Serenade for tenor, horn and strings

Programme note

Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Op 31

Prologue
Pastoral (Cotton)
Nocturne (Tennyson)
Elegy (Blake)
Dirge (Anonymous, 15th century)
Hymn (Ben Jonson)
Sonnet (Keats)
Epilogue

The Serenade for tenor, horn and strings was one of the first works which Britten completed after his wartime return from the United States to England. It was first performed at the Wigmore Hall in London in October 1943, with Britten’s partner Peter Pears and the great horn player Dennis Brain as soloists, and Walter Goehr (father of the composer Alexander Goehr) conducting. The piece is a “serenade” not in the eighteenth-century tradition of nocturnal outdoor entertainment music, but in being a setting of a selection of English poems on the themes of evening, night and the approach of sleep. But it also embraces the idea of night as (in the words of the work’s dedicatee, Edward Sackville-West, who helped to compile the text) “the cloak of evil – the worm in the rose, the sense of sin in the heart of man”.

The horn begins the Serenade on its own, with a short fanfare-like Prologue, to be played on natural harmonics (without using the valves). It then partners the solo tenor in each of the first five songs, though in a different relationship to the voice part in each one: shadowing the voice line by line in the “Pastoral” to words by the seventeenth-century poet Charles Cotton; responding appropriately to the refrain in each stanza of Tennyson’s Blow, Bugle, blow; framing the declamatory setting of Blake’s The sick rose with long, intense solos; providing the climactic statement of the ostinato which underpins the setting of the traditional Lyke Wake Dirge; and leading the chase in the setting of Ben Jonson’s Hymn to Diana, the moon goddess. After this, the horn is silent in the last song, a rapt setting of Keats’s sonnet To Sleep, allowing the player to station himself offstage for the final repetition of the Prologue as an Epilogue.

© Anthony Burton

TEXT

Pastoral
The day’s grown old; the fainting sun
Has but a little way to run,
And yet his steeds, with all his skill,
Scarce lug the chariot down the hill.

The shadows now so long do grow,
That brambles like tall cedars show;
Mole hills seem mountains, and the ant
Appears a monstrous elephant.

A very little, little flock
Shades thrice the ground that it would stock;
Whilst the small stripling following them
Appears a mighty Polypheme.

And now on benches all are sat,
In the cool air to sit and chat,
Till Phoebus, dipping in the West,
Shall lead the world the way to rest.

Charles Cotton 1630-1687

Nocturne
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long night1 shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory:
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Bugle, blow2, answer, echoes,
dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Bugle, blow2, answer, echoes,
dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Bugle, blow2, answer, echoes,
answer, dying, dying, dying.

Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

1 “light” in Tennyson’s Blow, Bugle, blow
2 “Blow, bugle” in Tennyson’s Blow, Bugle, blow

Elegy
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,

Does thy life destroy.

William Blake (1757-1827)

Dirge
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleete and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.

When thou from hence away art past,
Every nighte and alle,
To Whinnymuir thou com’st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.

If ever thou gav’st hos’n and shoon,
Every nighte and alle,
Sit thee down and put them on;
And Christe receive thy saule.

If hos’n and shoon thou ne’er gav’st nane,
Every nighte and alle,
The winnies shall prick thee to the bare bane;
And Christe receive thy saule.

From Whinnymuir when thou may’st pass,
Every nighte and alle,
To Brig o’ Dread thou com’st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.

From Brig o’ Dread when thou may’st pass,
Every nighte and alle,
To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.

If ever thou gav’st meat or drink,
Every nighte and alle,
The fire shall never make thee shrink;
And Christe receive thy saule.

If meat or drink thou ne’er gav’st nane,
Every nighte and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
And Christe receive thy saule.

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleete and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.

Anon (15th century)

Hymn
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heav’n to clear when day did close;
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short so-ever:
Thou that mak’st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Sonnet
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the “Amen” ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, -
Save me from curious Conscience,
that still lords
Its strength for darkness,
burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd Casket of my Soul.

John Keats (1795-1821)