Friday afternoons

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Friday Afternoons , Op. 7, is a collection of 12 nursery rhymes by Benjamin Britten . He composed them between 1933 and 1935.

Composition and lyrics

The songs are designed for a boys' choir with piano accompaniment . Almost all of them are in unison , only the last song, Old Abram Brown , is a four-part canon .

Many of the songs come from the poetry collection Tom Tiddler's Ground, recently published by Walter de la Mare . The songs cover a range of moods: the song Old Abram Brown deals with death; on the other hand, the song A Tragic Story with a text by William Makepeace Thackeray is an English adaptation of the humorous poem Tragic Story by Adelbert von Chamisso . Many are traditional English children's poems about life in nature or animals. For example, Cuckoo! on the nursery rhyme Cuckoo, cuckoo, what do you do? the poet Jane Taylor .

History of origin

In 1933, shortly after completing his training at the Royal College of Music , the then 19-year-old Britten began setting a number of children's poems to music. In May 1934 he spent some time with his older brother Robert HM Britten, who was the headmaster of the Clive House School in Prestatyn at the time. Benjamin Britten gave physical education and music lessons there, which inspired him to resume his work on the children's songs, which he finally finished in 1935.

The work is dedicated to Robert HM Britten and the students of the Clive House School. The title “Friday Afternoons” refers to the time when singing lessons usually took place at school.

Songs

  1. Begone, Dull Care (text: anonymous, 17th century)
  2. A Tragic Story (Text: William Makepeace Thackeray )
  3. Cuckoo! (Text: Jane Taylor )
  4. Ee-Oh! (Text: anonymous)
  5. A New Year Carol (Text: trad.)
  6. I mun be married on Sunday (Text: Nicholas Udall )
  7. There was a man of Newington (Text: anonymous)
  8. Fishing Song (Text: Izaak Walton )
  9. The Useful Plow (Text: anonymous)
  10. Jazz-Man (Text: Eleanor Farjeon )
  11. There was a Monkey (Text: anonymous)
  12. Old Abram Brown (Text: anonymous)

Afterlife

Two of the songs, cuckoo! and Old Abram Brown , are - among other compositions by Britten - part of the soundtrack of the 2012 movie Moonrise Kingdom ; Old Abram Brown was also used on the soundtrack of the French television film Stranded .

For Britten's 100th birthday on November 22, 2013, the organization Aldeburgh Music launched the “Friday Afternoons project”. On that day, the work was performed by over 100,000 children worldwide. A wide variety of materials were made available on the Internet, including texts, sheet music and arrangements, including song texts in Braille and sign language , in order to make them accessible to as many children as possible.

literature

  • Stephen Arthur Allen: Britten and the World of the Child. In: Mervyn Cooke (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 978-0-521-57384-9 , pp. 277-291.
  • Boris Ford: Benjamin Britten's Poets. The Poetry He Set to Music. Carcanet, Manchester 1996, ISBN 1-85754-240-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter de la Mare : Tom Tiddler's Ground. A Book of Poetry for Children. Collins, 1931 ( digitized ).
  2. ↑ John Evans: Journeying Boy. The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten 1928-1938. Faber and Faber, London 2009, ISBN 0571238831 , p. 152.
  3. ↑ John Evans: Journeying Boy. The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten 1928-1938. Faber and Faber, London 2009, ISBN 0571238831 , pp. 210-211.
  4. ↑ John Bridcut: Britten's Children. Faber, London 2006, ISBN 978-0571228393 , p. 23.
  5. ↑ Moonrise Kingdom (Original Soundtrack) on Allmusic (English)
  6. ↑ http://www.fridayafternoonsmusic.co.uk/about
  7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fridayafternoonsmusic.co.uk