John Amis Composer Portraits

A number of John Amis Composer Portraits can be found on Radio NZ. 

http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/appointment

 Including Percy Granger, Benjamin Britten and more!

2 New Britten Biographies

Both books are entitled: BENJAMIN BRITTEN. Paul Kildea's is sub-titled A Life in the Twentieth Century, published by Allen Lane, 666p, £30. Neil Powell's sub-title is A Life for Music, 512pp, £25, Hutchinson.

Melancholy was surely Britten's temperament, yet he composed some of this century's happiest music. I need only mention the finales of the Young Person's Guide to music and the Spring Symphony. He was blessed with triple gifts; a genius of a composer, as a pianist-partner supreme, and one of the best conductors of his time. No wonder that Michael Tippett thought him the most musical person he had ever encountered. Yet Ben needed to be reassured, as a nervous performer, always having recourse to strong drink before lifting his baton. There is a story of a friend finding him hopping about on a carpet in an Amsterdam hotel: if he could get to the door without treading on a line of the pattern it would prove that he was a good composer.

Yet making music must have given him pleasure. And he was a happy traveller; likewise he enjoyed his food (nursery fodder – weak tummy) and drink. He was a voracious and wide-ranging reader, poetry and prose, and he must have taken pride in his expert settings of various languages besides English. In his setting of our native tongue he showed himself a master, a worthy follower of Dowland and Purcell. He could open the ears of his listeners to fresh thoughts about words that he made always audible and that he positively illuminated. Sometimes he botched spellings but he wrote thousands of fine letters (now duly published). How did he find time to accomplish what he did? His powers of concentration must have been almost superhuman, likewise his ability to work long hours. His various devoted helpers sometimes could not keep up to his pace – sometimes twenty pages of full score a day. When did he get time to think and dream?

He was always happy to be with children (even little girls sometimes!) He frequently fell in love with boys but, as two of them testified, David Hemmings and David Spenser, there was never any 'hanky-panky' (they both used that expression) even though they sometimes spent time in his bed. Happiness there was but also a certain melancholy that Leonard Bernstein described as emotions not quite meshing. His childhood days seem to have been his happiest and I think he always regretted their passing. Nevertheless composing was his keenest joy, a joy reflected in the subtle charm that delights us, a charm that never cloys. With time there was less of that charm – the experience of visiting Belsen left its mark.

Britten was a genius. He was modest… up to a point. He sacrificed his life to this art, his health too. Maybe that was why he also sacrificed many of his friends and colleagues when they transgressed – or he thought they did. The list of his 'corpses' is long and distressing. He could be cruel as well as wonderfully kind.

Both of these biographies deal fully and fairly with the life and works of Britten. There are no conspicuous gaps. Powell veers towards the literary angle which is understandable because he is also a poet. There are a few opinions one could argue about in both books but nothing serious. Kildea thinks more highly of Owen Wingrave than most of us who find it curate's-eggish, that the plot inspired neither BB nor us (Walton called it Owen Windbag), likewise Powell favours the cantatas, academic or pitying more than most of us and he is 'down' not on Jemmy Legs but the novice-flogging scene in Billy Budd. But these are tiny pimples on the flesh of two fine bodies of work, well produced, difficult to choose between them. If you are in funds, splash out on both. Here follow a few notes which I add from my long knowledge of Ben and Peter:
There's no need for Pears
To give himself airs;
He has them written
By Benjamin Britten.

Punch spoke the truth. There is no performer in musical history who had so much music, most of it can be called great music, written for him as Peter Pears. From Grimes through to Death in Venice via song-cycles, folk-song arrangements, cantatas, canticles; the tally is unique. And Pears repaid the gifts with his gifts. Britten thought that nobody was a better artist than his life companion.

Peter doesn't come unscathed in these biogs. He had many peccadillos. He was also often impatient with Ben being ill so often. He was also not interested in Ben's works written for others to perform. And he could be wildly jealous when Ben fell in love: Arda Mandikian told me that during the production of Turn of the Screw in Venice she got little sleep in her hotel bedroom next to Peter and Ben, because they screamed at each other all night because Ben was so blatantly besotted with Miles-David Hemmings. It was a sexless affair that ended abruptly on the day that Hemming's voice broke; apparently Ben had no further contact with the boy from that moment on.

Ben and Peter were better at engaging than dismissing. My wife was a victim. Olive Zorian had been leader of the English Opera Group Orchestra for some years when she heard that she had been given the chop. Every member of the orchestra knew that she was to be replaced but nobody had told her.

