– an essay by Ida Habbestad
A Goddess Bearing a Shield
"Britannia" frames this year's festival.. A huge framework, with artistic activity within an extensive historical and geographical range.
The earliest pieces on the program were created at a time when King Henry VII had seen the value in wool and textiles. In the late 15th century, he introduced tariffs on the export of raw materials and a tax policy that laid the foundation for the British merchant fleet and navy. From 1707 the name was Great Britain, and the country fronted industrial development in Europe. They were well on their way to taking over land and eventually became the largest empire in the world. But next: World wars, and in the wake decolonization and liberation struggle. Eventually, 700 million people could say goodbye to a British rule they might never have wanted. In our own time, Britain is still an economic superpower. But also — through Brexit, among other things — have become more inward, towards themselves.
"Britannia" is the name of a goddess. She symbolizes the British Isles, an entire nation. Britannia bears a spear and on English coins also a shield. Britannia is power and vulnerability at the same time.
And it is in such duality, in the world empire and in the outside world, that we enter the festival, in the year 1943. Benjamin Britten had recently returned from the United States, where he, together with Peter Pears, had been staying since 1939. Europe's military armament was expanding in parallel with the breakthroughs for their respective artistry. They stood outside. Insisted on being together, it was punishable until 1967. Insisted on not using weapons, not even against Nazism. To see that friends, family, colleagues were made ready for the front and at the same time refused to take part, must have been a painful and absurd dilemma.
But then they went home, and in one of the first works after that — "Serenade — the horn player stands alone in the opening movement. It sounds pastoral and naked: optimistic quarter-tone fluctuations point both forward and backward in time. In the rest of the work, Britten embraces the night. Still in the warm language of folk tradition, but also with more shadows; shades of sunset, a medieval darkness, baroque starry skies, the heavy angels of sleep and the heavy sense of guilt in people's hearts. Six poems, six poets, spanning from a growing 15th-century Britannia to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who shortly before the 20th century portrays the warrior: Alone, he sends his signal for help, with no other answer than the echo of nature: Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; // And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
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One possible thread in this year's festival is spun from the works of Britten. His outsider position, but also the fact that he was largely embraced by his own contemporaries, the fact that his music has remained standing, may represent precisely the division in "Britannia": The power and the protection, the great and the fragile.
At the other extreme we find Purcell: A versatile artist who linked the musical currents from the continent up to a homely tonal language. As a young composer, he experienced the tension between France and England, between royalty and faith: the pendulum between Catholic and Anglican currents, the power that lay in this - not least driven by love.
Henry Purcell's "Fantasier" and "In nomines" also run as an extended line through the festival. Collectively, they are his greatest chamber music works. Individually, they are small, melancholic gems. Retrospective, some say, about the music. For Purcell did not write forward, perhaps he wrote rather to investigate, to master: Parallel to the outside world exploring new stringed instruments, flirting with general bass and a chordal way of thinking, Purcell worked in these works with an older, contrapuntal tradition. He inscribed himself along the expression of other Englishmen: Of William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, of their great voice and horizontal thinking. He wrote for the instruments of the gambe family, while the gambe was going out of fashion. He wrote for his own use and did not try to get this bundle of fifteen pieces published. It must have been a wonderful feeling to find Purcell's Imaginations, among other manuscripts in the British Library, in 1927.
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To write in the tradition, close to the work of others, Britten did that too. Posterity has called him the most literary of England's 20th-century composers, and he himself has highlighted Purcell as his foremost role model in setting the tone of their common mother tongue. At the 250th anniversary celebration in 1945, Britten arranged a larger collection of Purcell songs. Later he dressed "Dido and Aeneas" and "Fairy Queen" in orchestral costume. In this way he was able to put his own stamp on the music, and in Aldeburgh he was able to bring it to life with performances. With this close reading, every single note he related to, arose a particular insight into the choices he made, to achieve what Britten believed was the most important legacy to build on; that the language naturally became alive - the art of setting a mood through a single chord or an interval.
In parallel with this arrangement work, Britten wrote "Canticle I–V". Some of the songs are based on form structures by Purcell, but in "Still Falls the Rain", which we hear at the festival, Britten's own form is reused just as much, from the parallel work on an opera. Lyrically, we constantly dwell on the war, and the year 1941, in meditation on human fallibility, and in prayer that there can be something better and greater than ourselves.
"Lachrymae" springs from the same idea. Close to the work on Dido's complaint, one could imagine that the work referred to this character's heartfelt desire — Remember me! — in the face of his own death. But there is another central personality that resonates in "Lachrymae". The master of melancholy, John Dowland, and his tone for "If my complaints could passions move" lie below, in hints and in fragments, before Britten's airy expressions gather, allowing the melody to emerge and then burn out. At this concert, Dowland's original version of the song is also performed, as well as his "In darkness let me dwell", the latter laying the groundwork for another piece on the programme; Thomas Adès's piano piece "Darknesse visible».
