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The Congregation Stands: A contextual study of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde
In 1946, Britten wrote his most famous educational piece, The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It was a fairly conventional piece, following in the traditions set by Saint-Sean’s Carnival of the Animals and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf; it set out to engage of a younger audience of listeners. Similarly, The Little Sweep, composed by Britten just a few years later in 1949, was an opera designed to be performed by professionals, albeit with several children’s parts, and some audience participation. The principle goal was to make opera more accessible to children as audience members. Noye’s Fludde, completed in 1957, aimed to do something completely different. In this opera, based on a play from the 15th century Chester Mystery Cycle, Britten utilised both professional soloists and a ripieno of amateur musicians, not to mention more than half a dozen solo parts for children’s voices, and a children’s chorus for the procession of animals. This means that children, and indeed amateur adults, are essential to the performance. Also, the music played by the amateurs is just as important as that played by the professionals. Britten’s handling of the forces does not turn the amateurs into optional accessories to the “real” musicians.
As mentioned earlier, “educational music” was hardly a new thing in 1957. However, Noye’s Fludde is clearly different in its approach than the Saint-Seans and Prokofiev examples, in that it seeks to educate through inclusion in the performance. In the generation before Britten, Gustav Holst wrote a vast body of music for his students at St. Pauls School (such as the St Pauls Suite) and Morley College. However, these are pieces which assume a level of technical proficiency on the part of the performers, and would probably not be best played by absolute beginners. Noye’s Fludde, on the other hand, is designed so that any player, of almost any standard, can be involved. The following description comes from Britten’s preface in the score.
There are three sorts of amateur Violins: the Firsts should be capable players...The Seconds do not go out of 1st position, while the Thirds are very elementary, and have long stretches of just open strings.
Having said this, Britten’s music for children is similar to Holst’s in one very important respect. Noye’s Fludde is a fully fledged opera, and a piece of “serious” music. It does not dilute itself in order to be more approachable, or easily playable by amateurs. It is a mark of Britten’s genius that there is no audible seam between the two groups of players. In addition, he keeps all the conventions of opera, so that children can learn about them. Meanwhile, the use of the medieval text provides a sense of mystery and excitement. The following quote sums this up:
The approach to the ancient story of Noah through an essentially medieval convention, realised in Elizabethan language of a fairly low order, was a splendid formula for arousing children’s sense of the fitting – Evans 272
Britten’s interest in educational music could be viewed as part of a growing international interest in music pedagogy. Carl Orff began to develop his Schulwerk in the 1920’s. The Suzuki Method came into being shortly after WWII. And in 1958, Zoltán Kodály first presented the teaching method named after him to the international community, at a conference of the International Society for Music Educators. Whilst Britten’s pieces for children are certainly not part of a wider “Britten Method”, the increased realisation of the importance of musical education may well have been an influence on him. Not only this, but his predecessors in Britain were very much in the business of educating. “The contribution of the composer in the first half of the twentieth century is arguably that of the composer-teacher” (Lawrence, 1987, p. 47).
But, once again, the main difference between Noye’s Fludde and the huge amount of music specifically written for children by Kodály, Bartok, Holst and Hindemith (to name a few), is that Noye’s Fludde is a piece of “real” music. It is not an etude, or something purely educational. It is intended for performance! The imaginative blending of amateur and professional performers also appears to be a unique idea at that time. A review in the Daily Telegraph of the first performance sums this up. “Britten has written something both wholly new and outstandingly original”.
Of course, Noye’s Fludde was not wholly new. The libretto was very old indeed. And this was not that first time that Britten had set a Chester mystery play. His second canticle, Abraham and Isaac, does similarly. Both pieces display a love of medieval religious dramatic style;
His...use of religious imagery is reminiscent of Haydn but can more readily be traced back to late-medieval use of popular drama and the static visual images that once adorned our churches in great profusion. Britten’s identification with these roots was one of his great strengths, and...enabled him to address his generation with a unique poetic authority. (Caldwell, 1999, p.431)
Other British composer in the 1950’s did explore pre-classical period music, such as Tippett in his 1953 Sinfonia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. And the much-overlooked Robert Simpson was a masterful neo-classicist in many ways. But Britten’s use of medieval literary sources in such a fashion as in Noye’s Fludde is possibly unique.
In terms of its form, and purely musical content, it is very difficult to compare Noye’s Flood to other operas from the same period. The whole concept of involving amateur performers, and the intention that it should appeal to children, mean that many of the usual operatic traditions and values do not apply. For one thing, Britten specifically intended for the work not to be performed in a theatre or concert hall (although performance in a church makes a great deal of sense, given the fact that the opera is in many ways an oratorio). Equally, comparing orchestral forces is nigh-on pointless. If the music was scored simply for the standard operatic orchestra of the time, it would have been extremely difficult to include a wide range of amateurs and children. The recorders, bugles and plethora of “exotic” percussion instruments (including mugs on a string to simulate the sound of raindrops. “Slung mugs”, as they are called in the score) are certainly unusual for a 1950’s opera. In many ways, the ensemble is very much like that of a baroque cantata or oratorio. The strings and recorders are divided into solo and ripieno groups, and the piano is often used as an accompaniment for recitative.
Musically, Britten does not pull his punches as much as one might expect for a “children’s” opera. Whilst Noye’s Fludde is arguably not as “cutting edge” as, say, Peter Grimes, neither is it toned down and patronizing. There is a wealth of harmonic interest and tone colour. The three main “audience participation” (or, congregational) hymns act as pillars, reference points for those watching the opera. In contrast, some of the music for the soloists and professionals is quite challenging. So, when compared to other operas (at least, British operas) from the same period, Noyes Fludde does not sound noticeably or too obviously “accessible”.
One “unusual” sound that is brought to mind in some sections of the opera, particularly just before the flood itself and at the very final chords, is that of the Indonesian Gamelan. Since it was first heard in Europe at the Paris Exposition in 1889, the Gamelan inspired countless composers, including Messiaen, Boulez and Cage. Britten himself would make greater use of the Gamelan sounds and scales in his ballet The Prince of the Pagodas, and even later in the “parable” Curlew River.
In short, Noye’s Fludde is such an interesting piece because it both fills and goes against the ideas of what an opera should be at that time. The very concept at the core of the music, the idea that amateurs, children and professionals should be able to perform together to create great music, is what make this such an intriguing and original work. It was like nothing that came before, and many other “operas for children” have come since. As with so much of his creative output, Britten pushed the boundaries in Noye’s Fludde in the least obvious, most easily accessible but yet still artistically valid way.
Bibliography:
Caldwell, J. (1999) The Oxford History of English Music, Volume 2, OUP
Carpenter, H. (1992) Benjamin Britten: A Biography, Faber and Faber, London
Evans, P. (1996) The Music of Benjamin Britten, Clarendon Press, Oxford
Lawrence, I. (1978) Composers and the Nature of Music Education, Scolar Press, London
