On 12 November 1960, the BBC Third Programme broadcast a roundtable discussion about Britten's opera Billy Budd among its principal actors: E. M. Forster, Eric Crozier, and, of course, Britten himself. The “discussion” was a bit of radio ruse, as Paul Kildea has uncovered. Crozier and Forster were recorded the previous week on 4 November, and Britten and Crozier on 9 November, with Crozier acting as leader for both sessions. Nonetheless, the end product gave the perception of seamlessness. The first part of their “conversation” comes across as rather scripted as the genesis of the work is gradually teased out, but it begins to take on a more lively tone when the question is raised of which medium – novel or stage work – best represents the complexities of Budd's “goodness.” After Forster suggested that all a composer need do in order to show “a good character” is to “give [one] good music,” Britten, whom Crozier had prompted earlier to represent “music” in what was fast becoming a battle of wits between Forster and Crozier, immediately set Forster straight:

After Britten said his piece, Crozier moved along to the subject of their collaboration, suggesting that he did not wish to take a side excursion into the notion of music and subjectivity, when, in reality, Forster was not physically present to continue the matter. But Britten's observation that music is “an inexplicit art,” however fleeting in the forty-minute broadcast, hearkens back to one of the most essential aspects of music: its inadequacy as symbolic medium. And yet, Britten's compositions – and particularly those with text – seem to belie this failing.

Death in Venice famously begins with an evocation of writer's block. Orchestral instruments mime the unfruitful pulsing of Aschenbach's brain. Britten creates the effect of slipped gears by confining each instrument to a single pitch, on which it hammers quietly in irregular bursts. The whole texture is rhythmically agitated but harmonically deadlocked. Furthermore, the instruments enter in pairs: two clarinets, two horns, two oboes. But each pair beats out conflicting rhythmic patterns. That is, the paired clarinets, for instance, do not mesh but chafe against one another in time, causing a kind of static blur. It's a masterful stroke – notes that twitch and go nowhere, that fail to blend. In this striking sonic image, Britten is drawing on a set of ideas for reconceiving texture which he had been developing continuously throughout his late period. Beginning in the early 1960s with Curlew River, Britten experimented with chamber textures for which no conductor would be required, in which interwoven lines took precedence over harmony as a structuring principle, in which temporal alignment between parts was flexible and casual rather than highly regulated, and heterophony acquired a special status. Heterophony – the rendering of a single melodic line as several slightly varied or asynchronous versions of the same line – is well known from traditional communal music-making, where individual singers might know a slightly different version of the tune, provide a personal embellishment, or momentarily fall behind in the beat. Heterophony also figures importantly in many non-Western traditions, such as the Far Eastern musics which exerted a strong influence on Britten in the 1960s and 1970s.

But there is more to be said about the motivations behind his recalibration of sonic material. Peter Evans has cautioned against exaggerating the revolutionary impact of Britten's encounter with music of the Far East, since “every technical innovation in [Curlew River] has precedents of a kind in Britten's earlier music.” Thus one can point to passages of relaxed temporal alignment between parts (marked senza misura or “freely”) in the second song of the Serenade (its cadenza: “Blow, bugle, blow”), the storm scene from Peter Grimes (Act 1, scene ii, the “recitativo animato” throughout), and the churchyard scene from The Turn of the Screw (Act 2, scene ii, “The Bells,” the children in particular: “O sing unto them a new song”).

VPS: In 1998 I received a generous grant from the University System of Georgia to conduct research in Britten's archive at Aldeburgh. I booked in for a three-week period, found a place to stay, and made the journey over, husband Mike and his trombone in tow. The whole trip had the feeling of a pilgrimage to a place I knew so well from Grimes. Aldeburgh was a sacred space, with the Britten-Pears Library – as it was then called – the holiest of holies. At Ipswich I saw a passing train car with a Britten image affixed to a square plaque. Even in my jet-lagged state, the excitement I felt was electric, for I was surely close to that sacred place. The journey from Ipswich to Saxmundham dragged on, as did what seemed an interminable taxi ride to our rented room in a bed and breakfast on Golf Lane. As we passed fields and houses, I tried to absorb as much of the landscape as I could because I had read so often how Britten fed his creativity from the Suffolk countryside. I saw the road marker to Snape – an auxiliary cathedral. And when the taxi drove past The Red House, I had finally come to my mecca. This is where Britten was, where he had lived and composed and loved. And when I made the trek to the sea to sit on the shingle and listen in quiet reflection, Moot Hall in my sights, I felt I understood Peter Grimes in its entirety for the very first time. The sound of the clacking of the shingle, the inevitability of the waves and tide, and the cries of the gulls: these were in Britten's music, which I so wanted to understand.

The library and its environs were indeed ritualized space – of the kind that only insiders were allowed to traverse. Readers who were not among the sanctified few could go in the reading room and adjoining hall, but not into the library itself. The Red House and grounds were completely off limits. But the reading room held the promise of riches untold.

