Day Twenty: Benjamin Britten, Four Sea Interludes
Born on the 22nd November, 1913, Benjamin Britten was one of the leading British composers of the twentieth century, his operas widely considered to be the finest produced in England since Henry Purcell in the 17th Century. For today’s recommended listening, I have chosen the Four Sea Interludes from his extraordinary opera, Peter Grimes. This recording is a studio recording from 1962 with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Carlo Maria Giulini.
Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes Op. 33a
1. Dawn
2. Sunday Morning
3. Moonlight
4. Storm
Britten’s operatic masterpiece, Peter Grimes, is the timeless and grim tale of how, when a society cannot face its own demons, it purges its collective soul by demonising something.
The Four Sea Interludes is Britten’s first suite and is taken from the purely instrumental moments in the opera. Dawn occurs between the opening Prologue and Act I and paints the timelessness of the morning quietude on the ocean. Britten divides his orchestra into three voices: flutes and violins play a high, largely static melody, against which the harp, violas, and clarinets interject shimmering arpeggios, mirroring the spray of the waves. The rest of the orchestra interrupts periodically with ominously surging chords.
In “Sunday Morning,” which begins Act II, large church bells are suggested by clanging thirds from opposing pairs of horns, and later by actual bells. Woodwinds, strings, and trumpets represent smaller bells, while a flute evokes waking birds.
In “Moonlight”, Britten uses harmony in a very interesting way to create a feeling of instability. In conventional harmony, if you have a major chord with the 5th at the bottom, ie a chord of C Major voiced as (G,C,E), the intervals form a relationship of 1,4,6. Known as a “sixth chord”, it is a consonant chord that acts as a dissonance because it doesn’t have the same feeling of rest as the tonic in its root position. This sixth chord is often the chord used at the moment of a cadenza in classical repertoire, the soloist using the instability of the harmony as a springboard to embellish the music before returning to the tonic. In this movement, Britten uses this chord to give the music a relentless feeling of being penultimate, of not really laying to rest, perfectly creating the necessary tension to deliver us to the storm.
The Storm, the fourth musical depiction of the Sea, is a ferocious and violent affair. It comes at the moment in the opera when the villagers completely lose faith in Peter Grimes and this violence and anger is perfectly managed by Britten with the entire orchestra fighting amongst itself, the brass and timpani taking centre stage in a rather thundering fashion.
