1 - Introduction: Britten's musical language

Summary

Music, like speech, begins in the moment of utterance. As the cardinal act of performance, utterance is an externalizing of musical ideas in the physicality of vocal or bodily gesture. Utterance is a process of putting forth, emitting – an unbroken flow of sound emanating from a distinct source. Something is revealed, made manifest; utterance, to recall the word's origins, is a bringing “out.” For the listener, utterance names an experience of being addressed directly by the performer or (less directly) the composer. By a process both interpersonal and reciprocal, performer and listener make contact. A musical thought moves from “in here” to “out there,” so establishing a chain of communication. Both music and speech impinge on the world in the living present of the utterance, whether as independent systems of address, or as paired discourses, acting together in the medium of song. And it is this composite musical utterance – a bringing forth of words and music meaningfully and vividly, as one – that is so clear in all of Benjamin Britten's work.

The phrase “musical language” in my title engages the moment of utterance in two distinct ways. In a first, metaphorical sense, Britten's music is itself a kind of wordless language – a characteristic way of presenting and shaping the interplay of essentially musical ideas (themes, rhythms, motives, or keys) within an unfolding discourse. The sounds of music, on this reading, themselves have properties usually ascribed to speech – expression, eloquence, a rhetorical force.