Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings

Britten wrote this cycle of songs shortly after returning from America to wartorn England. The love he felt for the English landscape is conveyed in this mostly gentle yet vividly realised masterpiece, setting six British poems quite different in character yet all dealing with eventide and nightfall. The work was originally written to showcase the artistry of two musicians Britten deeply admired: his life-long partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and the brilliant young horn player Dennis Brain—both performed in the 1943 premiere at Wigmore Hall, London. The work opens and closes with a horn call—akin, perhaps, to an eventide bugle call, though its seemingly out of tune notes are caused by the player using only the horn’s natural harmonics suggest something more atavistic. Then follows the sequence of songs, sometimes refreshing in their contrast, or—as in the pairing of Blake’s “Elegy” with the anonymous “Dirge”—suggesting a single narrative, in this case like a sombre prelude followed by the growing drama of a fugue (played by the string orchestra). Its growing tension is released by the histrionic entrance of the horn at the height of the lament. Framing this are songs that are by turns serene (Charles Cotton's “Pastoral”), exuberant (Tennyson’s “Nocturne”), playful (Ben Jonson’s “Hymn” to the moon), then intimate and a touch apprehensive (Keats’ “Sonnet”), a final spell of enchantment cast by the final epilogue played by the now off-stage horn player.