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Re-Visioning the ‘Missing’ Scene: Critical and Tonal Trajectories in Britten's Billy Budd

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Shannon McKellar
Shannon McKellar*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Oxford
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Extract

Those familiar with Herman Melville's last novella, published posthumously in 1924 and entitled Billy Budd, Foretopman, will know that one of the most memorable scenes is in fact barely there. In the so-called ‘missing’ scene, all that readers know with any certainty is that Edward Fairfax Vere, captain of the warship Indomitable (later editions rename the ship Bellipotent), communicates to Billy Budd, a sailor, the verdict of a drumhead court. Billy is to die in the early hours of the following morning for the crime of striking and killing the master-at-arms, the malevolent John Claggart. Precisely what passes between Vere and Billy in the crucial scene — one pivotal for the denouement of the story — has remained for ever a literary mystery. Although the narrator provides some conjecture as to what may have happened in the compartment where Billy is held, all he can say for sure, in a sentence endlessly cited by Melville's critics, is ‘Beyond the communication of the sentence, what took place at this interview was never known.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 122 , Issue 2 , 1997 , pp. 258 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1997

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References

1 The definitive title of Melville's novella has since been altered Because of the posthumous publication of what was an unfinished manuscript, the early stages of Billy Budd in print are particularly varied The pioneer transcription by Raymond Weaver (1924) is called Billy Budd, Foretopman F. Barron Freeman retains this title for his 1948 edition Most recently (1962), Harrison Hayford and Merton Sealts Jr suggest the title that most Melville specialists accept as definitive Billy Budd. Sailor (An Inside Narrative).Google Scholar

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