Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976)
String Quartet No. 1
in D major, Op. 25
String Quartet No. 2
in C major, Op. 36
Three Divertimenti for
String Quartet, 'Go play, boy, play!' (1936)
Benjamin Britten's compositions for string quartet include some of the
most important examples of the genre in the twentieth century. They include
four quartets and three movements from an unfinished suite and reflect his
understanding of a medium of which he had experience as a performer.
Born in Lowestoft in 1913, Britten quickly outgrew local resources for
guidance in composition and was sent for instruction in 1927 to Frank Bridge
who became both teacher and friend. In common with Bridge, Britten played the
viola, and his works for string instruments are from the earliest attempts,
entirely idiomatic, with a thorough understanding of all aspects of performing
techniques. His brother Robert was a violinist, and Britten's first
compositions reflected these family abilities.
Frank Bridge was a fortunate choice of mentor – his harmonic leanings
found sympathy with more contemporary European ideals, especially Berg, and
this cosmopolitan outlook, almost unique amongst British composers of the time,
was quickly recognised by Britten's precocious talent. In contrast, when
Britten later attended the Royal College of Music, he found that his
compositional style did not always find favour with the establishment. He
studied with John Ireland, but kept in close contact with Bridge, and
frequently asked his advice. He said of these years "They don't seem very
happy in retrospect. I feel I didn't learn very much".
The Three Divertimenti were composed in 1933, towards the end of
his student life at the Royal College. The three movements originally belonged
to an unfinished suite for quartet entitled Alla quartetto serioso 'Go play,
boy, play', and were intended as a series of portraits of school friends;
the first of the athletic David Lay ton from Gresham's, Holt, his public
school, and the third of Francis Barton, a friend from South Lodge, his earlier
private school. The movements bore the titles PT, At the Party and Ragging
but were withdrawn, revised and re-born in 1936 as Three Divertimenti. The
March is one of the earliest examples of Britten's use of this form – a
recurring feature of his later works. The charming Waltz has an air of
calm relaxation before the almost mota perpetua energy of the Burlesque.
They were first performed in this version by the Stratton Quartet (later to
become the Aeolian Quartet) at the Wigmore Hall on 2Sth February 1936.
Britten first met the tenor Peter Pears in 1934, but it was in 1937,
after the death of the latter's close friend Peter Burra, that a relationship
began that was to continue until Britten's death in 1976. As the uneasy decade
of the 1930's drew to a close, Britten and Pears made the decision to move to
America, largely under the influence of the poet W.H. Auden and the writer
Christopher Isherwood, who had despaired of the old world with its conventions
and apparent sterility. When Frank Bridge saw Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
set sail on the SS Ausonia on 29th April 1939 bound for Canada, it was to be
the last meeting of pupil and teacher. Bridge died in 1941, the year of the String
Quartet No. 1 in D Op. 25. An earlier string quartet in the same key
written in 1931, was revised in 1974 and first performed in this revision at
Snape. Both the first two numbered string quartets date from the years of the
Second World War. After his collaboration with W.H. Anden on the folk opera Paul
Bunyan, which received indifferent reviews, Britten and Pears passed the
summer of 1941 in California as guests of Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson. It
was here that he was commissioned to write the String Quartet in D major
by the wealthy American patroness Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The quartet was
first performed by the Coolidge Quartet in Los Angeles on 21st September 1941.
During this Californian summer, Britten also discovered the work of the poet
George Crabbe (1755-1832). After reading a transcript of E.M. Forster's
broadcast on Crabbe, Pears found a copy of his work in an antiquarian bookshop
and, particularly impressed by The Borough, with its characters from the
life of his own native East Anglia, Britten resolved to write an opera about
the tormented fisherman, Peter Grimes. Althongh the composition of the
second quartet is more nearly contemporary with Peter Grimes, there are
distinct similarities with the sound world of the Quartet in D. The
opening Andante sostenuto with its high tessitura and directed to be
played molto vibrato has much of the feeling found in the Dawn
Interlude from Grimes and similarly the third movement Andante calmo in
5/4 looks forward to the Moonlight Interlude. These two movements are
separated by the Scherzo, Allegretto con slancio, which, somewhat like
that of the Violin Concerto of 1939, is reminiscent of Shostakovitch. A
frothy and humorous finale, Molto vivace, concludes the work.
In July 1945, and at his own request, Britten made a tour of Germany as
accompanist to Yehudi Menuhin, who had undertaken to play to the survivors of
German concentration camps, including Belsen. Britten must have been affected
by this and it was on his return that he completed the String Quartet No.
2 in C major, Op. 36. This astonishing work was given its first performance by
the Zorian Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 21st November, 1945. Together with
the settings of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne and The Young Person's
Guide to the Orchestra, it was written to commemorate the 250th anniversary
of the death of Henry Purcell. The two large-scale outer movements flank the
malevolent Scherzo (Vivace). Played with mutes, the trio offers
no respite, being thematically linked to the movement's primary theme. The
first movement, Allegro calmo senza rigore, is in sonata form, but
stretches the exposition out to such a length as to dwarf the development,
while the recapitulation is still shorter. The main three themes that
constitute the first subject are characterised by a rising tenth. The final Chacony
is a ground followed by 21 variations, interspersed with cadenzas for the
cello, viola and first violin – the second violin accompanies the viola cadenza
by sustaining a C throughout. It was in a filler for the recording of the
quartet by the Zorian Quartet that Britten himself played second viola in
Purcell's Fantasy upon One Note, the entire work being constructed
around a sustained C. The Chacony, in the very spelling of its title and
in its form, is an overt tribute to Purcell. The first six variations are harmonic
and the cello cadenza separates these from a further set of six which
are basically rhythmic. Then follows the viola cadenza and six
contrapuntal variations. The cadenza for first violin heralds the final
three variations and the movement ends with an almost Beethoven-like
reaffirmation of the tonic tonality.