Poulton, l ohn Dow la nd, pp 76-77.

Robert Burton, T he A n at om y o f M e la nc ho ly[1621)' ed. r.c. Faulkner, N,K. Kiessling &R.L. Blair (Oxford, 1989-94).

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F oll ow in g a re s ou rc es fo r t he s on gs a nd l ut ep ie ce s b y D ow la nd e xt ra ct ed i n E xampl e I:'F lo w m y teares f al l f r om your s pr in g s' , nil

'In darknesse le t m e dwe ll', MBIIO'W h en t he p oo re C rip le ', psll6

'I s aw m y Lady Weepe' , nilMelanco ly G( l ll i (l rd , CLMI2S

Farwell, cLM/3F o rl or n Ho pe Fancye, ct.ulz

'Weepe yo u n o mo re s ad F ou nt ai ne s', milsAbbrev ia ti ons ( det a il s i n B ib li ogr aphy);

I F ir st B oo ke o f S on ge s o r A y re sII S ec on d B oo ke o f S on gs o r A y re s

III T hird m Id L as t B ao ke o f S on g; o r A yr esPS A P i lg rime s S o la ce

MB Rober t Dow land , A Mu si ca l! BanquetCLM C olle cte d L ute M us ic o f I oh n D ow /m idIn t he so ng s, th e sp ellin g o f t he title (t ak enfrom th e co nte nts p ag e o f t he s ou rc e} m ayb e at o dd s w ith t he te xt u nd erlay . B arrin gan d key s ig na tu re s o f s on gs a s in s ou rc es .

Dor ia n s ignatu re s have b een ch ose n fo r th es ol o l ut e p ie ce s.

a) 'Flow my teares 'I)

,r J IeJ JFlow fall fro m y ou r sp rin gs .)' - teares

b) 'In darknesse let me dwell'

f - I J J V II I) l(1- - - - - -n dark nesse le t mee dwell,c) 'When the poore Cripple', - a__ J --j J I -4 ~ Jr r , . . , (I IiIWhen the poore eri ple by t he P oo le did lye,d) 'Isaw my Lady Weepe'~I~: I II~ f4 II ~ J IiI saw m y La dy weepe,

e) Me lan co ly Ga ll ia rd' ~ j , 1 ,B ~ ) j J I , J J J 1 , 1A uth or a nd e dito r a re m ost g ra tefu l to

Anthony Rooley who gene rou sl y p rov id ed f) Farwellc op ie s o f p rim ar y- so ur ce m at er ia l fo r t his i _j _j ~ D _j

musical example. ~ ~~ ~ (~ $ i~1 ~J ~j~i ~~~~~A~#~d~!~~.! I - ~ $ J ~ pJ~ ? ~ ;g) Fo rl or n Hope Pa l/ ey e

4 ~ (! 0 # fh) 'Weepe you no more sad Fountaines'@ ~p . ~ I r r I - r ' r j F ' J r II F F

That nowe fiefs) s!ee - p in g, t ha t now e lie[s) slee - p in g , s of t - Iy , soft - I)',i) ' In darknesse let me dwell '

@ i F r r a d I , 1- IT ill d eath , till death doe come,

Example 1 Representations of melancholy in Dowland

tion, or just fin-de-steele malaise. Burton and his contemporaries also recog-nised that melancholy was a peculiarly English complaint that seemed not toaffect 'those rich United Provinces of Holland, Zealand, &c'. The Elizabethansbelieved that 'melancholy' or 'black bile' was one of the four liquids or humoursfound in the body that corresponded with the four elements of inanimate mat-ter, Black bile was considered to be thick and heavy and therefore encourageddark moods tormented by morbid fears and deep sorrows; it was connectedwith the element earth, with winter, and with old age,STEPHEN GOSS

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a ) [E x. ia ] b ) [E xs id, e l c ) [E xs ia , c] d ) [E x. If] e) [E x. 1 9] f) [E xs ib , d ] g) [ Exs i h, i]8 7 6 5 3 2 S j 2 5 6 5, - j j - I I . . I I - . I I d - . I I - II I I . I I ~.

Example 2 Melancholicmotivic contours

How does this melancholy manifest itself in Dowland's music? Some ofDowland's melancholic song texts share similar phrases and images. Poultondraws attention to some striking similarities between Dowland's celebrated'Flow my Tears' and the texts of'Mourne mourne, day is with darkness fled' and'In Darkness let me Dwell'. She suggests that the poems may have been writtenby a single author and lists a number of close parallels of which the followingexample is typical:you shadowes that in darcknesse dwellin darknesse learne to dwell

'FlowmyTears''Mourne mourne, day iswith darkness fled''In darkness let me dwell'n darkness let mee dwell

It is perhaps, hardly surprising that certain emotionally powerful images recurin some of Dowland's melancholic songs. Indeed, it is the frequency of theseimages that helps to crystallise the specific literary style of the poems. Givensuch parallelisms between the texts of Dowland's melancholic songs, are there,one is led to ask, similar melodic or motivic parallelisms that suggest melan-choly in the music? A survey of Dowland's songs and lute music reveals a wealthof motivic connections. Example 1 illustrates certain recurring melodic frag-ments that are associated with melancholy. From these examples, I have ex-tracted various motivic archetypes that might suggest different aspects ofmelancholy (Example 2).Could there be a deeper semantic system in operation here or are these par-

allelisms merely coincidental? Perhaps the most appropriate answer to thisquestion is couched not in the notions of linguistics, but in the historical art ofrhetoric. To a degree scarcely imaginable today, rhetoric, in deference to classi-cal traditions, remained central to the aesthetic and theoretical concepts ofWestern art music throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and theBaroque. This was partly due to the fact that, for a long time, notated music waspredominantly vocal and thus inextricably bound up with text. Even after therise of independent instrumental musk, rhetorical principles still dominatedcompositional technique until around 1800. In 1627 Francis Bacon wrote that'There be in Musick certaine Figures, or Tropes; almost agreeing with theFigures of Rhetoricke; and with the Affections of the Minde, and other Senses.'In Elizabethan England, the portrayal of melancholy occupied a central role inmusical rhetoric; many of the above motivic archetypes were in common usageby composers of the day.The t ea r mo t iv e (a descent of a perfect fourth whether accomplished by leap

or by diatonic or chromatic steps) has long been associated with lachrymoseemotions. Holman describes it as 'a standard emblem of grief' and goes on toexplore the etymology of the motive drawing attention to a number of impor-tant models. Dowland uses the motive in a variety of ways, as can be seen in theexamples above. The chromatic versions make use of the rhetorical figure

COME, HEAVY SLEEP

Whilst many of Dowland's songs weresett ings of pre-exist ing poems there werenotable exceptions, 'Flow m y Tears', forinstance, is an adaptat ion of Dowland'salready popular L ac hr im ae P a v a tIandPoulton believes the text to have beenwritten to fit the music . This practice wasnot uncommon at the time.

