Curlew River Research Articles

Benjamin Britten's Musical Characterization of the Madwoman in Curlew River

Benjamin Britten's Musical Characterization of the Madwoman in <i>Curlew River</i>

Восток и Запад в оперных нарративах ХХ века: от столкновений к зеркальным отражениям

The article is devoted to the evolution of the perception and implementation of the culture of the Far East in the narratives of Western operas of the twentieth century. As material, the author turns to "Madama Butterfly" and "Turandot" by Giacomo Puccini, "Curlew River" by Benjamin Britten, "A Night at the Chinese Opera" by Judith Weir. A holistic view of the evolution of the perception and interpretation of the East in the opera of the twentieth century has not yet been undertaken. Operas by Puccini and Britten were not considered from the perspective of the specifics of narrative, Weir’s "A Night at the Chinese Opera" is practically unexplored. The article traces the path of transformation of the perception of China and Japan in European opera narratives of the twentieth century from the confrontation of worlds to their interpenetration and awareness of deep identity. There are two main stages in the evolution of the oriental theme in the twentieth century, the line between which was drawn by the events of the Second World War. In the operatic narratives of the first stage, there is a connection with the romantic tradition of personifying the West and the East as masculine and feminine principles with the invariable victory of the West. The opera narratives of the second, pivotal stage demonstrate the disappearance of the conflict between East and West. As tools for the dialogue of cultures, the author notes Britten’s and Weirs’ reflection of plots from one culture in the narrative of another, as well as the comparison of theatrical systems: European and Far Eastern.

Ritual and parable in Britten’s Curlew River

Benjamin Britten se definit comme un « musicien de circonstance » et certaines de ses œuvres sont composees pour des commemorations ou des ceremonies civiles ou religieuses qui obeissent a des rituels particuliers. Comme compositeur d’opera, genre qui met en scene des rites et qui possede ses propres rites, Britten etait sensible a la notion de rituel auquel il souhaite toujours associer la participation active du spectateur. Il appartient aussi a la « generation Auden », le poete, ami et mentor des annees 1930, qui pratique l’art de la parabole. Aussi, il n’est guere surprenant qu’il donne a Curlew River (La Riviere au coulis), son adaptation de la piece du theâtre No, Sumidagawa, qui transpose le rituel du drame japonais chez une communaute de moines des Fens anglais avant la conquete normande, le sous-titre de Parabole pour etre jouee a l’eglise (Parable for church performance). Se fondant en partie sur l’analyse de l’art de la parabole par son contemporain et ancien collaborateur, le poete Louis McNeice, autre membre de la Generation Auden, cette etude se concentrera sur l’integration des caracteristiques de la parabole —souci de pedagogie, appel a des textes prescripteurs, creation d’un monde particulier, connaissance et accueil de l’Autre— , aux rituels de l’opera et sur le message œcumenique du compositeur qui laisse cependant transparaitre les inquietudes de Britten sur la place de l’artiste et du deviant dans la societe de son temps.

Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching by Carrie J. Preston

Reviewed by: Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching by Carrie J. Preston Alex Rogals Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, And Journeys in Teaching. By Carrie J. Preston. Modernist Latitudes series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016; pp. 352. Redefining the act of submission is at the heart of Carrie Preston’s Learning to Kneel. Positing that “submission is a crucial aspect of our lives and desires” (205), she criticizes the contemporary Western notion that assumes that “submission to an authority and tradition would always be dehumanizing and oppressive”—an assumption that she herself admits to once having held (21). Focusing on the traditional Japanese performing art noh, Preston argues that its submissive learning model is essential to interpreting the work of notable figures in twentieth-century modernism, in both the West and Japan. Drawing from her personal experiences as a teacher and an amateur noh student, Preston provocatively unpacks the act of submission and explores its fertile role within political, social, and religious contexts. Her accessible memoir-style introduction presents the way that noh is typically taught, focusing on the student’s—in this case Preston’s—goal to copy her master by observing her master demonstrate speech and/or movement and then attempting to recreate it exactly. She acknowledges her own initial prejudices against this system of learning—prejudices she ascribes to her Western tendency to position individual agency as paramount in the creation of art. That there is something to be learned from submitting to the methods of a master is not a revolutionary notion, particularly when it comes to Japan’s traditional performing arts. However, Preston builds on this observation to argue that submission (be it within a performance context or otherwise) should not be unequivocally equated to a lack of agency; it is often a conscious choice made by a willing participant. From this vantage point, Preston engages modernism, a movement that arguably sought to subvert tradition, by illustrating how it actually benefited from its encounters with noh. She explores the work of early Euro-American modernists like Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats, because they drew inspiration from noh and collaborated with Japanese artists to create intercultural translations and stage productions. While Preston acknowledges some common criticisms of these artists—misinterpretation, cultural thievery, fascist political agendas—she argues that “our limited visions of theatrical and intercultural transmission” (93) have placed too much focus on artistic product. This misplaced focus has obscured the processes by which these modernists submitted to noh as artistic authority in order to create cross-cultural collaborations. Preston asks that we focus on the “intimacy of translation,” in contrast to “moralistic evaluations of fidelity or deceit” (39), in order to understand how Pound and Yeats sought respite from realism’s grip on theatre by submitting to noh’s alternative theatrical methods to find inspiration. Preston’s desire to consider process over product leads her to challenge “our shallow conceptions of failure and success” (22). She argues that previous judgments of Pound’s and Yeats’s work, which have simplistically labeled these efforts “failed noh,” have incorrectly assumed that these artists aimed to produce something culturally “authentic.” Contending that this scholarship has ignored how submission has been a tool for innovation, she reveals how both Pound and Yeats grew artistically by submitting to noh techniques and intercultural learning. In chapter 5 Preston returns to this argument to explore Benjamin Britten and William Plomer’s “noh-derived church parable” Curlew River (1964) through its instances of religious- and artistic-submission processes (204). She also provides an intriguing defense of Samuel Beckett’s notoriously controlling directing style by considering how his 1976 production of Footfalls/Pas (1976) demonstrates the artistic merits of submission. If “authenticity” is the guiding factor by which such Western artists have been unfairly judged, Preston also suggests that such biases have tainted the way in which scholarship has understood experiments in Japanese modernism as well. Her third chapter examines the life and work of forgotten transnational dancer Itō Michio, who was Yeats’s main collaborator in his one-act play At Hawk’s Well, which was loosely based on the noh play Hagoromo. Itō’s performance of “noh...

Review of Philip Rupprecht. 2001. Britten’s Musical Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

In this wonderful book Philip Rupprecht develops a new, unified theoretical approach to Britten’s dramatic vocal music. To that end, he assembles a chronological series of close readings of major works, some extremely well-known (Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, War Requiem), others less familiar (Curlew River, Death in Venice). His approach draws on speech-act theory, as expounded by J. L. Austin (1975) and John Searle (1969) , conceiving linguistic utterance as a performative act. This conceptual basis resituates traditional concerns of text-setting, tonal structure, and leitmotivic development by promoting the dramatic context as the central topic of analysis. The focus shifts from details of objective structural integrity to rhetorical effects. Music, words, and gesture are treated not as separable symbolic media but as elements of a composite interactional discourse with “social and institutional force” (3). Broadly speaking then, the book aims toward a renewed evaluation of Britten’s stature as a dramatic composer while arguing persuasively for the value of linguistic and literary theories in music scholarship.

Where Rivers Meet

Where Rivers Meet, a fall 2015 theatre/film series/symposium/music/art event/workshop in South Texas with international and local participation, is detailed. The event drew together the Japanese nō play Sumida River (Sumidagawa) and Benjamin Britten’s “church opera” Curlew River and added a new kyōgen play, Song of the Yanaguana River, written by San Antonio poet Carmen Tafolla.

Performing Ritual: Physical and Musical Gesture in Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River

Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River (1964) defies traditional genre labels, exhibiting characteristics of opera, Japanese Noh drama, and religious ritual. Set in medieval England and given a Christian theme, Curlew River is based on the Noh play Sumidagawa and uses a unique language of physical gesture inspired by Noh traditions. The integration of these physical gestures with the music is one of the ways in which Curlew River projects an atmosphere of ritual. In this paper I examine two passages from Curlew River, each of which demonstrates a close connection between the development of individual musical gestures and the progression of physical actions performed at the same time. In the arietta “Near the Black Mountains,” sung by the character of the Madwoman, the subtle development of a single musical figure is linked to the gradual transformation of the actor’s posture. A similar relationship is present in the Ferryman’s introductory scene, in which physical movements act as punctuation for a sequence of musical statements. In both instances, musical and physical gesture are integrated into a unified form of expression, the intensity and focus of which lend Curlew River its ritual quality.

