Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:00:19.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

20 - Britten’s Holy Triangle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2023

Get access

Summary

For this chapter we return to Aldeburgh, where we started. Jonathan Reekie was Chief Executive of Aldeburgh Music from 1998 to 2014. ‘What kept me there’, he says, ‘was the combination of the inspirational place [and] the richness of the Britten legacy.’ His response to the place and the legacy was expressed in his broad and adventurous programming, crowned by the celebrated Peter Grimes performed on Aldeburgh beach in 2013, and by his appointment of Artistic Directors in the tradition set by Britten, with both composers and performers in the role. Reekie was also concerned to develop a community and education programme that would be forward-looking, whilst also drawing on the vision Britten had regarding the role of music – and musicians – within the community.

One recent project was Friday Afternoons, which began as an opportunity to bring together Suffolk school pupils in 2013 on what would have been Britten’s hundredth birthday to sing the songs that Britten wrote for children – Friday Afternoons, and which culminated on 22 November 2013 as an international happening with close to 70,000 people taking part.

A second long-term venture has been in HMP & YOI Warren Hill, a local prison. The ‘usefulness’ there is about developing not only musical and artistic skills, but also, vitally, social skills – so useful to these young men: how to work in a group, work to a deadline, compromise, refine, perfect.

In this article, Jonathan Reekie takes Britten’s ‘Holy Triangle’ and asks whether the model still holds for today, both in general and more specifically in post-Britten 21st-century Aldeburgh. Each section begins with an extract from the Aspen Lecture.

… a musical experience needs three human beings at least. It requires a composer, a performer, and a listener; and unless these three take part together there is no musical experience.

In his Aspen speech of 1964, Benjamin Britten defined what he went on to describe as ‘this holy triangle of composer, performer and listener’. It is an image that can be read as a sender-carrier-receiver description of music. Britten’s model, however, is not linear and serial but interactive and simultaneous – something more elusive, mysterious. The key word is ‘together’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Beyond Britten
The Composer and the Community
, pp. 252 - 259
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×