Poulton, J o hn D ow la n d, p 256.

Francis Bacon, S y J I' Il s y /v a rl lm ( 1 61 7 ).quoted in Holman, Lachrimae, p 43.

Tear mo t iv e i s Holman's own term:although the figure was well used and wellknown it never attracted a formal Latinlabel. See Holman, ibid . pp 40-42-

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Cooke's findings, then, more or less coincide with the models provided by thetheories of musical rhetoric. Whether the emotional connotations of certainmelodic shapes are natural or culture-bound, the strength and depth of Cooke'sresearch suggests that an unwritten emotional lingua franca has developed inWestern tonal art music.It would appear that all the melancholic motives that I have identified fea-

ture prominently in Cooke's argument. Example aa, for instance (8-7-6-5 in aminor key), is often used in the context of a lament:To fallfrom the tonic to the dominant, taking in the 'mournful' minor seventhand 'anguished' minor sixth, isclearlyto express an incoming painful emotion,an acceptance of, or yielding to grief: passive suffering; and the despair con-nected with death. Cooke, T he L an gu ag e o f M u si c, p 16}.

The descending figure 3-2-1 (Example zb) also appears to have melancholicimplications, particularly when preceded by the lower dominant (5-4-3-2-1,Example 2C) :

Sloboda (T he M u si ca l M il ld ) t ab ula te s anumber of examples of the figure s-:\-2-itaken from a wide historical range ofvoca l musi c.Torise from the lower dominant over the tonic to the minor third, and fallback

to the tonic ... conveysthe feelingof a passionate outburst of painful emotion,which does not protest further, but falls back into acceptance- a flowand ebbof grief. Being neither complete protest nor complete acceptance, it has aneffectof restlesssorrow. T i re [mrg ll ll ge o f Mu s i c, pp 137-1)8.

All Cooke's observations and conclusions are backed up with a plethora ofmusical examples taken from well-known canonic works from the last fivehun-dred years.Besides the melodic representations of melancholy discussed above, Cooke

also discusses the melancholic effect generated by particular note pairings. Hecompares the metaphorical implications of the minor sixth falling to the dom- Thes e p airin gs h av e p art ic ula r re le va nc e ininant and the minor second falling to the tonic (c f Example zf') in these terms: the context of the phrygian mode.[The minor second's J tension isobviously akin to that of the minor sixth: it isan acute dissonance in relation to the minor triad, but whereas the minor sixthis drawn by semitonal tension down to the dominant, the minor second isdrawn by semitonal tension down to the tonic. This means that whereas theminor sixth isan expression of anguish in a context of flux, the minor secondis an expression of anguish in a context of finality; in other words, the minorsixth expressesan active anguish, the minor second a hopeless anguish. Ibid. P 7 11 .

Even outside these specific tonal contexts, the semitone has a key expressive rolein the portrayal of musical melancholy. Cooke describes the effect producedwhen diatonic descents (such as 8-7-6-5) are filled in chromatically(Example ze):The effectof filling in the gaps is to make the 'despairing' descent more weary,and to increase the element of pain by every possiblechromatic tension. Ibid. P 165.

One has only to think of the bass line of Dido 's Lamen t from Purcell's D ido a ndAeneas or the opening of Dowland's Fo rlo rn Hop e F an cy (Example 19 ) to appre-ciate Cooke's point.

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From this point onwards, I shall often referto Dowland's song as it appears on p 1 5 ofBri tten's score, rather than to the original

song. To avoid confusi on Ihall refer to thisversion as S / O l l ' a nd q ui et (the marking inBritten's score), reserving the title 'Come,heavy Sleep' for Dowland's original song.

The implications for performance of thesetwo sect ions are challenging. How to con-vey distinctly the two, almost impossiblyquiet, dynamic levels marked, and how tomake the hairpin dynamics sound within

the indicated pianissimo! Clearly much is tobe gained from practising the two sections

side by side.

Sleep was an Elizabethan metaphor fordeath and it is possible that the arrival of

the song hera lds not the repose of sleep , butthe finali ty of death after tormented sleep.

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Cooke's thesis addresses tonal music only. It is time to return to Noc turna l andask, can his ideas be translated into Britten's post-tonal idiom? Example 3 (onP 75) attempts to find an answer. At the heart of this example is a search for theunderlying motivic structures which form an expressive undertow to Musingly.But its starting point is to be found in the first two staves, which show how themelodic line (and occasionally the rhythm) of Musingly is derived from that ofS lo w a nd q uie t, We shall pursue this topic more fully in part III, but the follow-ing preliminary observations are well worth noting: In its basic contour, Britten's line keeps to within a tone and a half of the orig-inal. The exception is the approach to the two cadences on c! at bars 15 and 26(we shall see why in part HI, v). Bars 1-12 are set an octave lower than the rest of Musingly. The four notes of'And tears my heart' are expanded in bar 13 to effect a transfer to the register ofS lo w a nd q uie t. Bars 22-24 are based on the same material as bars 20-22, extending the effectof anabasis already described in the rhetorical summary of 'Come, heavy Sleep'.

o Although S lo w a nd q uie t fades away,its extra bar, by comparison with Musingly,is crucial to the close of the work.

