The Rest Is Noise Series: “Grimes! Grimes!”: The Passion of Benjamin Britten

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Alex Ross. The Rest Is Noise Series: “Grimes! Grimes!”: The Passion of Benjamin Britten

“GRIMES! GRIMES!” The Passion of Benjamin Britten. From The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross

12 “GRIMES! GRIMES!” The Passion of Benjamin Britten

Young Britten

Peter Grimes

Britten’s Cold War

Britten and Shostakovich

Death in Venice

Notes. Abbreviations Used

“Grimes! Grimes!”

SUGGESTED LISTENING AND READING. Five Recommended Recordings

“Grimes! Grimes!”

Read the next chapter. Zion Park

Read the full book. The Rest is Noise

Copyright

About the Publisher

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This is a chapter from Alex Ross’s groundbreaking history of 20th century classical music, The Rest is Noise.

It is released as a special stand-alone ebook to celebrate a year-long festival at the Southbank Centre, inspired by the book. The festival consists of a series of themed concerts. Read this chapter if you’re attending concerts in the episode

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At the age of fourteen Britten began studying with Frank Bridge, an imaginative composer of Debussyish tendencies who quickly perceived the boy’s potential. The first year of Britten’s studies yielded, among other things, the orchestral song cycle Quatre Chansons françaises, which was not only amazingly accomplished in technical terms but disconcertingly mature in theme. One setting is of a Victor Hugo poem that depicts a five-year-old who plays outside a window behind which his mother lies dying; the juxtaposition of a childlike melody with shadowy harmonies prefigures many Britten works to come.

By the age of sixteen he was writing thorny, quasi-atonal pieces. The turn toward Viennese expressionism may have had something to do with the alienation he felt while at boarding school, where, according to ageless routine, older boys bullied younger ones. Britten marked his departure from Gresham’s School with an Elegy for Viola that traces anguished nontonal circles around a tonal center of C.

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