Volume I. With Such Friends.... Volume II. Echoes truer far: Benjamin Britten's folksong arrangements as analytical guides.

Abstract

Benjamin Britten's folksong arrangements offer a unique representation of his compositional technique. Their relatively simple nature affords easy access to melodic and harmonic characteristics and procedures typical of the composer's music. An examination of these elements in the arrangements can reveal basic compositional processes that are also present in his wholly original songs. Furthermore, such an examination can yield specific analytical tools that can then be applied to a new analytical system, one that avoids many of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies that arise when examining Britten's music from the standpoint of standard tonal analysis. Chapter 1 addresses elements related to modality---among them inflection, bi-modality, and modal ambiguity---and demonstrates through numerous examples Britten's applications of these techniques in the folksong arrangements and in the wholly original songs. Chapter 2 addresses Britten's treatment of harmony on local and global levels, how it deviates, often significantly, from the practices of major/minor tonal system, and how it relates to the issues of modality. Again, numerous examples from the folksongs and the original songs are cited and analyzed. In Chapter 3, a system of analysis is proposed in which many of the elements inherent in tonal analysis are replaced by indicators that more accurately reflect Britten's compositional processes as addressed in the first two chapters of the paper. Three folksongs and two original songs are analyzed in full using this system.