o Both movements are set p p - and in both movements the distinctive homo-phonic passages are set apart to be played ppp.In Musingly, Britten freely adapts the rhythm and carefully manipulates thetones and semitones of melodic line of 'Come, heavy Sleep' to increase tempo-ral and tonal ambiguity. He processes the pitches by dividing the octave equallyinto minor thirds, giving what we may call a 'diminished-seventh' filter. This fil-ter replaces the confident stability of Dowland's diatonic line with the tonal fluxof uncertain exploratory musings, Example 4 shows diminished filters at workin the opening measures of Mu sin gly , V er y A g ita te d and March-l ike, whereasExample 3 follows the diminished filters all the way through Musi l1gly.Essentially, Britten uses these filters to translate the musical language from atonal to a post-tonal idiom.One of the keys to Britten's post-tonal style is his ability to transform tonal

fragments into motivic cells for non-tonal exploitation (more of this inpart III).Therefore, even outside a tonal context the motivic intervallic shapesthat Britten uses correspond to the melancholic melodic fragments discussedabove. And they can trigger similar emotional responses.

Musingly is suffused with melancholic imagery and is controlled by motivesconstructed from three intervals taken from Dowland's song - the fallingfourth and falling tone of 'heavy sleep' and the rising semitone of 'true Death'.Table 1suggests an implicit emotional metaphor for each of the intervals and acorresponding rhetorical figure.Example 3 shows how these motivic cells operate at a variety of depths of

compositional construction. At the surface level it is possible to trace Britten'sIMusingl)', bars 1-2 II Very agitated, bars 1-3 V March-like, bars 2-5-

QQI ,~ a t2o

Example 4 Dimin ished f il te rs

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Table 1Interval Classical rhetoric T he L an gu ag e o fMu s icAscendingsemitone

yearning, anguished hope or striving fortme D eath - closely related to the sighing,anguished, descending semitone

pathopceia

Descendingtone

grief, lament, mourning,acceptance of death

catabas ls

Descendingperfect fourth

despair - dose relationship with8-7-6-5'tear motive'(Lachrimae)

recomposition of Dowland's vocal line note by note (lines 1and 2). The nextlayer reveals chromatic ascents and whole-tone descents that are localisedenough to be audible beneath melodic decoration (lines 3 and 4). Line 5showsthe diminished filters discussed above, which pervade the latter part of themovement. Below that, the final cadence notes of each phrase can be isolated,like an acrostic, to suggest the contour of the 'Come, heavy Sleep' motive (line6). At a deeper level (line 7), I have uncovered long-term semitone sighs thatmap the underlying motivic structure and sit over the gently rocking fossilisedfourth that remembers the bipartite division of Musingly . Melancholy inflectsall levels, from surface to structure alike. All are wounded; all weep.

III THAT DYING LIVES: DOWLAND RECOMPOSING BRITTEN

i Va ri at io n fo rmAs in several of Britten's other variation sets, Nocturnal places the starting point- the theme - at the end. Other examples include Lachrimae for viola andpiano, also based on a Dowland lutesong, and the Third Cello Suite, based ona Russian folksong, In all three cases the final theme is not Britten's and is tonal.Of course, it is no easy matter for a post-tonal composer to quote tonal

music without anomaly, and Britten's reversed form is a response to thisdifficulty. There is a rupture between Dowland's language and Britten's whichwould be all too apparent had Nocturnal followed the traditional ordering.Admittedly, in the tonal variation sets of earlier epochs, there could also be sty-listic discrepancies, but the fact of tonality assured a certain unity, againstwhich differences in style could be celebrated without any fundamentalcontradiction,Composers frequently based a set of variations on another composer's

theme (Beethoven's 'Diabelli' Variations, op. 120, Britten's early V aria tio ns o n aTheme of F rank Bridge, op. 10) or a theme in a self-enclosed style (Bach's'Goldberg' Variations, BWV 988). The critical feature of these themes is their epi-grammatic nature. They are miniatures which achieve full closure. The varia-tions do not continue the music, standing as they do on a quite different levelto the theme - not continuation but repetition and commentary. In these

COME, HEAVY SLEEP

Catabasis is the opposite of anabasis . See A.Kircher, Musurgi a un iv er sa l is (Rome, 1650).referenced in Beulow, 'Rhetoric in Music',p 263: 'This occurs when a voice part ormusical passage reflects the textual conno-tation of descending.'

The graphic notation used in Example 3uses beams to group notes together intosalient motions. It is not a Schenkeriangraph of the piece, above all because it isnot and never could be a tonal harmonicanalysis . This isone reason why the deeperlevels are shown at the bottom rather thanthe top, turning the typical Schenker graphon its head: there is no underlying back-ground which could be posited as a theoret-ica l kernel, fleshed out by the surface of themusk. In Schenker's tonal model, the sur-face of the music synthesises the remoterlevels; in Example 3, the deeper levelsmerely analyse - underlie - the surface.

Other post-tonal solutions have been toquote the theme piecemeal throughout(Nicholas Maw's Music o f M em or y forguitar), Of to add a post-tonal accompani-ment to the statement of a tonal theme(Martinu's Yariations 011 tl T he me o f R os sin iH290, [l941j fo r cello and piano and PeterDickinson's Ce ll ar s C lough Dllo (1988) fo rtwo guitars),

The Aria on which Bach's variations arebased is so self-consciously French inmanner that its authorship was briefly inquestion a couple of decades ago.

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To speak of working against a traditionalform is to put things very much in themanner of Hans Keller, and it is not

surprising that Brit ten was for Keller one ofthe few twentieth-century composers to

solve formal problems in an utterly naturalway. He paid Brit ten's Second Quartet thecompliment of composing a 'FunctionalAnalysis' of it (a wordless, performable

analysis in notated music alone), and hisessay on the Third Quartet is couched inthe terms just described: 'Britten's LastMasterpiece', in Essays 01 1 Music, ed.

Christopher Wintle (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994), pp Ill-II).

In S lo w a nd q ui et , the Ite is absent:according to Julian Bream, Britten wantedto 'WIite a lute piece' rather than the guitarpiece that Bream eventually prevailed uponhim to write (quoted in Tony Palmer, Iulian

B rea m: A L ife 01 1 t il e Road [London:Macdonald & Co, 1982], p 87).

