Britten Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge
BENJAMIN BRITTEN 1913-1976
Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge Opus 10
1 Introduction and Theme
2 Adagio
3 March
4 Romance
5 Aria Italiana
6 Bouree Classique
7 Wiener waltz
8 Moto Perpetuo
9 Funeral March
10 Chant
11 Fugue and Finale
Britten was 14 when he first studied composition under Frank Bridge, who was to remain a major influence on the composer for many years.
The Variations were commissioned for the 1937 Salzburg Festival, and were fully sketched out by Britten in just ten days. Boyd Neal, whose string orchestra gave the first performance, was not only impressed at the speed of composition, but was evidently also left in no doubt of the significance of the piece when he later described it as a work in which "the resources of the string orchestra were exploited with a daring and invention never known before; indeed it remains one of the landmarks of string orchestral writing in musical history."
Britten was on record as deploring the tendency of most listeners to expect only the luscious tutti effect from orchestral strings, and was intensely interested in developing and working with new combinations of instrumental effects and colours.
In essence the ten variations can be regarded as parodies of various European styles, both past and present. The Bridge theme, taken fron an early quartet of 1906, is first heard on a solo violin after the brilliant and sonorous introduction; the adagio movement which follows is punctuated by soaring melodic bursts of violins out of the enveloping chordal darkness of the lower strings. Whilst many of the movements tend towards the light-hearted, this dark, sombre side of the work is never far away, as in the haunting Funeral March, and particularly the Chant which follows it, where the high pizzicatti and long-held harmonics inhabit a mysterious twilight world which Bridge would surely have loved.
In the Finale, the Bridge theme gradually emerges against the intense contrapuntal scoring of the final Fugue, bringing to an end a work which, perhaps more than any other, firmly established the young Britten as a composer of truly international stature.
The Variations were commissioned for the 1937 Salzburg Festival, and were fully sketched out by Britten in just ten days. Boyd Neal, whose string orchestra gave the first performance, was not only impressed at the speed of composition, but was evidently also left in no doubt of the significance of the piece when he later described it as a work in which "the resources of the string orchestra were exploited with a daring and invention never known before; indeed it remains one of the landmarks of string orchestral writing in musical history."
Britten was on record as deploring the tendency of most listeners to expect only the luscious tutti effect from orchestral strings, and was intensely interested in developing and working with new combinations of instrumental effects and colours.
In essence the ten variations can be regarded as parodies of various European styles, both past and present. The Bridge theme, taken fron an early quartet of 1906, is first heard on a solo violin after the brilliant and sonorous introduction; the adagio movement which follows is punctuated by soaring melodic bursts of violins out of the enveloping chordal darkness of the lower strings. Whilst many of the movements tend towards the light-hearted, this dark, sombre side of the work is never far away, as in the haunting Funeral March, and particularly the Chant which follows it, where the high pizzicatti and long-held harmonics inhabit a mysterious twilight world which Bridge would surely have loved.
In the Finale, the Bridge theme gradually emerges against the intense contrapuntal scoring of the final Fugue, bringing to an end a work which, perhaps more than any other, firmly established the young Britten as a composer of truly international stature.
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