Soirées musicales

Benjamin Britten (1960s photograph)

Soirées musicales, (Musical Evenings), Op. 9, is a suite of five movements by Benjamin Britten, using music composed by Gioachino Rossini. The suite, first performed in 1937, derives its title from Rossini's collection of the same name, dating from the early 1830s, from which Britten drew much of the thematic material.

The five-movement suite was expanded from incidental music Britten had written for a film in 1935, and was quickly used as the basis of a ballet by Antony Tudor. Other choreographers, including George Balanchine created ballets using Britten's score.

## Background

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In 1935 the young English composer Benjamin Britten started to work for the GPO Film Unit, mainly writing incidental music for promotional documentaries. One of his early works for the unit was the music for a five-minute short film called The Tocher.[n 1] Using three melodies by the 19th-century composer Gioachino Rossini, Britten arranged a score for boys' voices, flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, clarinet, piano and percussion.[2] The pieces he chose were the soldiers' march from William Tell, and two pieces from Rossini's collection Soirées musicales: a canzonetta "La promessa" (The Promise), and a bolero, "L'invito" (The Invitation).[3] He published the three movements as Rossini Suite in 1935.[4]

Two years later, in 1937, Britten reworked the music for a full orchestra and added two more movements based on Rossini: a "tirolese" (in the style of a Tyrolean peasant dance) called "La Pastorella dell'Alpi" (The Shepherdess of the Alps) from the Soirées musicales collection, and a tarantella, "La Charité" (Kindness), from Rossini's Trois choeurs religieux.[3] The expanded suite, titled Soirées musicales, was premiered on 16 January 1937, by the BBC Orchestra conducted by Joseph Lewis.[4][5]

In 1938 the dancer and choreographer Antony Tudor created a ballet called Soirée musicale (singular) using Britten's suite. It was presented at the London Palladium on 26 November,[6] was given around the country, and, in 1939, on early television,[7] and remained in the Ballet Rambert's repertoire into the 1960s.[8]

In 1941 Lincoln Kirstein wanted a new ballet for a South American tour by the American Ballet. Britten composed another suite after Rossini called Matinées musicales, joined it to the Soirées musicales music and added the overture to La Cenerentola as a finale. The resulting ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, was called Divertimento.[9] In 1955 a new ballet, Soirée, by Zachary Solov was given at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, using the music of Britten's Soirées musicales.[10]

## Music

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### Analysis

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The suite, which plays for about eleven minutes, is in five movements:[11]

* March

The lively opening march is based on the "Pas de soldats" from the third act of Rossini's William Tell. After an opening flourish, the movement begins quietly and crescendos to a fortissimo finish.[3]

* Canzonetta

The second movement is in a gentle Italianate style with woodwind solos over undulating strings.[12]

* Tirolese

A peasant song from the Tyrolean Alps, with a yodeling effect in the tune, first heard in the solo trumpet.[12]

* Bolero

The Bolero, a sensuous Spanish dance, employs the expected castanets, supported by what the commentator William E Runyan calls "sparkling, luminous orchestration, with luxurious, cascading timbres".[12]

* Tarantella

For the final movement, Britten takes an andante molto in 12
8 from a religious choral work and speeds the tune up to become a whirling Sicilian tarantella to bring the suite to an exuberant finish.[3][12]

### Scoring

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The analyst Eric Roseberry writes of Britten's scoring:

These dashing and piquant adaptations from Rossini are in the spirit of all Britten's arrangements – there is no false reverence for a past style, no attempt to imitate Rossini's orchestral manner. Preserving only the tunes and original harmonies intact, the composer feels free to give rein to his own creative exuberence in exploiting the expanded wind and percussion resources of the twentieth-century orchestra, occasionally adding his own sly parodistic asides here and there.[2]

The suite is scored for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two trumpets, two horns, three trombones, percussion (two players:glockenspiel, xylophone, cymbals, suspended cymbal, triangle, castanets, bass drum and side drum), harp and strings.[11]

## Notes, references and sources

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### Notes

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1. ^ The Oxford English Dictionary defines "tocher" as "Scottish and northern dialect: The marriage portion which a wife brings to her husband; dowry";[1] the film shows a young Scotsman whose substantial Post Office Savings Account helps him win the hand and tocher of a young Scotswoman.[2]

