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Billy Budd and the fear of words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Barry Emslie
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Extract

Three thematic clusters can be inferred from the libretto of Billy Budd: the sexual, the spiritual and the social. Each exists dialectically with the other two, creating a characteristic apparent synthesis of their respective internal and relational contra-dictions. Indeed, Billy Budd's status as a masterpiece traditionally depends on an assumed successful and harmonious resolution of its thematic material within the overall musical context. However, this article will argue that no such resolution takes place and that this ‘failure’ is the opera's most striking and interesting characteristic. I do not wish to argue that exposing these contradictions, along with the failed strategies designed to effect customary artistic reconciliations, lessen the opera's status: they are better regarded as evidence of its most challenging and worthwhile aspects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 43 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Unless otherwise stated, all references are to the revised two-act version of the opera (1960).

2 Kennedy, Michael, Britten (London, 1981), 199Google Scholar, claims: ‘Structurally the opera is among Britten's greatest and most intricate achievements’. For Erwin Stein ‘in Billy Budd the integration of the thematic material goes much further [than in the earlier operas] and is more than a means of dramatic expression’. See his ‘Billy Budd’, in Mitchell, Donald and Keller, Hans, eds., Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on his Works from a Group of Specialists (London, 1952), 201.Google Scholar However, several commentators have felt less certain of the opera's integration and homogeneity, in particular Andrew Porter's review of the original production in The Musical Times, 33/2 (04, 1952).Google Scholar See also Whittall, Arnold, ‘“Twisted relations”: Method and Meaning in Britten's Billy Budd’, this journal, 2 (1990), 145–71Google Scholar, for a more thorough account of the ambivalent responses of critics.

3 see Brett, Philip, ‘Salvation at Sea: Billy Budd’, in The Britten Companion, ed. Palmer, Christopher (London, 1984).Google Scholar For a more wide-ranging argument on the importance of homosexual repression in Britten's work, see Brett's contribution to the Programme Book of the English National Opera's production of Peter Grimes (première 17 04 1991)Google Scholar, and the chapters ‘Britten and Grimes’ and ‘Postscript’ in his Benjamin Britten: ‘Peter Grimes’, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar Some account of the gossipy reactions to Billy Budd on the part of those more interested in the private lives of its creators can be found in Headington, Christopher, Britten (London, 1981), 104–5.Google Scholar

4 None the less, Britten's and Pears's pacifism should be acknowledged. Furthermore, however much Britten may at times have felt himself an outsider, it was extremely important to him to work in the community (see n. 18).

5 Evans, Peter, The Music of Benjamin Britten (London, 1979), 164.Google Scholar

6 Melville, Herman, Billy Budd and Typee (New York, 1962), 5f.Google Scholar

7 Melville goes so far as to associate Billy with the ‘Lamb of God’ and the spar on which he was ‘suspended’ with the ‘cross’ ( Melville, , 86 and 94Google Scholar).

8 See Eric Crozier's reminiscences, ‘Writing the libretto’, in the Programme Book to the English National Opera's production of Billy Budd (première 24 02 1988Google Scholar).

9 See, for instance, Evans, (n. 5), 164.Google Scholar

10 Stein, (see n. 2), 209.Google Scholar

11 Shawe-Taylor, Desmond ‘Billy Budd II’, The New Statesman and Nation (8 12 1951), 664.Google Scholar However, Tracey, Edmund in The Musical Times, 105 (03, 1964), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar, writes: ‘Of all Britten's operatic scores Billy Budd has the most glorious abundance of melody’; a statement one either completely disagrees with or treats as an incentive to consider the question of the distinction between recitative and melody. It can also be argued that the superficial clarity of the text is underpinned by Forster's openness concerning the opera's sexual theme. Brett, Philip in Palmer, , Companion (see n. 3), 136Google Scholar, argues for a link between Billy Budd and the idealised working-class Forsterian hero Alec Scudder in Maurice. He quotes Forster: ‘I want to love a strong young man of the lower classes and be loved by him and even hurt by him. That is my ticket, and then I have wanted to write respectable novels’. On the same page there is Forster's explicitly sexual account of Claggart's Act I aria: ‘I want passion – love constricted, perverted, poisoned, but nevertheless flowing down its agonizing channel; a sexual discharge gone evil’. An account of Forster's dissatisfaction with Britten's setting of Claggart's aria and the subsequent cooling of their friendship can be found in, among others, the ENO Programme Book (see n. 8).

