Britten's ‘Cantata Academica’

Extract

So reads the title page of ‘CANTATA ACADEMICA—CARMEN BASILIENSE’, completed in March 1959, and awaiting its first performance on 1 July, 1960, when Basel University celebrates its five-hundredth anniversary. The Latin text, compiled by Bernhard Wyss, is taken from the charter of the university and from older orations in praise of Basel. Britten has arranged the words to form ten set pieces and three recitatives, making thirteen sections in all. Discounting the final chorus, which is but a unifying return to the opening (musically speaking), it is no accident that the remaining formal divisions are governed by the number twelve. It is fascinating to discover that this is in fact a ‘serial’ work—entirely dependent on a note-row for its harmonic outline, though without serial order in harmonic detail. This is serialism of a very personal kind, so tightly connected with the form that it is the form itself—an integral part of the musical creation, valid only for this particular work; and although the idea is apparently simple it is filled with such a wealth of musical invention that one is left gasping at the ingenuity which makes it possible.