See Harold Bloom, T il e A n xi et y o f I nf /u en ee :a th eo ry o f p o et ry (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1973).

62

works, the sense of quotation marks surrounding the theme, of the examina-tion question followed by a brilliant and lengthy response, is unmistakable.

Nocturnal is composed against the background of this traditional variationform. The most important effect of this is that the opening section and first'variation', Musil1gly , becomes a provisional theme for what follows. The equiv-alence is clear in the way Britten chooses the same dynamic levels for each, ppand ppp, and asks for these dynamics at corresponding places. The symbioticrelationship between Musingly and S lo w a nd q uiet implies a cyclical rather thanlinear structure to the whole work,The first part of Nocturnal is a set of variations that move away from

Musingly , whereas the second part moves towards S lo w a nd q uiet. The initial vi-olent contrast of dynamic energy generated by the juxtaposition of Musinglyand Very agi ta ted propels the work forwards, The wave-like dynamic swings be-tween subsequent variations gradually subside until the work reaches its stillcentre, Dreaming and Gen tl y r ock ing . These dynamic swings are reminiscent ofcycles of depth of sleep; the alternation of orthodox (deep) and paradoxical(shallow or dreaming) sleep that occurs several times during a night's sleep. Asthe night progresses the depth of orthodox sleep gradually reduces until itmerges with the cycles of paradoxical sleep just before waking,Following this still centre, the balance of power shifts decisively from

Musingly to S lo w a nd q uiet. The passacaglia ground, absent throughout the firstfive variations, is adumbrated at the beginning of Dreaming (albeit in a middlevoice and in a non-tonal, filtered context) and Gentl y r oc ki ng uses an unfilteredversion of Dowland's opening melodic phrase for the first time. The dynamicswings of the opening variations are reflected by the Passacaglia, which gradu-ally energises a similar, but inverted, dynamic discourse. This time, therefore,the moment of most extreme contrast comes not at the beginning but at theend, between the death-rattle of the final climactic wave of the Passacaglia andthe serene tranquillity of S lo w a nd q uiet.To close a variation set, the tradition was to round off with a final variation

demonstrating a complex discipline, usually a fugue: Britten touches base withthis tradition by casting the last variation of Nocturnal in his signature form,the passacaglia. A final statement of the variation theme as an apotheosis is notuncommon in the traditional form: one thinks of Bach's Goldberg Variations(where the theme is repeated at the end, verbatim but experientially trans-formed), and Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (whose final minuet seems to rep-resent a sublimated version of Diabelli's original waltz). In Nocturnal , when wearrive at Dowland's song, at Dowland's style, after the variations, the effect israther different. The theme is not heard, but overheard: it is to be played 'slowand quiet', as if from a distance. It is not sung but played; the instrument is notlute but guitar; and finally the music drifts away at the end, left incomplete andhanging on the tonality most remote from home. Ifthere is an analogous struc-ture, it is Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, but in Britten's form it is the originalrather than the translation which is the goal of the music.In short, Nocturnal makes itself heard not as a set of variations on a theme,

but as a theme on a set of variations. The result is startling: a sense of whatHarold Bloom calls 'the return from the dead': in this anachronistic sequence,is Britten recomposing Dowland, or Dowland recomposing and distillingBritten? To ask this seemingly absurd question is to arrive at the heart of the

STEPHEN GOSS


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Passacaglia ground

FExample 5 The passacaglia ground and its derivation

question of style, for Britten was, to borrow Bloom's terminology, a strong com-poser: one who embraced influences with such confidence that sometimes it ishard not to hear the original in light of the 'remake'. Are there not momentswhen Bach seems to borrow from Brahms, Mahler from Shostakovich, andPurcell, in his passacaglias, from Britten?We shall pursue this question by exploring what elements of Dowland's

song are already i n s ty le , ready-made for Britten's language, so that the reversalof roles in the work becomes natural. Of course, the variations themselves willtell us what these elements are. The key to the matter is the difference betweenintervallic and tonal writing. The writing is intervallic rather than tonal when amotive is used in various contexts and transpositions, but the exact intervalsfrom note to note remain fixed. Very little of 'Come, heavy Sleep' can be im-ported into Britten's music without some filtering. But in a few componentsBritten recognised particular intervallic properties that allowed him to usethem unaltered.

ii T he p assa ca glia gro un dA hermeneutic account of the Passacaglia would be an invidious undertaking.To some listeners it is the most disturbing movement in the work, to others themost beautiful. To bring the two reactions together is to call the movementepiphanic: certainly, there is a moment of epiphany when the obsessive repeti-tions of the passacaglia ground dissolve into a benign accompanimental figurein Slo w a nd q uiet (Example 5).When the Passacaglia begins, it is the first time that this motive is heard in

its unfiltered version. There is a surface similarity with two of Cooke's melan-cholic semantic units (Examples za and 2C). However, the tonal implications arenot clear and A minor is the least important of three possible tonalities at work.In 'Come. heavy Sleep' the motive is contextualised as 8-7-6-5-4-3 in themajor (ionian) mode. but in the Passacaglia the impression of 6-5-4-3-2-i inthe phrygian mode dominates; the pattern of tones and semitones is identicalin all three cases, Peter Evans alludes to a tonal conflict between C major and Ephrygian:

COME, HEAVY SLEEP

In its original rhythm (see full version ofDowland's song on p 74), the motive beginsas a major-key version of the Lachrimaemotive (the original pavan for lute had beenwri tten by the time Dowland published TIleF ir st Hooke o f SO ll ge s) . I t isobvious, how-ever, that the original rhythm would makenonsense of the Passacagl ia as it stands , andBritten was 0bliged to change it.

It should be noted that although Brittencalls this a passacagl ia it is not a passacagl iain strict definition of the word, as Evansexplains:'Whereas most ground-bass treatments

are studies in simultaneity - counterpointsagainst the ground, new harrnonisations ofit , developing rhythmic activity above i t,and so on - the nature of guitar techniquemakes this passacaglia something nearer adialogue. Since the ground is so persistentlyat variance with the unfolding argument itinterrupts, the piece acquires a dramaticisrnthat may well be unique in the repertoire ofthis instrument.' ( Th e M u si c o f B en ja nn nBritten, p 3}2)


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T he M u si c o f B en ja m in B ri tt en , p 332.

