The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op.34

(Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell)

In the late 1930s Britten had supplemented his meagre income as a composer by writing film scores, most of them – including his now famous collaboration with W.H. Auden, Night Mail – for the GPO Film Unit. After the War he wrote just one more film score, this time for a Board of Education project, Instruments of the Orchestra, which was produced by the Crown Film Unit and first shown at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, in November 1946. But a few weeks before Instruments of the Orchestra was seen in the cinema, the score was presented in Liverpool, by Malcolm Sargent and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, as a concert piece under the title The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Although on that occasion it was accompanied by the commentary Eric Crozier had written for the film, it is nowadays nearly always performed without it. As the subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell suggests, it is entirely valid as an orchestral work in its own right.

The theme, a hornpipe in D minor from Purcell’s incidental music for Abdelazar or The Moor’s Revenge, is heard no fewer than six times at the beginning of the piece. It is played first by the whole orchestra, then by woodwind alone, brass alone, strings and harp, percussion alone and, finally, full orchestra again – a process interesting for its changes not only of colour but also of harmony. In the thirteen variations – starting at the top of the score with flutes and piccolo and working down through the rest of the woodwind, to strings, brass and percussion – each instrument is awarded a distinctive character study. The high singing voice of the bassoon in the middle of the fourth variation is particularly appealing, the passionate double basses in the eighth variation particularly amusing, the colourful continuity of the percussion variation particularly resourceful. The most ingenious episode of all is the concluding fugue: starting at the top again, each instrument enters in turn, creating a complex web of sound which is suddenly simplified as the Purcell theme in its original form but now in D major makes its dramatic and triumphantly conclusive entry on lower strings and brass.