Ben loved games. Cricket when he was very young, later tennis and croquet. His swerving serve could only be returned if his opponent stood practically in the netting (as I found myself). One day he was playing croquet at the Red House with frequent Aldeburgh Festival performer and first Miss Jessel in Turn of the Screw, soprano, Ben managed to manoeuvre his ball from just behind the line with a croquet that got him actually through the hoop. Incredulous, Arda exclaimed: "Oh Ben, how do you get your balls in round the back." He replied "Well, I've had a good deal of experience." (Game, set and match)

He was determined to win and could get shirty if he didn't. He placed a ball as skilfully as he set down a note, always knew how a note could be sung, bowed, blowed or hit, how the singer(s) could find the note.

When he wrote the Nocturnal for the guitarist Julian Bream Ben swotted up by getting hold of a technical manual so that when Julian pointed out that one or two passages were not possible Britten apologised but asked Bream if he'd thought of using this fingering or that position. Julian goes away, follows Ben's suggestions and finds that they work. The harpist Osian Ellis had a similar experience; he changed an octave passage for the sake of convenience. Sometime later when rehearsing for a repeat performance of the new piece (Suite for harp) Britten asked him if he would try out his original disposition of the hands as written); Osian tried it and found that, of course, the composer was right.

One day after lunch with Erwin Stein and his family in St. John's Wood, Ben sat apart at a table writing dots in a manuscript. After some minutes he joined us for coffee, saying that he had just written the final notes of the full score of Peter Grimes. Historical moment.

Later I sat with Erwin in the Stalls of Sadler Wells A1 and 2 for the première of Peter Grimes – June 7, 1945, another historical moment, this time for Britten and opera in Britain. After the performance I supped with Michael Tippett and his poet friend, Brean Douglas Newton.

The choice of the opera to re-open the house after the war had been the subject of much contention; older members of the company (Edith Coates, for example, who played Auntie in the opera) had wanted to kick off with Aida or even Merrie England but the new work proved to be an inspired choice, the finest full length opera an English composer had ever composed and brought to performance literally epoch-making as well as making the name of Benjamin Britten famous throughout the world (and another biff in the eye for those who still thought of the UK as Das Land ohne Musik).

Kildea does Britten one disservice by stating that the composer was suffering from syphilis. Britten's own doctor says this is not true and that Kildea has not properly checked all the medical reports. Whatever is the truth of the matter the damage is done and somehow Britten's reputation will suffer.

OLD GUARD, NEWER GUARD: THE REST IS NOISE

Curious that the conductors Monteux and Toscanini who gave fine performances of the Enigma Variations did not subsequently tackle Elgar's symphonies. I suspect that it was because those symphonies are, especially the first and last movements, subjective in emotional content whereas the Variations are more objective. I suspect that this was the reason for Beecham's high-handed, indeed ruthless cutting of the first symphony.

During the year after the premiere of that symphony the hundred or so performances of the work did not suffer the indignity of the Beecham treatment when he reduced the work's fifty or so minutes to a paltry 38.  The above thoughts were induced by attending the Barbican concert given by the BBCSO on January ll when Andrew Litton conducted a programme of British music. He proved himself once again to be yet another American conductor who can be relied on to get right inside the music of our composers. My only quibble concerns the extreme loudness of the playing; Litton seems to be suffering from a current delusion of performers: that volume equals intensity. The orchestra responded enthusiastically  and virtuosic ally to his exhortation, strings sang, bugles/ trumpets, likewise the muted trombones as they quietly barked out that four-chord phrase at the close of the Adagio, letting us hear Elgar's genius for inventing short phrases that are truly memorable.

In 1938 Benjamin Britten played the solo part in his new Piano Concerto, a dazzling performance (I heard it on the wireless) of a work that could only be written by a young man (curly-mop was just twenty-five at the time) The concerto does not outstay its 34 minute length, despite its show-off, look at me, mummy, quality. The four movements have genre titles, Toccata, Waltz, Impromptu and March, the third number being a replacement written for the revised version of 1945 (soloist Noel Mewton-Wood).

The soloist at the Barbican was another Benjamin, even younger than the composer was at the premiere but no less brilliant with the entire virtuoso pianistic. You may remember that Benjamin Grosvenor was a BBC finalist in 2004 when he was only eleven years old - he played the two-handed Ravel Concerto but the judges didn't give him the top-prize (because they thought he was too young, I heard). Andrew Litton presided on the podium meaningfully, artfully, successfully. The concert began with a twenty-minute number called Night Ferry; title derived from a poem by Robert Lowell where the ferry is depicted "huddled in a big sea, the whole craft ringing with an armourer's music." So, lots of scurrying strings and heavy brass but not somehow suggesting the ocean as well as composers in the past (Wagner, Debussy, Britten). The composer was Anne Clyne (born London 1980, living now and getting performances in the States). She seems to eschew melody and although there was plenty of movement in her piece there was little action.

