Did you know Britten’s Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra was initially composed for a film? Daniel Jaff\u00e9 enjoys instrumental inspiration from piccolo to\u00a0double bass as he compares the best versions of Britten\u2019s didactic masterpiece <\/p>
Britten composed The Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra<\/i> late in 1945, fresh from the phenomenal success of his first full-scale opera Peter Grimes<\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Yet, significantly, he was first approached to compose his didactic masterpiece well before rehearsals for Grimes<\/i> had begun. Not yet a celebrated opera composer, Britten<\/a><\/strong> was respected for his music for documentaries, having in the 1930s scored approaching 30 such films, including his legendary collaboration with WH Auden, Night Mail<\/i> (1936). What became Young Person\u2019s Guide<\/i> was originally written for a 20-minute film featuring Malcolm Sargent and the LSO; this was to be Britten\u2019s last and most celebrated film score.<\/span><\/p>\n Basil Wright, a former colleague and now producer-in-charge at Crown Film Unit \u2013 formerly the GPO Film Unit responsible for Night Mail <\/i>\u2013 had first contacted Britten about the LSO film late in 1944. Following RA Butler\u2019s 1944 Education Act, by which music for the first time became part of the British school curriculum, the Crown Film Unit was planning a series of educational films including one on the instruments of the orchestra, a project for which Britten appeared ideal.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Notwithstanding his other commitments, Britten accepted, and planning for the film proceeded. A typescript scenario dated 24 February 1945, presumably written in collaboration with Sargent and Wright, includes what was to prove the score\u2019s masterstroke: after all the instruments have been presented according to their families \u2013 woodwind and brass, percussion and strings (albeit, the order ultimately changed in Britten\u2019s final composition) \u2013 there was to be a \u2018fugue-form bringing in all the instruments of the Orchestra section by section until the whole Orchestra is playing the grand climax\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Britten, having seen Grimes <\/i>to its premiere, then composed his song cycle The Holy Sonnets of John Donne <\/i>and his Second String Quartet before finally tackling the film score in earnest in December 1945. For the opening theme played by full orchestra he used a theme from Purcell<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s Abdelazer<\/i>, incidental music written in 1695 for a play by Aphra Behn.<\/span><\/p>\nWhy did Britten compose The Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra?<\/em><\/h2>\n
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A guide to The Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra<\/em><\/h2>\n