Serenade, Op.31 — Benjamin Britten | The Gerald Larner Programme Note Archive

Prologue

Pastoral (Cotton)

Nocturne (Tennyson)

Elegy (Blake)

Dirge (anonymous, 15th century)

Hymn (Jonson)

Sonnet (Keats)

Epilogue

Like most of his songs and song cycles, Britten’s Serenade was written for Peter Pears, who duly appeared as tenor soloist in the first performance in the Wigmore Hall in October 1943. There was, however, another inspiration: as he wrote to a friend six months earlier, “I’ve practically completed a new work (6 Nocturnes) for Peter and a lovely young horn player Dennis Brain, & strings…” So Dennis Brain also took part in that first performance, with a string ensemble conducted by Walter Goehr, in the Wigmore Hall.

The sound of the horn seems to have been instrumental in the very conception of the work, not least in the choice of texts. Tennyson’s The splendour falls on castle walls, with its echoing bugle, and Ben Jonson’s Hymn to Diana, with its hunting associations, are only the two most obvious examples. The horn is also an integral element in the texture of the music itself, not just as an additional source of colour but as a formative factor in its melodic and harmonic character. In the Prologue the hornist is instructed to play only on natural harmonics, which is to say without the help of the valves, and from that point on triadic intervals - of the kind familiar from conventional fanfares and posthorn and hunting calls - are established as the basic material. Departures from the natural norm are as significant as adherence to it.

In Cotton’s Pastoral, which steals in obliquely on muted strings as the last note of the horn Prologue dies away, the triadic intervals enter with the voice. The horn promptly echoes them and later preserves thematic continuity by repeating the same motif in its commentary on the contrasting middle section. In the Nocturne it is there again, in the glowing reflection in the strings of the splendour of the castle walls, in the reverberating bugle calls and the magically muted echoes of “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing.”

For the Blake Elegy the symbolism is different - a chromatic sickness in the melodic line, uttered in pained seconds and sevenths by the horn, with the triadic motif in uneasy pizzicato in the double bass below it. The vocal line of the Dirge expresses the fear of divine judgement in much the same way. In the meantime the triadic motif is in the orchestra’s fugal march, which enters first on cellos and basses and gains in intensity until the horn joins the strings at the agonized climax of the song.

The last two nocturnes return to the happier aspect of night. Ben Jonson’s Hymn to the moon, personified as Diana the huntress, inspires a galloping horn part with an obbligato of hunting calls, while Keats’s Sonnet to sleep omits the horn in favour of a soothing chorale accompaniment on strings only, the triadic motif discreetly sustained by a solo cello. The Epilogue is a distant echo of the Prologue, the hornist now off stage and finally disappearing altogether.

A seventh nocturne, a setting of Tennyson’s Now sleeps the crimson petal, was discarded before publication.

Gerald Larner©

Pastoral (Joseph Cotton, 1770-1853)

The Day's grown old, the fainting Sun

Has but a little way to run,

And yet his Steeds, with all his skill,

Scarce lug the Chariot down the hill.

The shadows now so long do grow

That brambles like tall cedars show;

Molehills seem mountains, and the ant

Appears a monstrous elephant.

A very little, little flock

Shades thrice the ground that it would stock;

Whilst the small stripling following them

Appears a mighty Polypheme.

And now on benches all are sat,

In the cool air to sit and chat,

Till Phoebus, dipping in the West,

Shall lead the world the way to rest.

Nocturne (Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892)

The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,

and thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river:

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

Elegy (William Blake, 1757-I827)

O Rose, thou art sick;

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy;

And his dark, secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Dirge (Anonymous, 15th century)

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,

- Every nighte and alle,

Fire and sleet and candle-lighte,