britten s unquiet pasts - cambridge university...

Britten’s Unquiet Pasts

Examining the intersections between musical culture and a British project ofreconstruction from the 1940s to the early 1960s, this study asks how gesturestoward the past negotiated issues of recovery and renewal. In the wake of the SecondWorldWar, music became a privileged site for re-enchanting notions of history andcommunity, but musical recourse to the past also raised issues of mourning and loss.How was sound figured as a historical object, and as a locus of memory and magic?Wiebe addresses this question using a wide range of sources, from planning docu-ments to journalism, public ceremonial, and literature. Its central focus, however, isa set of works by Benjamin Britten that engaged both with the distant musical pastand with key episodes of postwar reconstruction, including the Festival of Britain,the Coronation of Elizabeth II, and the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral.

HEATHER WIEBE is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia.A member of the editorial board of the Opera Quarterly, she has published widelyon twentieth-century music, British musical culture, and opera.

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Cambridge University Press978-0-521-19467-9 - Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar ReconstructionHeather WiebeFrontmatterMore information

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Music Since 1900

general editor Arnold Whittall

This series – formerlyMusic in the Twentieth Century – offers a wide perspective onmusic and musical life since the end of the nineteenth century. Books includedrange from historical and biographical studies concentrating particularly on thecontext and circumstances in which composers were writing, to analytical andcritical studies concerned with the nature of musical language and questions ofcompositional process. The importance given to context will also be reflected instudies dealing with, for example, the patronage, publishing, and promotion of newmusic, and in accounts of the musical life of particular countries.

Titles in the series

Jonathan CrossThe Stravinsky Legacy

Michael NymanExperimental Music: Cage and Beyond

Jennifer DoctorThe BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922–1936

Robert AdlingtonThe Music of Harrison Birtwistle

Keith PotterFour Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass

Carlo CaballeroFauré and French Musical Aesthetics

Peter BurtThe Music of Toru Takemitsu

David ClarkeThe Music and Thought of Michael Tippett: Modern Times and Metaphysics

M. J. GrantSerial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War Europe

Philip RupprechtBritten’s Musical Language

Mark CarrollMusic and Ideology in Cold War Europe

Adrian ThomasPolish Music since Szymanowski

J. P. E. Harper-ScottEdward Elgar, Modernist






Yayoi Uno EverettThe Music of Louis Andriessen

Ethan HaimoSchoenberg’s Transformation of Musical Language

Rachel Beckles WillsonLigeti, Kurtág, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War

Michael CherlinSchoenberg’s Musical Imagination

Joseph N. StrausTwelve-Tone Music in America

David MetzerMusical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Edward CampbellBoulez, Music and Philosophy

Jonathan GoldmanThe Musical Language of Pierre Boulez: Writings and Compositions

Pieter C. van den Toorn and John McGinnessStravinsky and the Russian Period: Sound and Legacy of a Musical Idiom

David BeardHarrison Birtwistle’s Operas and Music Theatre

Heather WiebeBritten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction






Britten’s Unquiet Pasts

Sound and Memory in PostwarReconstruction

Heather Wiebe






CAMBR IDGE UN IVER S I TY PRE S S

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Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521194679

© Heather Wiebe 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the writtenpermission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataWiebe, Heather.Britten's unquiet pasts : sound and memory in postwar reconstruction / Heather Wiebe.p. cm. – (Music Since 1900)

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-521-19467-91. Britten, Benjamin, 1913–1976 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Music – GreatBritain – 20th century – History and criticism. 3. Reconstruction (1939–1951) – Great Britain.4. World War, 1939–1945 – Music and the war. I. Title.ML410.B853W53 2012780.92–dc23

2012015504

ISBN 978-0-521-19467-9 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence oraccuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred toin this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on suchwebsites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.






Contents

List of illustrations page viiiAcknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Music and cultural renewal 16

2 “Today on earth the angels sing”: carols in wartime 41

3 Realizing Purcell 72

4 Gloriana and the “New Elizabethans” 109

5 Remembering faith in Noye’s Fludde 151

6 Ghosts in the ruins: the War Requiem at Coventry 191

Select Bibliography 226Index 236






Illustrations

4.1 David Low, “Cultural Addition to the Procession,”Manchester Guardian,June 2, 1953 © Guardian News & Media Ltd. 1953 page 119

5.1 Production photo of Noye’s Fludde © Kurt Hutton, 1958. Imagereproduced courtesy of the Britten–Pears Foundation(www.brittenpears.org) Ref: PHPN/11/1/31 173






Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to thank the many people and institutions who have helpedwith this project over the years. Katherine Bergeron, Richard Taruskin,Roger Parker, and James Vernon read and responded to multiple versionsof this text and made crucial interventions in its planning and execution,particularly at the dissertation stage. Many others offered ideas and encour-agement, including David Levin, my colleagues at the University ofVirginia, and members of the Michigan Society of Fellows. At Berkeley,Martin Deasy, Laura Basini, Greg Bloch, Michael Markham, Dave Paul,Anna Nisnevich, and Mary Ann Smart also provided inspiration and sup-port. Thanks also to Arnold Whittall, as well as staff at CambridgeUniversity Press, for guiding this book through its final stages, and toSteven Kemper and Aurie Hsu for preparing the music examples.

I’m grateful for the grants, fellowships, and research time provided by theUniversity of Virginia and theMichigan Society of Fellows, which allowedmeto complete this book, and for a generous subvention from the AMS 75 PAYSEndowment of the American Musicological Society. The dissertation onwhich it is built was also supported by the American Musicological Society,UC Berkeley, and Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities, whileBerkeley’s Center for British Studies and Pembroke College, Cambridgemadepossible an invaluable year of research in Britain. My thanks, also, to helpfularchivists and librarians at Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley, and Cambridge, andat the British Library, the BBCWritten Archives Centre, Coventry Cathedral,the British Film Institute, the archives of King’s College, Cambridge, the V&ATheatre and Performance Archives, the GlyndebourneArchive, and the RoyalOpera House Collections, and particularly to Dr. Nicholas Clark and the staffof the Britten–Pears Library, Aldeburgh.

Finally, I’m grateful to Arman Schwartz, who has seen this project throughmany moves, talks, research trips, and crises, offering endless ideas andencouragement on the way, as well as welcome distractions. And to myparents, Abe and Pearl Wiebe, who provided boundless support.

Material from the Archive Centre at King’s College, Cambridge is repro-duced by kind permission of the Provost and Fellows, King’s College,Cambridge. I am also grateful to the Britten–Pears Foundation (brittenpears.org) for permission to print Britten’s unpublished letters and Kurt Hutton’s






photograph, to the V&A Department of Theatre and Performance for per-mission to print material from the Oliver Messel collection, and to the BBCWritten Archives Centre and Royal Opera House Collections for permissionto print unpublished material.

Earlier versions of Chapters 4 and 5 have appeared elsewhere: “BenjaminBritten, the ‘National Faith,’ and the Animation of History in 1950sEngland,” Representations 93 (Winter 2006): 76–105, copyright 2006 bythe Regents of the University of California, reprinted by permission ofUniversity of California Press; “‘Now and England’: Britten’s Glorianaand the New Elizabethans,” Cambridge Opera Journal 17 (July 2005):141–172, reprinted with permission.

Music example acknowledgments are as follows:

Exx. 2.1, 2.2: A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 by Benjamin Britten© Copyright 1943 by Boosey & Co., Ltd. Reprinted by Permission.

Exx. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3: Saul and the Witch at Endor arr. by BenjaminBritten and Peter Pears © Copyright 1947 by Boosey & Co., Ltd.Reprinted by Permission.

Ex. 3.5: The Holy Sonnets of John Donne by Benjamin Britten© Copyright 1946 by Boosey & Co., Ltd. Reprinted by Permission.

Exx. 3.6–3.9: Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain – The Raids, 1940,Night and Dawn, Op. 55 by Benjamin Britten, text by Edith Sitwell;poem from “The Canticle of the Rose” by courtesy of the publishersMacmillan & Co. Ltd. © Copyright 1956 by Boosey & Co. (London),Ltd. Reprinted by Permission.

Exx. 4.1–4.6: Gloriana, Op. 53 by Benjamin Britten, text by WilliamPlomer © Copyright 1953 by Hawkes & Son (London), Ltd. Reprintedby Permission.

Exx. 5.1–5.2: Noye’s Fludde, Op. 59 by Benjamin Britten© Copyright 1958 by Hawkes & Son (London), Ltd. Reprinted byPermission.

Exx. 6.1–6.5: War Requiem, Op. 66 by Benjamin Britten, text byWilfred Owen © Copyright 1961 by Boosey & Hawkes MusicPublishers Ltd. Reprinted by Permission.

x Acknowledgments






britten s unquiet pasts - cambridge university...

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