In se rial t erm s, it s p rim e fo rm an dr et ro g ra de i nv er si on a re i de nt ic al ( ifsui tably tr ansposed).

Hans Ke ll er ,'B ri t t en ' s La s t Mas ter p ie c e; p Ill.

it falls from C to E through the 'white' notes, creating by simple means aconflict between 'tonic' and 'final' that prepares for a greater tonal conflict, ofa kind familiar from many dramatic Britten contexts.

The culmination of this conflict occurs at bar 35 of the Passacaglia, when the bassnote C competes with an E major chord to sound the climax of the entire work.The passacaglia ground has a simple symmetry about it: two semitonesflanking a whole-tone fragment. Taking it from Dowland's song, Britten has no

need to pass it through the filter of his own language. Again, the closing sectionprovides a striking demonstration of this (bars 35-41), when the theme, break-ing free at last from the bonds of incessant repetition, is stated at many differentpitches in prime form and in inversion, and sometimes in a chain. Throughoutthis passage its intervallic structure is never altered (Example 6).The ground bass in the final movement of Britten's Third String Quartet is

likewise symmetrically constructed, moving entirely in whole-tone steps. It canbe seen in Example 7 that its second half is a strict intervallic inversion of thefirst. The whole-tone steps (later extended to include A, B,q/q) could exist ina number of tonal contexts;qhrygian, E rnixolydian, A ionian and D lydian.These tonal ambiguities are never satisfactorily resolved and the ending of thework is notoriously enigmatic (Example 8). The much-discussed last chordcould be aqminor triad with a phrygian second in the bass or, more plausi-bly, a poly tonal cadence with each instrument cadencing in its own tonality-violin 1, E (major); violin 2, q (minor); viola, A (major); cello, D (major!lydian). Each of these tonalities could be implied by the exclusive and inde-pendent use of scale degrees l , 2 and 3 in each part. Hans Keller, the dedicateeof the Third Quartet, has tried to unravel the tonal threads of the final cadence.\"'hen 1 lectured on [the Third Quartet) at Snape ... I analysed the heavilycharged end, or non-end, against the harmonic background of the traditionalinterrupted cadence,and ventured that the only possible verbal translation ofthese last unfinal notes was,'This isnot the end.' ,"VhereuponDonald Mitchell,the composer's authorised biographer, recounted that in reply to the questionwhat this end meant, Britten had said, 'I'm not dead yet.'iii 'C om e, heavy Sleep'

The opening four notes of Dowland's melody hold the key to much of Noc-turnal. Example 9a shows the intervallic relationships that dominate the score.The prominent sighing falling fourth, on the word heavy, is a particularlysignificant gesture and one that haunts the refrain of the Dowland song andpermeates many of Britten's variations. This short phrase provides the kernelfor the specific, idiomatic harmonic language that Britten has chosen for hisguitar piece. Example 9b shows the derivation of the open-string chord whichfeatures prominently in many of the movements (II, V and VI in particular)(Example 10).From this open-string chord, Britten develops an informal lexicon of

chords for Nocturnal, based on the coincidences between Dowland's song andthe intervallic quirks of guitar tuning. He has taken the rogue major third inthe guitar's otherwise quartal tuning and made a feature of it - Britten com-poses the guitar.

STEPHEN GOSS


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a) bar I

b) bar 35013 5 7 8 ~ .

c) bar sz s o I ~o 1~~It--~:!:~!~ L_ .. L f : I L - - - - -f P"p~ - - - - - - - -

Example 6 Fixed intervals in the passacaglia ground

Example 7 Benjamin Britten, String Quartet NO 3, op. 94, fifth movement, Recitativeand Passacaglia (La Se ren is simay, ground bass.

tall.. ,

l n1 '1 II M IV r,..

tU ___....mf 1'f pp/I ~ H IV r,..V ....__.r - _ -mf 1'1 f P P

u II IV r,..n~~~ .. ~.

ml 1'f ~pr,.. /OrtJ[:

q ? t


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II Very agitated

~'L~ 8lidif > if

V March-like

VI Dreamingf ~ 1 1 ~ ~i$ I i VIII Passacaglia34 ~ ~i,~!r'~bli~ I 'Example 10 Quartal harmonies, strict and informal

x

The i-mage of true DeathIV Uneasy, bar 3

x . ' ( inver ted5

-==Example 11 'The image of true Death'

iv 'The im age o f tru e D ea th 'Whereas the C om e, hea vy S leep motive undergoes much transformation andfiltering throughout Nocturnal , Britten frequently uses the im ag e o f tru e D ea thmotive in its original, unfiltered form (Example 11).Even at the outset this unfiltered phrase does not seem anomalous when

Britten reproduces it in bars 3-4 of Musing ly within the context of otherwisefiltered music. In fact, it would be better to say that this one phrase definesmuch of Britten's melodic style for Musing ly , and Noc tu r na l in general: to usesegments from diatonic scales, but to vary constantly the accidentals betweenascending and descending so that no tonal centre predominates.

v H arm onySo far I have referred to Dowland's music as tonal, and Britten's as post-tonal.Both terms are loose: Dowland stands at a transitional moment in historybetween the Renaissance modes and Baroque tonality; Britten's music makesfrequent use of tonal vocabulary but to very varied ends, depending on theexpressive context. Triads are frequently heard in Nocturnal , along with the

66 STEPHEN co ss

ff


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I i :; ; ~ : : :~ :2 " :blf E majorExample 12 Fusion of E major and F minor

Slowly movingA n d a m e

Example 13 Benjamin Britten, B i ll y Budd , op. 50, opening bar 1951 by Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. Reproduced by permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.

