Word: brittens
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Under the threat of a strike by Radcliffe employees, the Radcliffe College Council pondered possible action. Claiming that it was not the proper body to weigh specific labor grievances, the Council delegated its negotiating power to administrative vice president J. Boyd Britten. Most of the workers' complaints centered on low wages...
...fourth item on the program, Benjamin Britten's cantata St. Nicolas, exemplifies the typical predilections of this composer. The melos of the work derives from a dulcissimo consort whose colors are determined by the whites and blacks of the human voice. St. Nicolas, like most of Britten's work, is characterized by self-effacing virtuosity, ingenuous theatricality, and effortless joviality. The Glee Club-Choral Society performance was vigorous and eminently enjoyable, with Tenor soloist Robert Gartside, the excellent solo violin, and the accomplished boy soloist all deserving particular praise...
THIS SORT of good-humored piece is almost beyond criticism. Yet I feel that its simplicity, facility, and accessibility collapsed into a mere smile of irritating urbanity. Nearly every one of Britten's works is charming; in fact, so is nearly every British and American work that is ever performed. Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Red Pony, Appalachian Spring, The Incredible Flutist, and Tender Land are all charming. The Tallis and Greensleeves fantasias, Young Person's Guide, Ceremony of Carols, and Spring Symphony are all exquisitely charming, irresistibly delicious. But I, for one, am slowly drowning in this unendurably "childlike" floodtide...
...delight in gratuitous perfumes cannot be disciplined by more profferments of dusty oleander. This never-ending recovery of "adolescence" and "national roots" on the part of Anglo-Saxon composers, their incessant celebration of the precious and popular, reaches an apotheosis of sorts when a British commentator asserts that Benjamen Britten's personality "does not show Stravinsky's uncomplicated sadomasochism, Schönberg's desexualization of music, or the naive barbarism of Bartok." There is really no answer to this kind of a chocolate-cream musicologist except to suggest that he write his glutinous panegyrics on the backs of sugar packets...
This week West Berlin's Singakade-mie performs the Christmas oratorio with members of the Radio Symphony Orchestra. In London, Composer Benjamin Britten conducts three cantatas for the BBC from St. Andrew's Church in Holborn. In Manhattan, Violinist and Conductor Alexander Schneider completes a two-concert series of cantatas and concertos at Carnegie Hall. And in New York, as in other major capitals, the coming weeks will see a performance of Bach's undoubted masterpiece, the B-Minor Mass-a work that he began as a tribute to the Catholic King of Poland, but which...