12 See Brett (n. 3) passim; on Pears, see Headington, (n. 3), 155.Google Scholar

13 See n. 11 and n. 12.

14 With respect to Billy's spiritual ‘identity’ there is an interesting difference between the novella and the opera. In the opera we know only what Billy tells Dansker of his meeting with the Chaplain on the night before the execution, and it seems conventional enough. However, in the novella the Chaplain cannot get anywhere with Billy. That is, although all the Christian imagery tells us of Billy's spiritual status, it is, I suggest, important to Melville that he remain in part a noble savage. Indeed, there is a strong pantheistic aspect to his description of Billy: he remains a child of nature until the end. For instance, the ‘bird' imagery is stronger in Melville than in the opera. See Melville, (n. 6), 83–4.Google Scholar

15 Concerning Forster's distaste for the novella's Vere during the trial scene, see Palmer, (n. 3), 135Google Scholar; about Britten's greater interest in the ambivalence of Vere, see Whittall, (n. 2), 150–1.Google Scholar

16 Melville is well read concerning the argument between the radical Paine and the conservative Burke. See Melville, (n. 6), 10–11.Google Scholar It is central to the argument of this essay that the polarities between which the operatic Vere is trapped – loyal servant of a tyrannous naval system and benevolent, Burkean patriarch committed to the civilising notion of community – are hopelessly irreconcilable, although it is remarkable how much of this irreconcilability we are allowed to observe. The simplifications that strengthen the symbolic identities of Claggart and Billy in the opera are not reproduced in Vere.

17 About the greater complexity and intellectual weight of the officers in the novel, especially during the court martial, see Melville, (n. 6), 65–7Google Scholar; about Claggart's status as a thinker, 40–1, and Chapter VIII, passim. With respect to the operatic Vere's greater knowledge of Claggart, as contrasted with the novella Vere's ignorance of the Master-at-arms, see 54–5.

18 This notion of community was also extremely important to Britten, as he made clear in his acceptance speech (22 October 1962) on becoming an Honorary Freeman of Aldeburgh. See Headington, (n. 3), 123–4.Google Scholar

19 In Melville there is the ‘conjecture’ of a paternal embrace; see Melville, (n. 6), 77–8.Google Scholar With respect to a positive but idealised homosexual relationship between the operatic Vere and Billy, see Whittall, (n. 2), 149 and 156.Google Scholar

20 Again the differences between novella and opera are instructive. In the novella Vere does not have as free a hand as in the opera. True, in the novella the ‘Indomitable’ is on its own when the story takes place, but Vere has to consider the ‘admiral’ and the fleet. Moreover, we know that there was criticism among certain officers of the fleet as to Vere's behaviour in conducting an immediate court martial; see Melville, (n. 6), 65–6.Google Scholar In the opera there is no possibility of confusion, no reference to any worldly authority other than Vere. He is a ‘monarch’ and, as a result, cannot avoid responsibility.

21 There is a clear difference between novella and opera here with regard to ‘mutiny’. In the former there is no doubt that Vere fears mutiny as a result of clemency (see Meville, [n. 6], 74–5Google Scholar). But there is no reason for carrying this over automatically into the opera, as Whittall appears to do (see Whittall, [n. 2], 162 and 169Google Scholar). Furthermore, in the novella we are aware that Starry Vere was given this particular post because he was judged the man to calm matters down after the Nore, a mutiny in which the ‘Indomitable’ and its crew were implicated; see Melville, , 23.Google Scholar None of this is relevant for the opera, where, on the contrary, the danger of mutiny is increased by the execution.

22 see Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, for a remarkable argument that claims an epistemological superiority for Marxism in understanding both literary texts and history, the former being for Jameson a crucial narrative encounter with the latter. With respect to the determining notion of narrative and the specific uncertainties of Billy's place in the symbolic order of language, one might consider something Jameson wrote in 1978: ‘“character” is that point in the narrative text at which the problem of the insertion of the subject into the Symbolic most acutely arises’. See ‘Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan’, in Jameson, Fredric, The Ideologies of Theory, Essays 1971–1986, I (Minneapolis, 1988), 102–3.Google Scholar I would argue for a clear link between Billy's ‘problem’ with language – as an expression of his unstable status as a character – and the irreconcilable contradictions of the opera's narrative(s).

23 For a thorough discussion of the responses among musicologists, see Whittall, (n. 2), Parts 4 and 5.Google Scholar

24 See Whittall, (n. 2), Part 5 and n. 35.Google Scholar

25 Evans, (see n. 5), 167.Google Scholar

26 Evans, , 167.Google Scholar

27 Culshaw, John, ‘The Deadly Space Between’, booklet issued with the Decca recording of Billy Budd (SET 379–81, London, 1968), 6.Google Scholar

28 Howard, Patricia, The Operas of Benjamin Britten (New York, 1969), 98.Google Scholar

29 White, Eric Walter, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas (Berkeley, 1983), 187.Google Scholar

30 Stein, (see n. 2), 208–9.Google Scholar My emphases.

31 Culshaw, (see n. 27), 6.Google Scholar

32 Porter, (see n. 2), 112Google Scholar; Culshaw, , 6Google Scholar; White, (see n. 29), 187.Google Scholar

33 Whittall, (see n. 2), 168Google Scholar, prefers to see the ending of the opera as evidence of Britten's ‘positive, creative indecision’.