Encompassing a Plenitude: Cataloguing the Works of Benjamin Britten

Abstract

One of the principal factors which any Catalogue of Britten's output will have to cope with, is not so much the size of his oeuvre though he was a prolific composer-but the extraordinary variety and quantity of source material which survives. Of course, it is only to be expected that on average the survival rate for sources relating to a twentieth-century composer would be higher than for more distantly deceased composers. However in the case of Britten there are special factors at work: his working methods and his personality contributed significantly to the wealth of resources now available. This paper begins with a brief account of some of these special factors, and illustrates their consequences through a draft catalogue entry for one work, Curlew River. Some basic information about Britten's life and working methods is essential for an understanding of the oeuvre he left. He was born in Lowestoft on the East Anglian coast in 1913 and died in Aldeburgh a few miles south along that coast in 1976. Having begun to play the piano and to compose at the age of 6, Britten dated his manuscripts from his earliest years, and looked after those he retained. There are several early series of opus numbers, but from the publication of the Sinfonietta as op. 1 in 1935 most works published by the composer were included in a single, and fairly rigourous chronological sequence. From the 1950's Britten employed music assistants of whom the most -important were Imogen Holst (1907-1984) and Rosamund Strode-who, amongst other duties, acted as copyist and editor responsible for seeing works through the press; Imogen Holst aIso prepared vocal scores. Many of their copies and working papers are preserved at Aldeburgh at the BrittenPears Library or at the Holst Foundation. Britten was a fastidious professional in a11 matters relating to music, not least the typographical presentation of his own works: the documentation not only reflects the painstaking