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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Britten‘s music is usually thought of as tonal, even if the term is sometimes qualified.’ Much of the drama of his operas (at least, up to and including A Midsummer Night's Dream, op. 64 (1960)) has been discussed in terms of ‘tonal action’, as have the structures of individual songs, song cycles and purely instrumental works. Yet his earliest published works are not tonal in the same way as later, more widely known ones. Not until the works of his American years (1939–42) do we begin to see the kind of tonal structure that enabled Peter Grimes, op. 33 (1945), to be conceived – structures like the highly focused tritonal opposition of Les illuminations, op. 18 (1939), or the E/C ambiguity (eventually resolved in favour of E) of the Hymn to St Cecilia, op. 27 (1942). Nevertheless Britten's first three works with opus numbers, written while he was a student at the Royal College of Music from 1930 to 1933 (the Sinfonietta, op. 1, completed in July 1932; the Phantasy Quartet, op. 2, completed in October 1932; and A Boy was Born, op. 3, completed in May 1933), are quite clearly diatonic in basis. This essay explores the ways in which this diatonicism is structured, and sketches the subsequent history of the main procedure involved.
1 See, for example, my ‘Comextually Transformed Tonality in Britten’, Music Analysts, 4 (1985), 265–87Google Scholar
2 See Evans, Peter, The Music of Benjamin Britten (London, 1979), and Arnold Whittall, The Music of Britten and Tippett Studies in Themes and Techniques (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar
3 The Music of Benjamin Britten, 18Google Scholar
4 The Music of Britten and Tippett, 16, 18 It should be noted that Whittall is not evoking Schenkerian terminology hereGoogle Scholar
5 The Music of Benjamin Britten, 16–17 (Examples 1 1 and 1 2)Google Scholar
6 Collections are labelled in terms of major modes for convenience only the labels ‘F major’ and ‘B major’ are not intended to imply tonal centres of F and B The notation ’ + F# means that F# is replaced by F#, ‘A♭ means that A# is replaced by A♭, etcGoogle Scholar
7 After the B major collection is reached in the sixth bar; the process is reversed, as noted in the main text, and F major is regained at rehearsal no 8 While the changes of collection between rehearsal nos 6 and 7 are very smooth, there is a slight jolt at rehearsal no 7 itself this is because two steps flatwards – G replacing G#; C replacing C# – occur simultaneously, with particular emphasis being accorded to the flattest element, C, in the flute line, reinforced by violin II If the A♭ in the bass is heard as a G#, as suggested by Example 2, then the consequent G#/G♭ equivocation also throws the flatness of C into reliefGoogle Scholar
8 Note that there is a slight detour in bar 38, where D♭ is momentarily reintroducedGoogle Scholar
9 The Music of Britten and Tippett, 19Google Scholar
10 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 19Google Scholar
11 It thus builds on Britten's experience in the Phantasy QuintetGoogle Scholar
12 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 23.Google Scholar
13 An example of this happening might be C-G-D-(etc.)-B-F#-C#-G#, etc, where the C major/G major referential collection is changed to D major with the introduction of C#, then to A major with the introduction of G#, etc.Google Scholar
14 Note that the ‘proper’ order of collection changes is altered slightly to accommodate the scalic run: D♭. A♭, E♭ is changed to D♭, E♭, A♭Google Scholar
15 There is little sense of an ambiguity involving those tonalities since no final or tonic is defined with clarity (and in any case the closest candidate for the final is the note B, emphasized melodically from three bars before rehearsal no 11)Google Scholar
16 References are to the 1955 revised edition.Google Scholar
17 The Music of Butten and Tippett, 25.Google Scholar
18 This may explain the length of time the variation took to compose The dates of composition for the individual variations given in the sketch are as follows (the date of the theme, which is not given in the sketch, has been surmised from the dates of composition given at the end of the published full score)Google Scholar
| Theme | [November 1932] | |
| Variation | I | 9 December 1932 |
| V | 3 January 1933 | |
| III | 12 January | |
| II | 16 January | |
| IV | 30 January | |
| VI | 30 May |
Even allowing for the time taken by the composer's other official studies at the Royal College of Music and his work on the Alla marcia for string quartet in February 1933, it would seem that the finale was somewhat troublesomeGoogle Scholar
19 Bar numbers for the sections are given in Table 10Google Scholar
20 See Britten's diary entry for 5 May quoted in Donald Mitchell, Britten and Auden in the Thirties (London, 1981), 145Google Scholar
21 The Music of Benjamin Britten, 75.Google Scholar
22 The only other example I have found occurs in Act 2 from rehearsal no 14, during the confrontation between Peter and Ellen over the treatment of John, Peter's apprentice The music here is in two layers Peter and Ellen occupy one, the off-stage church congregation the other Both start with the G major collection, but while the congregation remains in it. Peter's and Ellen's collection moves flatwards The changes – F♭ for F# in the second-bar; B♭ for B in the fourth bar, Eb for E in the fifth bar, and A♭ for A in the seventh bar – are all fairly prominent-melodically, the A♭ particularly so, occurring at Peter's dramatic peak on 'he's mineGoogle Scholar
23 See Evans, , The Music of Benjamin Britten, 53Google Scholar
24 In a letter to Britten written in February 1954, Grace Williams, who was a fellow student at the College, says that she finds variation I of A Boy was Born and the section beginning in the fifth bar of rehearsal no 79 in the Finale (‘This Night a Child is Born’) ‘too typically English’. See Boyd, Malcolm, ‘Benjamin Britten and Grace Williams Chronicle of a Friendship’, Welsh Music, 6/6, (1980–1), 7–38 (p. 13).Google Scholar
25 See, for instance, Arnold Whittall's comments on Ivor Gurney in his review of Stephen Banfield's Sensibility and English Song Critical Studies of the Early 20th Century (Cambridge, 1985), Music Analysis, 4 (1985), 308–15 (p 309)Google Scholar
26 See, for example, much of the third song, ‘O Might those Sighes and Teares’, of The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, op 35 (1945), the three bars before rehearsal no 3 in Phaedra, op 93(1975) (a fleeting but expressively telling instance); and bars 26–32 of ‘Ostinato’, the second movement of the Third String Quartet, op 94 (1975) I am indebted to Martin Greet for drawing my attention to the last example. The theme of The Turn of the Screw, op 54 (1954) shows links with the interval circle, as outlined below, but the implied movement through the circle of major seconds by collection (which is not completed) is not pursued in the work to any degreeGoogle Scholar
| interval circles. | D | A | E | B | F# | C# | G# | D# | B♭ | F | C | G |
| theme' | A | D | B | E | C# | F# | D# | G# | F | B♭ | G | C |
| E# | A# | |||||||||||
| implied collection: | C major | D major | E major | FU major = G♭ major | A♭ major |