quartal harmonies we have already examined, but there is rarely a prolongedtonal centre, Nevertheless, if in purely tonal variation sets the harmonic struc-ture was paramount, even here it is not forgotten: Britten's response to the har-monic relationships in 'Come, heavy Sleep' is one of the most imaginative fea-tures of the work.Let us first look at an example of Britten's use of triads at its most character-istic. In Musingly , bar 16, he fuses together two triads, E major and F minor.Understood as a fusion of keys, we can see that all the scale pitches from E majorand F minor (melodic ascending) complete a full chromatic set with two notesrepeated, E natural and G~(A~)(Example 12a).In the vertical arrangement of thechord in bar 16, there is a perfect symmetry around the G~/A~which acts a ful-crum between the two tonalities (Example 12b). The tonal tension between Fand E, and C and B,looks ahead to the phrygian passacaglia ground.There are many examples of this kind of bitonality in Britten; Billy Budd is

drenched in these minor-within-major relationships. Peter Evans cites ErwinStein's notion of an Urmotiv in the work:

Stein was able to demonstrate how many {melodic] shapes [in the opera],could be referred back to an Urmot iv (of which, it appears, the composer wasnot fully conscious) consisting of [amongst other things] the minor-within-major third of the opera's opening bars. [Example 13 ]

The celesta ostinato that accompanies Oberon's music in A M idsu mm er N ight'sDream is built on totally symmetrical segments of m major and E minor, whilethe remaining four pitches of the complete chromatic set are gradually addedby the glockenspieL However, perhaps the most striking and directly relevantexample is taken from the end of the prologue to Pe te r Gr ime s, where Peter and

COl' ..r a , HEAVY SLEEP

I am grateful to Dr Christopher Mark forpointing out a mult itude of such examplesto me, from every phase of Bri tten's compo-sitional career.T he M u sic o f B en ja mi n B ritt e/ I, p 166. Seealso Erwin Stein, 'Billy Budd', in Mitchell &Keller (eds), Ben jamin Britten: a com/lie/ItMy o n h is w or ks fr om a g rO J lP o f sp ec ia li st s(London, 1952) , pp 201ff .

IIIi

iI


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Progression b), third Progression b), fifth_ ._ T . . _ ~ _ .

Example 14 Duplicated harmonic progressions in S lo w a nd q uie t and Musingly (bars 13-18)

This E held special s ignificance for Brit tenas it was his favourite note in Peter Pears'vocal range. Bri tten exploited i t to great

effect in the many songs and opera tic partsthat he wrote for Pears.

Ellen Orford are left alone on the stage after the courtroom empties. Ellen singsin optimistic E major, her line outlining the tonic triad with a little decoration,while Peter sings in dark F minor. Both voices use G~(Ab) as the registral floorand ceiling of their phrases, and they finish on a unison E.The use of the E major chord in bar 16 of Musingly is striking for several rea-sons; it marks the end of the opening monody, it receives the softest dynamic

so far, ppp, and it contradicts the sonority contrast that Dowland uses in hissong (see below). The quaver delay of the F minor superimposition allows timefor E major to be heard with pure clarity before its sonority is muddied. Themoment is also rhythmically very important as Evans remarks:

T he M u si c o f B e n ja m in B ri tt en , P 33 2.the opening of the second strain preserves the drumming homophony that isso marked a feature of the song.

So much for Britten's own harmonic 'style'. To what extent was he able to im-port harmonic progressions, 'camera-ready, from Dowland's song? As a matterof fact this same phrase (bars 16-18), borrows, of all things, the fifth relation-ship that forms the terminal harmonies of the phrase it is based on, 'Come andpossess my tired thought-worn soul' (see Example 14). In Musingly the result isa simple V-I cadence, but in the upper voice the F from the F minor-E majorfusion persists, keeping traditional tonality at bay by a hairsbreadth.Dominant to tonic is the defining relationship of traditional tonality.

Britten's subversion of the progression here is managed with the confidence ofmastery, but at only one other place in the work does he attempt to repeat theprogression. The place is Gen tly r o ck in g , bar 15 , which is likewise a paraphraseof 'Come and possess my tired thought-worn soul'. For two bars the music os-cillates between C minor and its dominant, G major, while open strings con-tinue the bitonal commentary that characterises this variation.There is one more harmonic borrowing in the passage under discussion in

Musingly. We have seen (in Example 3) that Britten's melody line keeps towithin a tone and a half of the original, straying only to complete the first strainon C (bar 15). The result is a 3-2-i cadential descent in C major, which is in-stantly contradicted by the E major chord in the next bar. This passage repli-cates the pivotal tertiary jolt that occurs at the equivalent point in Dowland'ssong, where there is the juxtaposition of a G major cadence at the end of theverse and a B major chord that begins the refrain. Diana Poulton draws atten-tion to the subtle colour change that takes place at this point:

68 STEPHEN GOSS


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Examp le 15 Passacaglia, bar 16, fusion of E and G~

35 36tJ H . ; . . . . _ . _ .. .. ~ . . 40

Slow and quiet41 42 43

~ II

~T__./ ~ . .'------i._c

Examp le 16 Passacaglia, bars 35ff, anchor notes

here Dowland makes use of his knowledge of the special sonorities of the lutewith moving effect ... The last words of line four, 'sorrows sigh swoln cries',end on a full dose with a chord of G major; a chord which on the lute ismainly composed of notes on the open strings, giving a dear ringing quality.This will support a considerable volume of tone from the singer. The next linebegins on a B major chord which, by the position of the notes on the stringsof the instrument, has a somewhat more muted tone colour. If the singerdrops his voice to match the natural change of quality in the accompanimentthe repeated notes of the invocation to sleep then take on a kind of hushed ur-gency, exceptionally expressive of the emotionally charged sentence:

Com & posses my tired thoughts, worne soule,That liuing dies, till thou on me bestoule.

Britten transposed the song down to E (from lute pitch to guitar pitch) to mir-ror this idiomatic effect in the guitar version of the song on the final page ofNoc turna l . This kind of sudden tertiary harmonic jolt was a recognised featureof syntax in Dowland's musical language as well as Britten's.