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Britten also had role models from his own time. In the same year that the British Museum opened its treasure trove of fantasy manuscripts, he met his foremost mentor. Frank Bridge performed "The Sea", and thirteen-year-old Britten was deeply fascinated. His students were few, and his approach modern, it focused more on ideas than on craftsmanship. Ten years later, in 1937, Britten varied Bridge's theme and with this he had his first major breakthrough. In hindsight, it is just as much Bridge that benefits from the reference and the variation work; through that, Bridge's name also comes to light a little more often.
Frank Bridge's references, they were often French, and the festival is also richly flavored with French music — Fauré, Boulanger, Ravel, Debussy, Satie — which was infused into the British. In Bridge's cello sonata, you may particularly hear a reflection of Debussy, who also worked with the cello around 1915. But above all, you hear that Bridge wrote his work in the period 1913–1917, he despairs that man must go to war.
French is also the textual basis for "Illumination". Musically, Britten takes material from "Three divertimentos" (1936) which we hear during the festival, while the poet Arthur Rimbaud gets to speak: It is based on a fierce life, of alcohol and arms trading, voyages of discovery and poetry. The year before the lyrics were written, he entered into a relationship with Paul Verlaine. They traveled from Paris to London, where Rimbaud wrote hallucinatory visions. The following year, Verlaine shot Rimbaud, twice. Fortunately, the outcome was not fatal, but Britten allows the protagonist to repeat "J'ai seule la clef de cette parade sauvage".
War and pain weigh heavily on the time when the works were made. In this sense, it is good that the festival can accommodate expressions that more unabashedly cultivate a warmth and elegance. Edward Elgar's serenade is a lyrical gift, a friendly space to be in. With "The Lark Ascending", Ralph Vaughan Williams shows a boundless love for the Earth. The goddess with spear and shield is power and vulnerability. She protects a tradition where art has offered despair, but also "hope and glory".
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Surrounded by Water
The British Isles have the water as a boundary against everything that lies outside: The water, which is also a boundary between life and death. In 1927, when the Purcell manuscripts were discovered in the British Library, Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" was also published. The Ramsay family travels to an island off the northwest coast of Scotland. During one long day, we get to join in, and the youngest child, James, rests his desire to travel out to the lighthouse. Only one generation, and a First World War later, the trip ends.
In the book's first part, we find fragments of a fairy tale about the Fisherman and his wife. An enchanted flounder is caught on the fisherman's hook, the fisherman chooses to release it into the sea. His wife Isabil believes that the action makes them deserve more and more things. Time and time again she sends the man out towards the gap in the sea. She wants more and more, and with each insatiable desire the wind increases, the waves become high - yes, like church towers. Seething, and yellow and green, the sea becomes.
Three concerts in the festival are filled with water. Movement and sadness also contain these titles: "Still Falls the Rain", “Tears" and "The Song of the Whale". In the former we find the sound and smell of the rain. In "Regenlied" by Johannes Brahms, it is the rain of childhood - the life-giving rain - that meets us, and continues to be a motif in "Regensonate", in one movement the rhythm of the rain is also turned into a mourning march.
At the latter, "Voice of the Whale", George Crumb's artist's response to the first sound recordings found of a whale, is played. Bioacoustician Roger Payne was behind the recordings from 1970. Later, a lot of sound has been taken from underwater, and composers and sound artists have often turned their attention to the fragility of nature. A call to demand less, and rather look humbly at everything we can't hear - but which is there - around us.
The water can also be found at several points in the festival. Thomas Adés' "Arcadiana" from 1994 thematizes a possible loss. Six of the seven movement titles refer to "idyls" that have disappeared or are about to disappear for us. All the odd rates have to do with water. The first movement could be the ballade of a lugubrious gondolier, says the composer. The last movement refers to the river of oblivion.
Handel's "Water Music" is also a companion in the festival, with suites nicely spread over the programme. Originally they were intended for a royal tour along the Thames. A grand event, musical as well as political, for this entourage was to be heard. King George the 1st had fallen out with his son, but along the Thames there should be no doubt about the question of status, nor about Handel's loyalty to the head of the family. The work is a celebration, but also a magnificent reminder: Music is also power.
Another George, the 3rd this time, is masterfully painted by Peter Maxwell Davies. "Eight Songs for a Mad King" stands together with Handel's suite number 3, as if to emphasize that this George was also fond of Handel's expression. George III also had a miniature mechanical organ that could play eight songs. The encounter with this instrument inspired librettist Randolph Stow to write eight new songs: Stow imagined a king trying to teach his birds the music he was interested in, while delusions and anxiety grew in his own head. And then: King George the 5th. His death was the background for a piece of mourning music. Paul Hindemith's "Trauermusik" was created in one long night, before the piece was performed on BBC radio the following day.
Back in "To the Lighthouse", a poem from 1799 rings out between the lines. In William Cowper's "The Castaway", a sailor has fallen overboard. He is strong and swims well, but you soon realise that the boat cannot reach him in the wind. The crew must listen to his fight until they "could catch his sound no more".
These forces outside of us are so strong. And man, whether he stands high or low in rank; We alternate between our inside and our outside, trying to control ourselves and our surroundings — whether it's on an island off the coast of Scotland or in a boat along the Thames. We live in and with a stream of thoughts, as Virginia Woolf noted them, until one day in 1941 she wanted to let the water surround her. She walked into the river, carrying heavy stones with her.