Program Notes

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

born: November 22, 1913 in Lowestoft, Englanddied: December 4, 1976 in Aldeburgh, England

Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes

Opus 33a (1945)premiere: June 7, 1945 in Londonapprox. duration: 16 minutes

In 1942, Benjamin Britten attended a performance of his Sinfonia da requiem by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At Koussevitsky’s suggestion, and with the support of the Koussevitsky Music Foundation, Britten began work on a full-scale opera.

While in Hollywood, Britten read an article about the life and poetry of George Crabbe. Britten was immediately drawn to Crabbe’s 1810 poem The Borough, with its vivid descriptions of life in the seaside town of Aldeburgh. One of the characters in The Borough is the fisherman Peter Grimes. In Crabbe’s poem, Grimes is in many ways a malignant character, with a mind “untouched by pity, unstung by remorse, and uncorrected by shame.”

Britten and his librettist Montagu Slater modified Peter Grimes’s character into a greatly disturbed, but in many ways misunderstood outsider. Crabbe’s Grimes flaunts society’s conventions at every turn. But in Britten’s opera, the title character’s conflicting desires for independence and acceptance by society lead to his ruin.

The story of Grimes’s downfall is told against the backdrop of the ever-present and omnipotent sea. As Britten explained:

For most of my life, I have lived closely in touch with the sea. My parents’ house in Lowestoft directly faced the sea, and my life as a child was colored by the fierce storms that sometimes drove ships on our coast and ate away whole stretches of neighboring cliffs. In writing Peter Grimes, I wanted to express my awareness of the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livelihood depends upon the sea — difficult though it is to treat such a universal subject in theatrical form.

Indeed, while the sea is the basis of Grimes’s livelihood, it ultimately proves to be the instrument of his death.

With the lead role of Peter Grimes, Britten created one of opera’s most haunting and unforgettable characters. The orchestra too plays a crucial dramatic role, perhaps most notably in the Interludes that bridge scenes of various Acts, and vividly depict the mysterious, powerful, and ever-changing sea. The Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes have also established a regular presence in the orchestral concert hall.

The Four Sea Interludes are played without pause.

I. Dawn. Lento e tranquillo

II. Sunday Morning. Allegro spiritoso

III. Moonlight. Andante comodo e rubato

IV. Storm. Presto con fuoco

GRACE WILLIAMS

born: February 19, 1906 in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales died: February 10, 1977 in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales

Sea Sketches, Five Pieces for String Orchestra

(1944)premiere: March 31, 1947 in Cardiff, Wales approx. duration: 17 minutes

Welsh composer Grace Williams was born in the seaside town of Barry, Glamorgan. Williams studied music with David Evans at the University College of Cardiff. Williams later attended the Royal College of Music in London, where her teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob. Williams also studied in Vienna with Egon Wellesz. From 1932-45, she taught and composed in London. But Grace Williams confessed to friends that she longed to return to her home town and the sea the composer so adored. In 1947, Williams moved back to Barry, where she lived the remainder of her life. Williams, regarded as one of Wales’s foremost composers, created music in a wide variety of genres, both instrumental and vocal. Williams was also the first British woman to compose the score for a feature film, the 1949 release Blue Scar.

Williams acknowledged that the sea exerted a profound influence on her music. But Williams also observed that this influence extended even to works that did not invoke the sea for its subject matter. The Sea Sketches, Five Pieces for String Orchestra, is a tribute to the composer’s beloved Glamorgan coast. The Sea Sketches are in five movements, each with a descriptive title that summarizes Williams’s evocative music.

I. High Wind. Allegro energico

II. Sailing Song. Allegretto

III. Channel Sirens. Lento misterioso

IV. Breakers. Presto

V. Calm Sea in Summer. Andante tranquillo

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

born: October 12, 1872 in Down Ampney, Englanddied: August 26, 1958 in London, England

A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1)

(1909)premiere: October 12, 1910 in Leeds, Englandapprox. duration: 64 minutes

Toward the end of his life, British composer Vaughan Williams said of the great American poet, Walt Whitman: “I’ve never got over him, I’m glad to say.” In R.V.W. A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer’s widow, Ursula, described Vaughan Williams’s initial encounters in the early 1900s with Whitman’s poetry:

Barnes, Tennyson, both Rossettis, and Stevenson were the poets Ralph had found most apt for tunes…but another, and very different, kind of writer was beginning to fill his mind. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, in several editions, from a large volume to a selection small enough for a pocket, was his constant companion. It was full of fresh thoughts, and the idea of a big choral work about the sea — the sea itself and the sea of time, infinity, and mankind, was beginning to take shape in many small notebooks. It was an ambitious and terrifying project, for the scope was to be unlike that of any choral work he had yet attempted.

In 1903, Vaughan Williams began a large-scale composition for chorus and orchestra he entitled The Ocean. Over the next seven years, the work developed into a symphony for solo soprano and baritone, chorus, and orchestra, renamed A Sea Symphony. During that period, Vaughan Williams enjoyed considerable success with another work for chorus and orchestra based upon Whitman poetry, Toward the Unknown Region (1906).

Vaughan Williams’s teacher, English composer Charles Villiers Stanford, convinced the Leeds Festival to present the world premiere of A Sea Symphony. Vaughan Williams conducted the October 12, 1910 performance.

The early success of such works as A Sea Symphony and Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910) quickly established Ralph Vaughan Williams as a new and shining light among British composers. Vaughan Williams was celebrated as someone who brilliantly wed musical tradition with vibrant, contemporary expression.

More than a century after its premiere, A Sea Symphony continues to thrill and move audiences. As Vaughan Williams biographer Michael Kennedy observes: “it passes the test of all great music: one finds more in it, not less, as the years go by.”

The following are from the composer’s program notes for the first London performance of A Sea Symphony, which took place at Queen’s Hall on February 4, 1913.

There are two main musical themes which run through the four movements:

I. The harmonic progression to which the opening words for the chorus are sung.

II. A melodic phrase first heard at the words ‘and on its limitless heaving breast, the ships’.

The plan of the work is symphonic rather than narrative or dramatic, and this may be held to justify the frequent repetition of important words and phrases which occur in the poem. The words as well as the music are thus treated symphonically. It is also noticeable that the orchestra has an equal share with the chorus and soloists in carrying out the musical ideas.

The Symphony is written for soprano and baritone soli, chorus and orchestra. The two soloists sing in the first and last movements. The slow movement contains a solo for baritone (and also a long refrain for orchestra alone) while the Scherzo is for chorus and orchestra only. The words are selected from various poems of Walt Whitman to be found in Leaves of Grass, namely ‘Sea Drift’, ‘Song of the Exposition’, and ‘Passage to India.’

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the visionary American poet whose works profoundly inspired Vaughan Williams, including his Sea Symphony, Dona Nobis Pacem, and many others.