The resultant juxtaposition of the triads of E and G~ (in S lo w a nd q uie t) in-forms the Passacaglia, as in Example 15 , when it manifests itself as a vertical fu -sion. More complex is Example 16, which illustrates the final climax of thework. To understand this passage fully, we need to add the triad of C major tothose of E and G~. The example suggests that the different member notes of thethree triads act as an armature for the apparently wild transpositions of the pas-sacaglia ground. In the first bar of the passage (bar 35) the various statementsof the hexachord take their cue from the climactic chord itself (see the dotted

COME, HEAVY SLEEP

J o hn Dow land , p 242.

But in Musingly the harmonic progressionis again transposed, moving from C to E(Example 14). Since the appearance of thisE hera lds the first time any chord is playedin the work, the result is a reversal of theeffect described by Poulton.Similar examples of these tertiary harmonicshifts can be found in numerous lute piecesand songs, for example, 'Flow my Tears ',Farewell , 'J saw m y Lady Weep' and A P am /!( NO 1 6 in the Co ll ec te d Lu te Mu s ic o f J ol inDowlarrd).


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In t hi s d es ce nd in g p as sa ge b etw ee n th e h ig hB a nd th e fo llo wing E m ajo r c ho rd , B ritte nc ou ld n ot h a ve k ep t to th e a rm ature d efin ed

b y th e c om p le x o f t ri ad s w ith ou t r ep ea ti ngth e a pp ro ac h to g~l from (2 used a lr eady

b et we en b ars 3 5 an d 3 6, w hi ch wou ldwe ak en t he c ri ti ca l a sc en t t o t he p il la r- li keE m ajo r c ho rd .

The link between Unealyand March-like iso st en si bl y r hy thm ic , b ut p it ch i s i nv ol ve din th e a cc um ula tion o f o pen s tri n gs a nd

h en ce q ua rt al h armo ny f rom o ne s ec tio n 10t he n ex t. A s im ila r a cc um ula tio n ta ke s

p lace be tween Very agi ta ted an d Restless.

70

a)C E GI

" ~l ~a#!b), ft ~ .... . ... .... ~...~---------'Passacagliaground 'Come , heavy Sleep'Example 17 Passacaglia ground and governing harmonies from work as a whole

slurs). Thereafter, the three triads provide anchoring pitches as far as the high-point of the section (b ' ). The following three hexachords form a bridge to thenext E major chord, leaping down by major and minor ninths from statementto statement. Once the E major chord has been reached the G#-E-C armaturecomes back into force, extending into S lo w a nd q uie t.The addition of C major to the complex of triads is anything but arbitrary.First of all, it will be remembered that the tertiary harmonic progression from

E to G# belongs to S lo w a nd q uie t; in Musing ly it is presented as C to E (bars15-16 in Example 14). Secondly - and this too we have already seen - a frictionbetween C and E is implicit in the passacaglia ground. Example 17 completesthe picture that has been emerging throughout this section. The groundembodies the relationship between C and E, just as its origin in 'Come, heavySleep' embodies the relationship between E and G#. The last bar of the Passa-caglia and the first bar of S lo w a nd q uiet make up a crucial moment when thetwo relationships are at last heard in succession. As Example 17b suggests, thetwo hexachords presented in this order can be thought of - indeed, h ea rd - asa continuous scale with a registral transfer from e to e2 Lastly,each of these tri-ads lies a major third away from the other two, all three dividing the octaveequally. This is a characteristic example of Britten's way of partitioning tonalspace in a non-tonal fashion, by fixed intervals. The result isa cyclical harmonicstructure which, by governing as it does the outer sections, can be said toencompass the whole work.

IV TILL DEATH ON ME BE STOLE: CLIMAX, CLOSURE

The transition from the Passacaglia to S lo w a nd q uiet is not only the passing ofone section into the next - it is the passing of all the variations into the theme,and indeed of Britten's music into Dowland's. It is here that Britten worksagainst his own background, as the previous sections have established it. For inthe bridging-over between sections there have been two elements: (1 ) a linkingidea, always consisting of pitches, but frequently incorporating rhythm also;and (2) a pause or comma, separating one variation from the next.Of course, the entire Passacaglia is abou t nothing but the link between itself

and Slow and qu ie t - the ground bass. Having converted it at the climax intocontinuous semiquavers in all registers, Britten takes a whole page to return itto its original register and rhythmic contour, together with its associatedE major chord.

STEPHEN GOSS


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Throughout the variations Britten has used the guitar's characteristic rollingof chords as a motivic element, and this repeated E major chord receives themost elaborate arpeggiation of all - after all, it is the only perfect triad that isever heard (as a vertical sonority, without the interference of other notes) in thevariations; it was the first chord to be heard in Musingly , and it is the last to beheard in the Passacaglia. Now, as it bridges into the music of Dowland, Brittenat last omits the pause. The notation here is telling: Britten does not mark Slowa nd q uiet as a separate section, with the titling roman numeral and precedingdouble bar that set apart all the preceding sections. Rather, it seems that we areto understand the Passacaglia and Dowland's song as one continuous section.And all of this does more than contradict our accumulated expectations ofBritten's form: it contradicts the traditional boundaries of variation form to themaximum, closing the four centuries' gap between two composers.['Come, heavySleep'] has two strains, of which the second should be repeated,but each variation leavesincomplete this repeat, falling awayas though in de"spair, and passing to the new approach of the following variation. When therepeat of Dowland's own second strain fades out, however,to the end of thewhole work, it is the achievement of oblivion.

