1 - Britten's Clever Subconscious

Summary

In the last weeks of 1952, just after Britten's thirty-ninth birthday, there appeared the first comprehensive study of the composer's output – which ran, to this point, through opus 50, the opera Billy Budd. A number of its contributions were uncommonly ambitious in their detail and technical depth: among them, Paul Hamburger's study of the chamber music. Britten himself was struck by these qualities: his amanuensis, Imogen Holst, recorded in her diary on 4 December 1952 that, when showing her the new book about him, the composer had “laughed a lot at the v. elaborate analysis of his early oboe quartet,” and, with respect specifically to the analytical diagrams, offered that “he’d no idea he was as clever as that: — ‘I’ve come to the conclusion I must have a very clever subconscious.’” Philip Reed recounts this conversation between Britten and Holst, and this remark of Britten's in particular, judging that it betrayed more than a hint of sublimated self-regard, “that the composer knew precisely how ‘clever’ he was, and how thoroughly well made his music was as a result.”

In his study, Hamburger takes up the Phantasy for oboe, violin, viola, and cello, op. 2, the Suite for violin and piano, op. 6, the String Quartets Nos 1 (op. 25) and 2 (op. 36), and the Lachrymae for viola and piano, op. 48. He is principally interested in those features that contribute to musical form in these works, and, owing to its novel design, the earliest of them, the Phantasy quartet, op. 2, of 1932, attracts a special emphasis. Hamburger posits a formal synthesis that comprises a ternary variation form, a sonata form, and what is essentially a slow movement. He attaches the labels “A,” “B,” and “C,” respectively, to these three components, and charts the work thusly: A¹-B¹- [B]-[A]-C-A²-B²-A¹ (coda). I expand on his diagram in Figure 1-1.

Beyond observing the fact of the synthetic or alloyed form itself, it is important to note three formal principles in evidence here. The first is the idea of formal framing. Hamburger's A¹ sections, which I have labeled “Andante” in bold type, feature, in the first instance, the gradual compilation of a theme, as a single F# in the cello becomes a minor third, hesitantly establishes a rhythmic profile, and invites the viola to join it.