Curlew River - Music

Music

At the premiere performance the instrumentalists included the flutist Richard Adeney, the horn player Neill Sanders, the violist Cecil Aronowitz, Stuart Knussen (double bass), the harpist Osian Ellis, the organist Philip Ledger and the percussionist James Blades.

The singers are accompanied by a small group of instrumentalists, dressed as lay brothers. The work is scored for:

• Flute (doubling piccolo)
• Horn
• Viola
• Double Bass
• Harp
• Percussion (5 small untuned drums, 5 small bells, 1 large tuned gong)
• Chamber Organ

Unusually, there is no conductor in the work: instead, the instrumental performers lead among themselves, the places at which instrument is to lead being marked in the score. The lack of a conductor allows Britten to dispense with a universal tempo, the performers often instead playing in two or more separate groups at separate tempi, comparable to the sound of the music of a Nobayashi ensemble in Noh plays. This leads to another unusual notational device, the 'Curlew sign', which is used to 'resynchronise' previously separate groups of musicians by instructing one to sustain or repeat notes 'ad lib' until a given point has been reached in the music of another group. The harp part is heavily influenced by music for the koto and the chamber organ part features extensive use of tone clusters, which are derived from the shō, an ancient Japanese free reed mouth organ used in gagaku court music. (Britten had become acquainted with this instrument while in Japan for two weeks in February 1956.)

Britten's chief compositional technique in Curlew River is heterophony, which he uses to extraordinary dramatic effect. It permeates all aspects of the work's composition, with textures derived from short, decorative couplings, or long, unsynchronised layers of melody. It should be pointed out that the opening plainsong ('Te lucis ante terminum') suggests many of the melodic shapes throughout the Parable.

As in many of Britten's other dramatic works, individual instruments are used to symbolise particular characters. In Curlew River, the flute and horn are used most clearly for this purpose, symbolising the Madwoman and Ferryman respectively. With such a small orchestra, Britten does not use the 'sound worlds' that are clearly demonstrated in his War Requiem and A Midsummer Night's Dream, nor the dramatic change in orchestral timbre (with the entry of the celesta and vibraphone, respectively) that accompanies the appearances of Quint in The Turn of the Screw or Tadzio in Death in Venice.