The Weeping Mothers in Sumidagawa, Curlew River , and Medieval European Religious Plays

One of the happiest and the most creative meetings of East and West came about a work by the British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-76). During a short stay of twelve days Japan, he saw two performances of the Japanese medieval Noh play Sumidagawa, and eight years later he completed his opera Curlew River, which was based upon this Noh play. In November 1955, he and the tenor Peter Pears along with their patrons, Prince Ludwig of Hesse and Rhine and his wife Margaret, left England on a world concert tour. On 8 February 1955 they arrived Tokyo, and three days later they attended a performance of Sumidagawa (Sumida River), Juro Motomasa's fifteenth-century drama, at the Suidobashi Noh Theater Tokyo. The performance was being staged by the Umetani Group of the Kanze School with Takeshi Umewaka playing the leading role. The day was to be remembered as one of the most significant of the entire tour. Before leaving for Japan, Britten had been advised advance by William Plomer, who was to become the librettist of Curlew River, that he should make a point of seeing a Noh play. Plomer, having spent three years Japan his early twenties and being well versed many aspects of Japanese culture, was certain that Britten would be inspired by a strange dramatic experience such as this even though the composer knew little about the genre and did not understand the language at all. It is useful to see how Plomer described his own experiences of the Noh theater his autobiography: And what was Noh play? To this the European brought that total ignorance which, its way, made him specifically impressionable. One did not understand the archaic language, the completely strange chanting; one knew nothing of the symbolism, and the briefly outlined plot was so steeped the mysteries of antiquity, of a remote and venerable culture, of esoteric Buddhism, that one had to rely on little but the evidence of one's senses to perceive the great beauty and refinement and agelessness of a wholly nonpopular tradition and convention, which, present-day jargon, would perhaps be sneered at as elitist--whatever that may mean. Perhaps, for those who use such a term, the best is too good. (1) As Plomer had hoped, Britten was deeply impressed by the performance of Sumidagawa and wanted to see it again. This occurred on 19 February just before he left Japan for Hong Kong. As soon as he came back to England, he told Plomer in a quiet voice but with ... a distinctive firmness that he wished to compose an English version of the Noh play that he had seen. (2) The composer was haunted by the memory of this extraordinary theatrical experience for many years. He wrote: The whole occasion made a tremendous impression upon me: the simple, touching story, the economy of style, the intense slowness of the action, the marvelous skill and control of the performers, the beautiful costumes, the mixture of chanting, speech, singing which, with the three instruments, made up the strange music--it all offered a totally new operatic experience. There was no conductor--the instrumentalists sat on the stage, as did the chorus, and the chief characters made their entrance down a long ramp. The lighting was strictly non-theatrical. The cast was all male, the one female character wearing an exquisite mask made no attempt to hide the male jowl beneath it. (3) Integral to the plot of Sumidagawa is the Sumida River (the name is derived from Sumi, corner, and da, rice field), from which this Noh play took its name, which runs through the Kanto Plain and enters the sea Tokyo Bay. (4) On an evening one spring, the Ferryman of this river is about to row across. The Traveler approaches him and asks for a place the boat. Shortly thereafter a distraught woman, a noble lady from Miyako (present-day Kyoto, the western part of Japan, and earlier times its capital) arrives. …

Curlew River

Curlew River

Encompassing a Plenitude: Cataloguing the Works of Benjamin Britten

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

A STUDY OF THE ORIGINS OF BRITTEN'S 'CURLEW RIVER'

Journal Article A STUDY OF THE ORIGINS OF BRITTEN'S ‘CURLEW RIVER’ Get access PETER F. ALEXANDER PETER F. ALEXANDER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume 69, Issue 2, April 1988, Pages 229–243, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/69.2.229 Published: 01 April 1988

Curlew River: A Parable for Church Performance, Op. 71

Curlew River: A Parable for Church Performance, Op. 71

Site of 'Curlew River'

Site of 'Curlew River'