Conclusion

Summary

Britten's creative relationship with Russia can, in the first instance, be placed in the context of the dissemination of Russian culture in the United Kingdom which began in earnest in the second half of the nineteenth century: in this sense, Britten and Pears should be seen as part of a much wider trend. Yet, placed in the musical context of the 1930s, the degree of Britten's admiration for Tchaikovsky was exceptional. The scores in which he appears to make reference to Tchaikovsky's music – notably The Prince of the Pagodas but also smaller-scale works such as the Third Cello Suite – suggest that this composer was the most fully assimilated Russian influence on Britten's music. On the other hand, from Britten's point of view, Tchaikovsky's ‘Russianness’ was always secondary to his melodic invention, refinement and creative temperament, and he seems to have responded to the composer's affinity to Mozart rather than his debt to Glinka. Britten's relationship with Shostakovich represents a more complex phenomenon, and the factors that contributed towards a personal friendship and limited musical convergence in the 1960s, not least Rostropovich's crucial influence and Britten's self-perception as a composer, were not identical to those which had excited his initial interest in Shostakovich's music in 1934–6; nor, by the 1960s, were they entirely related to ‘Russia’. Britten's lack of enthusiasm for Musorgsky is particularly striking in this regard. Although the friendship between Britten and Shostakovich in the 1960s may have particularly fostered creative overlap, at the start of the decade the composers’ musical language and preoccupations were already moving into similar channels; by 1970 the relationship was equally one of admiration, empathy and personal affection. Assertions of direct musical influence, as opposed to similar responses to related themes (such as the topic of death), should therefore be viewed with caution, and one must not discount other, non-Russian, sources of influence – for example Bartok – on each composer's ‘late style’.