Benjamin Britten - Musician and Man

In a sense, Benjamin Britten was a composer three times over: the genius who wrote the notes, the pianist who played as only a composer can play, aware of the music's structure and conjuring up the sound of the orchestra, and the conductor making music sound as though the ink were still dry. From the young man's hair-breadth daring brilliance through all the operas, songs of all kinds and instrumental pieces through to the last delicate look backs in tenderness. He could make magic at the keyboard in such a way as to cause Gerald Moore declare that he was the best accompanist there was. His playing at those operatic programmes where his Verdi was so compelling or the time when he played the opening bar's eight repeated chord of C minor of Fauré's Elégie before Fournier entered made one hold one's breath in sheer wonder. As a conductor he could raise a storm in The Hebrides that was shatteringly dramatic whilst his Mozart G minor Symphony was tragic in the extreme (with all possible repeats it took nearly three-quarters of an hour – heavenly length). 

Ben was a competitive chap: he wanted to be the best, he was modest in a way but sought to be the best. Generally, he was the best, even running the Aldeburgh Festival (how many other administrators could read a balance sheet as well as an orchestral score?) He was a good driver of fast cars (a sparky Jensen previous to a more sedate Rolls), he played tennis well with a vicious swerving serve that could only be received in the netting, he played croquet and even Happy Families (although Shostakovich won on his Christmas visit to Aldeburgh – I think Ben must have allowed his guest to win). On the other hand Ben admired people who did things as well as himself, in different fields mind you, as witness his duets with Richter or Rostropovich, Vishnievskaya. There has never in musical history been a love-match that produced so much music as Ben wrote for Peter Pears, at least eight song cycles and ten operas – from Grimes in 1945 to Death in Venice in 1973. The preponderance of subject matter relating to the corruption of innocence and sympathy for the oppressed must have had a lot to do with Ben's own experience, mainly because he was a homosexual. It may have been that he was always looking back to his childhood years.  

Britten believed his task was to write music for the living, to be useful to his fellow beings. Like Mozart, most of his music was composed with certain voices or instrumentalist in mind. he tailored the notes for the singers, for example, knowing which were the best ones wide, intervals or narrow, which parts of the voice 'spoke' best, was the singer better at quick music or slow; all the individually of the original singer is so much encapsulated in music that it amounts almost to a portrait of their particular voice. The music composed especially for Fischer Dieskau, Vyvyan, Baker, Mandikian, Vishnievskaya, Ferrier and Pears above all, still sounds like those singers even when others perform it. Britten also knew exactly how any instrumentalist was going to produce any note he wrote for him or her; which finger, methods of bowing, blowing, striking, pedalling, which string; you ignore his written indications at your peril. (By the way, none of this means that it is easy to perform: it is always possible though). Did he ever make a boo-boo in his orchestration? Just once, and he joked about it, it was so rare: he wrote a low note for the piccolo in Billy Budd which is off the instrument's range.  

Ben had charisma. He had the manner of a diffident prep school master, (clothes to match – a sports coat, grey bags à l'anglaise), speaking voice beguiling which the microphone distorted, it came out a bit like Prince Charles. He could charm you if he wanted something or liked you; but the charm would switch off if he didn't, or thought you might be hostile. There is too large a list of favourites who suddenly found that they were what he himself called 'corpses'. They were perhaps sacrifices to his career. But that was a dark side to his character. 

There were a couple of years when Ben would not work with the London Symphony because one day a couple of double-basses laughed at a newspaper joke while they had nothing to play for a few seconds. He thought they were laughing at him.  

His conducting was serious and penetrating; the heart and soul of the music was revealed.

 

It was curious about Peter's voice. With the consummation of their affair in the States, it changed, no longer that of a typical English choir tenor but, as some old friends pointed out, uncannily like the singing voice of Ben's mother. (Any comment, Dr. Freud?)

Perhaps Ben had one skin less than most of us. That might account for his sensitivity, his touchiness, maybe his genius.

Is the best of his music inspired by words? Not only are they impeccably set but they are set with an imagination that enhances and re-creates the original writer's spirit, style and imagery. He often chose words that you would think impossible to put to music or that would be destroyed in the setting. The only love duet, man and woman, occurs in The Prince of the Pagodas – wordless of course.

It was said that he turned down a knighthood but he was later awarded the Order of Merit and the first peerage ever awarded to a musician. He was happy to chum up with the Royals but that may have helped him to sleep nights in a country where, for most of his life, homosexuality was a criminal offence.

What a blessing it was to have lived at a time when it was possible to hear Britten play, conduct and produce a steady stream of wonderful new music!