### References

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1. ^ "tocher". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
2. ^ a b c Roseberry, pp. 234–235
3. ^ a b c d Luik, Kaisa (2017). Notes to ERP CD ERP9817 OCLC 1040035510
4. ^ a b Brett, Philip, Heather Wiebe, Jennifer Doctor, Judith LeGrove, and Paul Banks. "Britten, (Edward) Benjamin", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 15 June 2021 (subscription required) Archived 15 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine
5. ^ "National Programme" Archived 2021-06-16 at the Wayback Machine, Radio Times, 10 January 1937, p. 66
6. ^ "All Star Dancing Matinee", The Times 28 November 1938, p. 10
7. ^ "London Television Programme", Liverpool Daily Post, 9 February 1939, p. 4
8. ^ "Theatres", Aberdeen Evening Express, 17 November 1965, p. 2
9. ^ White, p. 40
10. ^ White, p. 81
11. ^ a b "Britten, Benjamin Soirées musicales op. 9 (1936)" Archived 2021-03-05 at the Wayback Machine, Boosey and Hawkes. Retrieved 15 June 2021
12. ^ a b c d Runyan, Willam E. "Soirées musicales, Op. 9" Archived 2021-06-16 at the Wayback Machine, Runyan Program Notes, 2017

### Sources

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* Roseberry, Eric (2008). "The concertos and early orchestral scores". In Mervyn Cooke (ed.). Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52-157476-1.
* White, Eric W. (1983). Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-52-004893-5.

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Benjamin Britten

List of compositions

Opera and operetta|

* Paul Bunyan (1941)
* Peter Grimes (1945)
* The Rape of Lucretia (1946)
* Albert Herring (1947)
* The Little Sweep (1949)
* Billy Budd (1951)
* Gloriana (1953)
* The Turn of the Screw (1954)
* Noye's Fludde (1958)
* A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960)
* Owen Wingrave (1971)
* Death in Venice (1973)

Church parables|

* Curlew River (1964)
* The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966)
* The Prodigal Son (1968)

Film/Ballet|

* Plymouth Town (1931)
* Night Mail (1936)
* The Prince of the Pagodas (1956)

Orchestral|

* Sinfonietta (1932)
* Simple Symphony (1934)
* Soirées musicales (1937)
* Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937)
* Mont Juic (1937)
* Sinfonia da Requiem (1940)
* Matinées musicales (1941)
* An American Overture (1941)
* The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946)

Concertante|

* Piano Concerto (1938, rev. 1945)
* Violin Concerto (1939, rev. 1958)
* Young Apollo (1939)
* Diversions for Piano Left Hand and Orchestra (1940 rev. 1954)
* Cello Symphony (1963)

Vocal/Choral Orchestral|

* Our Hunting Fathers (1936)
* The Company of Heaven (1937)
* Les Illuminations (1939)
* Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943)
* Saint Nicolas (1948)
* Spring Symphony (1949)
* Nocturne (1958)
* Cantata academica (1959)
* War Requiem (1961)
* Cantata misericordium (1963)
* Children's Crusade (1969)
* Phaedra (1975)

Vocal|

* Beware! Three Early Songs (1922–26)
* Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940)
* The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945)
* Britten's Purcell realizations (1945)+
* 5 Canticles (1947–75, including Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952), Canticle III: Still falls the rain (1954), Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi (1971) and Canticle V: The Death of Saint Narcissus (1974)
* A Charm of Lullabies (1947)
* Winter Words (1954)
* Songs from the Chinese (1957)
* Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente (1958)
* Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (1965)
* The Poet's Echo (1965)
* Who Are These Children? (1969)
* A Birthday Hansel (1975)

Choral|

* Friday Afternoons (1932–1935)
* A Boy was Born (1933)
* Te Deum in C (1934)
* Advance Democracy (1938)
* A Ceremony of Carols (1942)
* Hymn to St Cecilia (1942)
* Festival Te Deum (1944)
* Rejoice in the Lamb (1943)
* Five Flower Songs (1950)
* Hymn to St Peter (1955)
* Missa Brevis (1959)
* A Hymn of St Columba (1962)
* The Golden Vanity (1966)
* Children's Crusade (1968)
* Sacred and Profane (8 medieval lyrics) (1974)
* Jubilate Deo (1961)

Chamber/Instrumental|

* String Quartet in D major (1931)
* Phantasy Quartet (oboe quartet, 1932)
* String Quartet No. 1 (1941)
* String Quartet No. 2 (1945)
* Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria (organ, 1946)
* Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (oboe, 1951)
* Fanfare for St Edmundsbury (three trumpets, 1959)
* Cello sonata (1961)
* Nocturnal after John Dowland (guitar, 1963)
* Cello suites (1964, 1967, 1972)
* String Quartet No. 3 (1975)
* Tema "Sacher" (1976)

Collaborations|

* Homage to Paderewski (1941)
* Variations on an Elizabethan Theme (1953)

Film adaptations|

* War Requiem (1989 film)

Legacy|

* Aldeburgh Festival
* Britten Pears Arts
* Britten Pears Young Artist Programme
* Britten-Pears Orchestra
* Snape Maltings Concert Hall
* The Red House, Aldeburgh

Named after Britten|

* Benjamin Britten (train)
* Benjamin Britten Academy
* Britten Inlet
* Britten Hall
* Britten Sinfonia

Related articles|

* Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century
* Britten's Children
* Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
* English Opera Group
* The Dark Tower
* Scallop (2003)

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