We saw earlier that Britten signals the close of the work quite precisely, byadding an extra bar by comparison with Musingly . This final bar of the work isso idealised as to be virtually unperformable. Perhaps, in the hard medium ofrecording, it cannot be realised at all. As Britten's dotted lines indicate, themusic has been slowing continuously for seven bars, and the dynamic level hassunk below ppp. The notated glissando is almost impossible to achieve at thistempo and dynamic, and the final note, set in parenthesis, isperhaps only imag-inary, a visual residue, the medium having dissolved into silence before the notecould sound.Underneath the double barline Britten indicates, as always, the provenance

of the work: 'A1deburgh - Nov. nth, 1963.' The reference to the seaside townwhich Britten made his home reminds us that neither melancholy, nor sleepand dreams, can encompass the range of topics that this music evokes. Thereare many others: the cradle (G en tly r oc kin g), the battlefield (March-like).Pushed furthest into the background is the sound of the sea.Britten became known as the greatest English composer since Purcell partly

because he drew attention away from the picturesque notion of pastoral music,towards another aspect of national identity: music of the coastline, islandedmusic - sea music. It is not for nothing that Pe te r Gr ime s remains his most fa-mous work, and perhaps there is no music of Britten's which does not have thesound of the sea somewhere in its background. In Nocturnal, too, it can some"times be heard: in the curving, ornamented lines of the Passacaglia, and in thesame movement's organisation into three climactic waves, like the Passacagliaof Pe te r Gr ime s.In the Passacaglia, the use of a ground bass refers to Purcell, before moving

deeper into the past towards Dowland, towards melancholy pure and distilled.The ornaments in the opening refer as much to Purcell as to the sea. Of course,there is night music, too: perhaps the most disturbing moment in Nocturnalcomes at the intrusion of the ghostly pizzicato passage at the climax of the sec"and wave. It is evident that for Britten, the night, the past, and the sea represent

COME, HEAVY SLEEP

See in particular Uneasy and Dreaming forthe rnotivic USeof the rolled chord.

It is true that performers often pause on theinit ial E of S lo w a n d q u ie t. To do so notonly denies the structural point of Bri tten'somission of the f ermata , but also removesthe syncopation from the entrance of theupper voice , creating the impression of a 5/ 4bar. Connected with this tendency is thetradition, surely mistaken, of beginning thefinal outburst of the Passacaglia ('withforce') at a suddenly faster tempo, making itnecessary to disobey Britten's instructionthat it is only necessary to slow down in thelast bar preceding S lo w a n d q u ie t.

Evans, T he M usic o f B en ja min Britten, p 33l .

In Peter Grimes. too , the phrygian mode isused to represent the sea .

71


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I w ou ld lik e t o th an k J on at ha n L ea th wo odf or h is c on sid era ble c on tr ib ut io n t o t bisa rt ic le . p ar ti cu la rl y w it h r ef er en ce t o t hea na ly ti ca l p o in ts d is cu ss ed . Th e t ex t h as

u nd erg on e mu ch t ra ns fo rm at io n s in ce t hefi rs t d ra ft . in t he l ig ht o f a l iv ely d ia lo gu ed urin g w hic h J on ath an sh ared a n um be ro f h is p ers on al in sig ht s i nt o t he p ie ce .

W ith ou t th is in pu t. th e art ic le w ou ld b every different.

72

a complex of creative sources. All three are metaphors for the submerged, forthe unconscious in its different aspects. They are hard to separate, for that is aproperty of unconscious content. If in this article, Ihave been purposefully par-tial by exploring Nocturnal 's relationship with Dowland and the past, it is be-cause even in a dream, themes must be isolated to be discussed. They may beput to test in the next playing of the piece: then the dream is endured oncemore, new resonances sound, and new themes may emerge, to be consideredlater, in the light of day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beulow, George J., Peter Hoyt, & Blake Wilson. 'Rhetoric in Music', in TheN ew G rM e D iction ary o f M usic an d M usician s, ed. Stanley Sadie & JohnTyrrell, vol. 21,London, MacMillan, 2001, PP 260-270

Bloom, Harold. T he A nxiety o f In flu en ce : a th eo ry o f p oe tr y, New York, OxfordUniversity Press, 1973Britten, Benjamin. La chrym ae: reflec tio ns o n a son g o f D ow la nd ('If m y

C om pla in ts co uld P assio ns m ov e: fr om th e First Booke of Songes) fo r v io laa n d p ia n o, op. 48, the viola part edited by William Primrose, London,Boosey & Hawkes, 1951

-. N octurna l after John D ow land for G uitar, op. 70, ed. Julian Bream, London,Faber, 1965;New York, Schirmer, 1965

-. Quartet N3, op. 94, London, Faber, and New York, Schirmer, 1977Burton, Robert. T he A na to my o f M ela nc ho ly [16211,ed. T.C. Faulkner, N.K.Kiessling & R.L. Blair, Oxford, 1989-94

Carpenter, Humphrey. Benj am i n B r itte n , London, Faber, 1992Cooke, Deryck. T he L an gu ag e o f Mu sic , Oxford University Press, 1959Dowland, John. T he F irst B oo ke o f S on ge s 01' Ayres , London, 1597;facsimileedn, ed. Diana Poulton, Menston (UK), Scolar Press, 1968

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_. A Mus i ca l ! Banque t, transcribed and edited by P.Stroud, London, Stainer& Bell, 1968

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1597-1622, Toronto, 1993

CO}'.fE, HEAVY SLEEP 73


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C o m e ) h e a v y S le e p JOH N DOWLANDT he F irst B oo ke o f So nges

or Ayres (1597), NO 20

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o J ' , Death, And c loseome, he a - - vy Sleep, th e im - age of true up;.o J ~ " . . - . J . . ~I ~. it ~ r - '~ it 4- O' ..- I - - - - I:

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" Whosew~ing of dothstop my vihese my wea - - ry weep-mg eyes, tears t al b r ea t h.- 1 ' 1 Lo J u r '" r I f r ~ - . 7 ) _ J J J ' 1ri J , ~: -0-I , I , Jr r

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fI ~o J , , " " rAnd tears my heart with Sor - row's sigh-swell' n cries, Come and pos- se s s my t r r - ed t ho ug ht -worn soul,1\ :tJ r _ r " f r j-CJ~ ~tt ~V' . . . - _ , - r r ~ r , : ri. n .1 J.. _ h: : --, , I W I , I V I

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jfI - :o J t'illhat liv - ing dies, that Iiv - ing dies, that liv - ing dies, thou on me b e s to le .1\ ,." _.." - :o J r _ r " F F

_i __j u r . r r = r If 7 r---r r tt: - :-, u....w J - ICome shadow of my end: and shape of rest,Allied to death, child to this black fast night,Come thou and charm these rebels in my breast,Whose waking fancies doth my mind affright.o come sweet sleep, come or I die forever.Come ere my last sleep, come or come never.

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