On This Island, Op.11

Let the florid music praise!

Now the leaves are falling fast

Seascape

Nocturne

As it is plenty

Britten’s many and varied collaborations with W.H. Auden in the late 1930s and early 1940s were a formative experience for both of them, though more for the composer than the poet. As the younger of the two (by seven years) and the less self-assured (by far), Britten had more to learn but, both inspired and intimidated by Auden’s brilliance, he learned quickly. Although, as his colleague said, he had “extraordinary musical sensitivity in relation to the English language,” he had to struggle to match the virtuosity and idiosyncracies of Auden’s verse, not least in the first of his song cycles with piano, On This Island.

The texts of the five songs, which were written between May and October 1937, were chosen from a collection published in this country as Look Stranger! and in America under the title Auden preferred, On This Island. Less than totally comprehensible even to someone in a position to understand the personal allusions in them, they gave Britten considerable trouble. He began with the easiest, Nocturne, which he set as a kind of chaconne, and extended the principle by finding a formal or stylistic equivalent for each of the rest of them - Let the florid music praise! with its baroque instrumental flourishes and vocal coloratura, Now the leaves are falling fast with its whirling vocal line over a rhythmic ostinato in the piano part, Seascape with its intimate post-impressionist lyricism, and As it is plenty with its parodied pop-song rhythms and harmonies.