Take "Our Hunting Fathers" as an example. This is a remarkable vocal suite with orchestral accompaniment. It was first performed in 1936 and was of great significance in the composer's life. Before Britten himself revived the work in 1961, it was performed only three times over a 25-year period; it was not until the 1970s that the work was sung by a new generation of sopranos It was appreciated by many writers and spread widely. Today, this work is still considered incomprehensible in evaluations of Britten's oeuvre, especially when it comes to relating the composer to the essence of traditional European culture. Inside. It is somewhat surprising that Our Hunting Fathers was not understood in 1936, yet who else among British audiences could have created a work that displayed such brilliant orchestral and vocal performance? Who can detect the influence of Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Berg, and especially Mahler? If the British musical world was offended by Britten's bold technical performance, then the British social and political establishment would be equally unprepared for a film that contained a political code that warned against the emergence and dangers of fascism. works.

It was not until a few years after the composer's death that his significant creations in the 1930s were fully recognized by the world. Our Hunting Fathers, several concertos for piano and violin, the Sinfoniada Requiem (another work inspired by Mahler's music), and his work in the 1930s and 1940s for The sound world of numerous scores for radio, film and theater undoubtedly added to the composer's creative inventory and propelled him towards his goals for Peter Grimes (1945). Today, performances and recordings of the opera "Peter Grimes", one of the composer's major works, are very popular. And "King Arthur" (1937) itself has become the "Piano Concerto" and "Ballad of Heroes" (Ballad of Heroes), the cantata-style "The World of the Spirit" (1938) and "The Salvation of Paneropa". An important source of musical material in works such as The Rescue of Penelope (1943). "The Rescue of Paneropa" was Britten's last work before writing "Peter Grimes". Although these scores added a new dimension to the appreciation of Britten's musical excellence, he later lost interest in scoring. Moreover, the publication of Britten's letters and diaries, as well as his music composition manuscripts, reveal the falsehood of the unwarranted accusations against him in his early years of intelligence, proving that the leisurely ease of his compositional techniques does not mean that his music creation is in some ways incomplete, because these materials clearly show that the composer always worked very hard, constantly testing his musical ideas in various forms until he was absolutely satisfied.

If the reproduction of Britten's early works can deepen the understanding of Britten's music, then the music he composed during his years in North America should also be re-identified. The composer himself also did this work in his later years, revising the complete version of his "choral operetta" Paul Bunyan (Paul Bunyan), which he composed in 1941. This work, written by WH. Auden, reflects the realization of the American "Dream" and the implementation of Roosevelt's "New Deal" and is still very popular today. Britten and Auden replaced the opera after its New York premiere, and it was virtually forgotten for almost 25 years. However, this work is a testament to Britten's talent: he was not only familiar with the stylistic characteristics of American music, country music, Western music and blues, but also familiar with such music as Kurt Weill (Kurt Weill) and Cora Porter ( Cole Porter) and other composers.

All of this was unfamiliar to British audiences, whose experience of Britten's music began with the Michelangelo Sonnets (a work of poetry set to music masked in Italian). Homosexuality) and "English Serenade" (1943) for tenor, horn and string instruments. The latter was the beginning of Britten's creative work after returning to England from the United States.

If Britten’s American dream finally awakened after he returned to his motherland at the fiercest moment of the war, then this experience that brought him back to his past became the most important moment in his life. An event worth remembering. The "Europeanization" of his creative style is reflected in works such as "Lesilluminations", "Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge" and "Michelangelo's Sonnets", while "Paul "Bunyan", "Canadian Carnival" and "American Overture" which became popular after his death showed his "American style". Such typical stylized creations suddenly came to an end after he returned to China in 1942. Stop. It was as if once he left the United States, he immediately plunged into a world that was very British. He was enthusiastic about the British language and firmly believed in the musical style of his country. This was completely impossible before. .

There are a lot of facts to illustrate the importance of Britten's rediscovery of the British national roots, and it is not just the psychological factors caused by Britten returning directly to where he belonged (Peter Gray James once sang: "I'm a native Englishman, my roots are here."). Musically speaking, when Britten became too depressed to compose in late 1941, he became increasingly interested in Purcell and Elizabethan music. In the process, the British language played a dramatic and crucial role for him. Britten's unique understanding of Purcell's songs reflected his love for Purcell's vocal works. He had already begun arranging highly personalized folk songs in the last few months of his life in New York. Nowadays, more and more facts have proved unprecedentedly the value created by these two "side projects" that Britten engaged in during his creative career. A few years ago, a complete recording of folk songs and a performance of Purcell's works were published. , are the two most significant CD recordings of Britten's works.

"A Ceremony of Carols" was written by Britten on his way back to England across the North Atlantic, which was full of submarines. This work can be seen as Britten's most authentic British voice. The lyrics use a common theme to express a new meaning. The wonderful combination of harp and boy's voice creates a thrilling sound. Britten's music is simple and vivid in melody, and several dance movements show Purcell's influence on him. The music that accompanies the lyrics is energetic, relevant, and stylistic. The work exhibits a formal ceremonial quality that also pervades many of Britten's later works, especially the Canticles, the series of church allegorical dramas created in the 1960s, and some works that can be used as The entrance and exit of the chorus heralds a dramatic development, a monophonic hymn passage that heralds the wonderful course of some ceremonial scenes in the allegorical play. Moreover, such monophonic hymn passages are scattered throughout the later movements of these Britten works.

The creation of the carol series also used heterophony composition techniques, that is, the use of relatively loose longitudinal harmonious melody progressions, which also foreshadowed Britten's development of musical vocabulary in the 1960s. a way. The most typical example is Britten's unaccompanied "Intermezzo" for harp, which is a free fantasy form based on a monophonic hymn melody.

In 1943, no one could guess the origins of this compositional technique. Britten's friendship with the Canadian composer and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee (1900-64) had a huge impact on him. Influence. It was McPhee who introduced the creative techniques of Balinese gamelan music to Britten in 1939 through a set of Balinese music that he adapted for two pianos. The two musicians performed and recorded these arrangements in 1941, and Britten incorporated the works into his repertoire after his return. The polyphonic creative technique first appeared in a concise form in the conclusion of the prologue to "Paul Bunyan" and became the most important stylistic feature of Britten's late works.

Donald Mitchell and Mervyn Cooke have examined the relationship between pure music and the limited creative form of Balinese gamelan music, Japanese court music and traditional Noh Dramatic relationship. Cook demonstrates Britten's successful use of synthetic elements in works such as The Prince of the Pagodas (a work that did not gain popularity until after Britten's death) and several church allegorical plays. . Philip Brett explores the cultural aspects extensively, noting Britten's penchant for the strange sounds of Eastern music and his sexual proclivities. He published a groundbreaking essay on "Peter Grimes" a year after Britten's death, the first public discussion of the relationship between Britten's homosexuality and his work. Brett later pursued this theme through an in-depth study of the opera's "source material" (1981), in which he attempted to interpret Britten's compositional approach through analysis of extant compositional materials and libretto drafts. Brett has also written about homosexual tendencies in operas such as "The Turn of the Screw", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Owen Wingrave", and he tried to interpret The precise nature of the moral and spiritual dilemmas underlying many of Britten's plays.