Beware!_Three_Early_Songs

<i>Beware! Three Early Songs</i>

Beware! Three Early Songs

Song cycle by Benjamin Britten

Beware! Three Early Songs is a song cycle for voice and piano composed by Benjamin Britten and set to texts by Herbert Asquith, Robert Burns and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

"Beware!" and "O that I had ne'er been Married" were composed in 1922, and are considered examples of Britten's juvenilia, as they were composed at the age of 10. "Epitaph: The Clerk", is a setting of the first verse of the poem "The Volunteer" by Herbert Asquith. It was composed in 1926. The pieces were revised in 1968 and published in 1985.[1] Britten mistakenly believed that "Epitaph: The Clerk" was written by Walter de la Mare when he was revising Tit for Tat, his setting of five pieces by De La Mare, in 1968.[2] The pieces were compiled into this collection by Britten when he was reviving Tit for Tat and Five Walztes (sic), two early compositions from 1926.[1] Rudyard Kipling's "Fuzzy Wuzzy", composed between 1922 and 1923, was revised at the same time, but remains unpublished.[3]

Britten's biographer, David Matthews, wrote of "Beware" and "O that I had ne'er been Married" that it was "a little disconcerting to find the texts of both of these songs are warnings against women".[4] Graham Johnson wrote that of Beware that for an 8 or 9-year-old "to write music that is this direct, this aware of the vocal line and potential of the human voice is almost a Mozartian feat".[5]

"O that I had ne'er been Married" was performed by Peter Pears with accompaniment from pianist Roger Vignoles on a Thames Television broadcast from the Britten Pears Foundation on 29 November 1976, though pre-recorded on 20 May that year.[6]

Songs

The songs are:

  1. "Beware"
  2. "O that I had ne'er been Married"
  3. "Epitaph: The Clerk"

A complete performance takes about 3 minutes.[7]

References

  1. [1]
    "3 Early Songs". Britten Songs. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
  2. [2]
    "Britten Songs Volume 1" (PDF). Britten Songs Volume 1 liner notes. Chandos Records. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 January 2021. Retrieved 12 January 2020.
  3. [3]
    "BTC21 Fuzzy Wuzzy". Britten Thematic Catalogue. Britten Thematic Catalogue. Retrieved 12 January 2020.
  4. [4]
    David Matthews (15 October 2013). Britten: Centenary Edition. Haus Publishing. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-908323-41-5.
  5. [5]
    Graham Johnson (musician) (3 October 2017). Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten. Taylor & Francis. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-351-21820-7.
  6. [6]
    "BTC41 O That I'd Ne'er Been Married". Britten Thematic Catalogue. Britten Thematic Catalogue. Retrieved 12 January 2020.
  7. [7]
    Benjamin Britten – Beware!, 3 early songs for voice & piano at AllMusic. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
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