The history of Ouidah is intelligible only by reference to its geographical situation, which has however often been misunderstood and misrepresented in accounts of the operation of European trade in West Africa. It is commonly referred to as a ‘port’, but this is strictly inaccurate, indeed positively misleading. Although it became an important centre for European maritime trade from the seventeenth century onwards, it is not in fact situated on the coast, but some 4 km inland, actually to the north of the lagoon which in this area runs parallel to the coast, and so separates Ouidah from the seashore. The slaves and other commodities exported through Ouidah had therefore to be taken overland and across the lagoon to the beach, rather than being embarked directly into European ships. At the coast itself, moreover, there is no ‘port’ in the sense of a sheltered harbour, but only an open roadstead. Indeed, heavy surf along the beach, and on sandbars parallel to it, makes it impossible for large vessels to approach close to the shore. European ships trading at Ouidah had therefore to stand 2-3 km off, and to communicate with the shore through smaller vessels, for which purpose African canoes were normally employed. The town's relative isolation from the sea, combined with its proximity to the coastal lagoon, played a critical role in shaping its historical development, during as well as prior to its involvement in the trans-Atlantic trade.

Although ‘Ouidah’ is the spelling of the town's name current nowadays, it occurs in European sources between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in various other forms: in English most commonly ‘Whydah’, in Dutch ‘Fida’, in French ‘Juda’, and in Portuguese ‘Ajuda’. All these are attempts to render an indigenous name that would be more correctly written, by modern conventions, as ‘Hueda’ (or in a dialect variant ‘Peda’).

One of Ursula Vaughan Williams's favorite anecdotes concerned a Russian friend who, suddenly exposed to several of Britten's dramatic works within the space of two weeks and reeling from a performance of The Turn of the Screw (1954), exclaimed: “Save me from those suffering boys!” Relating this story, Vaughan Williams added the summation: “But she had no doubt as to the high quality of the music, you see, my dear, but Ben's particular idée fixe did exasperate her.” Such exasperation is hardly unique, as the enduring “problem” of Britten can be put quite simply: he had an erotic fascination with boys. His fascination was frowned upon by society during his lifetime, and is, if anything, subject to even greater opprobrium at present. It is also an enduring scandal for his partisans and a stumbling block for a number of otherwise sympathetic listeners. This is particularly true given that the music resulting from Britten's interactions with boys is among the finest of the last century.

Lest it be doubted that boys, and, in particular, suffering boys, constituted one of Britten's favorite topics, here is a partial list of scores dealing with this theme: the operas Peter Grimes (1945), The Turn of the Screw, Curlew River (1964), and The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966); smaller dramatic works such as The Little Sweep (1949) and The Golden Vanity (1966); cantatas such as The Children's Crusade (1968) and Saint Nicholas (1948). The latter is particularly notable for its vivid recounting of a miracle dealing with an hapless group of pickled boys.

Britten's attraction to boys was well known by his musical and life partner, Peter Pears. In a letter meant to cheer up the despondent composer, Pears wrote in 1949: “Don't worry, and remember there are lovely things in the world still – children, boys, sunshine, the sea, Mozart, you and me.” Note the distinction that Pears makes between “children” and “boys.” By doing so, Pears was anticipating psychological distinctions that would become current some fifty years later.

The political and commercial situation on the Slave Coast was transformed by the rise of Dahomey, under its king Agaja (died 1740), who conquered Allada in 1724 and Hueda in 1727. This profoundly affected Ouidah, which became subject to Dahomey from 1727 and was left as its exclusive outlet for trade with the Europeans after the Dahomians destroyed the rival ‘port’ of Jakin in 1732.The origins of the Hueda–Dahomey war of 1727 have been treated at length elsewhere, and detailed rehearsal would be out of place here; it need only be stated that the general view of contemporary European observers – that Agaja sought control of Ouidah principally in order to secure more effective and unrestricted access to the European trade – remains persuasive. For present purposes, it is the consequences rather than the causes of the war that are of central importance.

The Dahomian forces invaded Hueda in March 1727, and quickly overran it. The capital Savi was taken on 9 March and destroyed; the European factories there, which had survived the initial sack of the town, were burned down by the Dahomians a few days later. Many thousands of the inhabitants of the kingdom were killed or enslaved and sold, and others fled, settling in communities along the coast to both east and west of Ouidah, where the lagoon and other inland waterways afforded a degree of protection against the land-based forces of Dahomey.

There is thus a Hueda quarter, Houedakome, in Porto-Novo, to the east, and a significant Hueda element also settled in Badagry, further east again. The Hueda king Hufon, together with many of his subjects, however, fled westwards, to found the kingdom later known as Hueda-Henji. They first took refuge, as reported immediately after the conquest, on ‘an island on the sea coast … lying near [Grand-] Popoe’. In early 1728 the place where Hufon was residing was named as ‘Topoy’, which may represent ‘Tokpa’, a generic toponym meaning ‘on the waterside’; but ‘Topoy’ was attacked and destroyed by the Dahomians soon after, and Hufon evidently removed to a less accessible site. Hueda tradition indicates that the initial settlement of the exiles was at Mitogbodji, an island in the southwest of Lake Aheme; but Hufon subsequently moved his capital to Houeyogbe, further north, on the western shore of the lake.

In contrast to the obscurity of the history of Ouidah during the first four decades of the nineteenth century, a relative abundance of documentation becomes available from the 1840s onwards. Principally, this comes from a series of foreign, mainly British, visitors, who left extended accounts, beginning with the missionary Thomas Birch Freeman in 1843 and including the explorer John Duncan in 1845. In addition, by the 1840s British and French merchants were engaged in trade in palm oil at Ouidah, some records of whose activities are preserved. This was followed by the involvement in Dahomian affairs of European governments, beginning with Portugal, which reoccupied its fort in Ouidah in 1844. British negotiations with the Dahomian authorities for the ending of the slave trade from 1847 involved a series of missions that passed through Ouidah and the maintenance of a vice-consulate in the town in 1849 and 1851–2; besides the official records of these contacts, one of those involved, the naval officer Frederick Forbes, published a lengthy account of his experiences in three visits to Ouidah in 1849–50. The French government, responding to the perceived threat of preemption by the British, also negotiated with Dahomey for commercial privileges, beginning with a treaty in 1851 and continuing in further diplomatic missions in 1856 and 1858. In addition, a British Methodist mission operated in Ouidah from 1854, which, although a failure in terms of its own agenda of evangelization, nevertheless provides useful documentation of its interactions with the local community. There is also an unprecedentedly detailed local source for this period, in the correspondence of the Brazilian trader Jose Francisco dos Santos, which survives for the years 1844–7. The papers of the Lawson family of Little Popo to the west likewise include correspondence from the period 1843–53, which makes frequent reference to links to Ouidah.

Besides being relatively well documented, the 1840s and 1850s also comprise a critical period of transition in the history of Ouidah, with the decline of the Atlantic slave trade and the rise of an alternative export trade in palm oil.

In this essay, I will circle various and conflicting interpretations of Benjamin Britten's Canticle I, “My Beloved Is Mine,” an extended “cantata” that struck me on first hearing as a work filled with a fascinating hermeneutic ambiguity. As Philip Brett's examination of Britten's life (and that of his professional and life partner Peter Pears) has shown, their negotiation of the “open secret” of their relationship offers ways of interpretation that center on a complex interaction of words, music, and performance rather than a strict analysis of the notes. In other words, perhaps “meaning” could be found in more abstract notions of context, live realization, and audience, bearing in mind the performative, intangible aspects of irony and polyvalence contained within a work's reification in actual performance. Canticle I, written in September 1947, was first performed on 1 November of that same year in Central Hall, London, with the composer, Britten, playing the piano, and tenor Peter Pears singing – just one recital performance among countless others in their long concertizing relationship. My approach is heavily influenced by music critic Edward T. Cone's 1974 book The Composer's Voice, but while Cone suggests some very useful concepts I will use his theories as a springboard for other notions. This essay also attempts to move beyond a simple understanding of the canticle as “an ecstatic reflection on the trust and confidence of Man in his Creator,” as Timothy Day wrote, or as just “an expression of spiritual feeling in intensely lyrical language,” as David Brown believed. The Canticle is certainly those things. But who says that it can only be these? In one way, “My Beloved is Mine” has precedent in the nineteenth-century genre of the sacred parlor song, but that tradition, as I will show, has also been useful as a way for subaltern groups to create work that transcends the genre's supposed straightforward ambitions.

When the shite (the Madwoman) in a performance of Sumidagawa sings the lines above, she does two things that happen in every nō play: first, she sings a shōdan, one of the standard modules of nō; second, she enriches the world of the play by referencing the world beyond it. Neither of these things happens at the parallel moment in Curlew River, William Plomer's and Benjamin Britten's adaptation of Sumidagawa: their Madwoman sings music without an inherited generic model and references, instead of Narihira, an unidentified “famous traveller who once made a riddle / in this very place.” This confirms what will come as no surprise: Curlew River and the two “church parables” that followed it, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son, are not nō. Nevertheless, without Japanese nō theater, this trilogy of the 1960s concocted by Plomer, director Colin Graham, and Britten would never have been written. The triptych would therefore seem to invite close consideration of the relationship between the works and their principal dramaturgical source, in order to tease out what “traces” of nō, if any, lingered after Curlew River. But very few critics or scholars have acknowledged that nō was even a factor in the composition of the later parables. Because Curlew River derives from the nō Sumidagawa, points of comparison to the parent form are easy to deduce: it is a relatively simple matter of comparing two stories. The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son take their stories from the Old and New Testament, respectively, so links to nō cannot be explored along simple narrative lines. The tendency among some scholars seems to have been to take the biblical source of narrative in the latter parables as justification to forgo any overt discussion of nō.