Pianophilia

Seconded, very attractive music and excellent materiaL.

ILU.

Ronald Binge was rightly famous for his Elizabethan Serenade,
but this isn't bad either.

After hearing Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony Op.4 being used in the soundtrack for the film Moonrise Kingdom, I note that most of the source material comes from juvenile works for either piano, or piano & voice.

Every site I visit quotes the exact same text used in Wikipedia thus:

I. Boisterous Bourrée 3'
Themes Used
- Suite No. 1 in E for piano (18 October 1925), second movement (Bourrée: Allegro vivace)
- Song (Song) (1923) A Country Dance ('Now the King is home again'), text from Tennyson's The Foresters, for voice and piano.
II. Playful Pizzicato 3'
Themes Used
- Scherzo (piano) (1924) Sonata for Piano in B flat major, op. 5, Scherzo and Trio (Molto vivace)
- Song (1924) The Road Song of the "Bandar-Log" ('Here we go in a flung festoon', text by Rudyard Kipling), for voice and piano.
III. Sentimental Sarabande 9'
Themes Used
- Suite No. 3 (for piano) (1925) Suite No. 3, in F# minor, for piano, op. 25, Prelude (Allegro di molto)
- Waltz for piano (1923) [Waltz in B major for piano], (Tempo di valse)
IV. Frolicsome Finale 3'15"
Themes Used
- Piano Sonata No. 9 (1926) Piano Sonata No. 9, in C# minor, op. 38, Finale
- Song (1925)

It looks to me like much of this is incorrect, especially as pertains to opus numbers e.g. Op.5 is actually his Holiday Diary, Op.25 a String Quartet, Op.38 the Occasional Overture, etc.

Are there any Britten scholars here who could straighten this out and point to the corresponding published works? (I know none of it is public domain, although I've found a Russian edition of the pocket score on Scorser).

sgambatiesque wrote: Are there any Britten scholars here who could straighten this out and point to the corresponding published works? (I know none of it is public domain, although I've found a Russian edition of the pocket score on Scorser).

Back in 2005 I wrote the Britten article for the German lose-leaf "Komponisten der Gegenwart" (Contemporary Composers).

For this I made a lot of research concerning the Britten worklist (using the catalogues fo the Britten-Pears library). Before Britten published his official opus1 (the Sinfonietta) in 1932 he already had written a few hundred (!) more or less small works (mostly songs or piano solos, a few chamber works and even some orchestral pieces). In this juvenilia he more than once began a new counting of opus numbers. To my knowledge the sources of the Simple Symphony are:

• Boisterous Bourrée: 2nd mov. from Suite in E major op24 No1 (1925)

• Playful Pizzicato: Scherzo of Sonata in B major op5 (1924/5)

• Sentimental Saraband: 1st mov. of Suite in f sharp minor op25 (1925)

• Frolicsome Finale: Final mov. of Sonata No9 in c sharp minor op38 (1926)

As far as I know none of these piano works have been published yet. But during the last 20 years some of his later juvenilia (from the late 1920s and early 1930s) have been publsihed posthumously by Faber Music, among them the highly important Quatre Chansons Francaises (1928), a String Quartet from 1928, Three Character Pieces for piano (1930) or the Double Concerto for violinand viola (1932, published by OUP).

There are lots of sketches and manuscripts which are still a bit of a mess. Britten began to compose at the age of 6 and composed a lot when he was young. The first works (most of them very short) were more or less bad imitations of classical composers like Mozart or Beethoven. His style became more and more advanced after he learned to know Frank Bridge in 1924. The quality of his compositions significantly went up after Bridge began to teach him privately in 1927.

Here's Britten's complete thematic catalogue including juvenalia:-
http://www.brittenproject.org/works/?gr ... 0&offset=0

And these are the early piano sonatas used in the Simple Symphony:-
http://www.brittenproject.org/works/BTC323
http://www.brittenproject.org/works/BTC434

So it's the 'J Op' opus numbering system which is being used to identify these works.
Unfortunately it's been lost in translation, as it were, by Wiki and everyone else.
The J simply means 'juvenile'.

Thanks to both of you for clearing that up.

I meant to add as well, that I became aware of a Howard Ferguson duet arrangement of Playful Pizzicato (OUP 1972): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPBzlh974J4

Maybe someone ought to edit the Wikipedia information!
These are the suites used in the Simple Symphony:-
http://www.brittenproject.org/works/BTC337
http://www.brittenproject.org/works/BTC339
Btw1, notice how young BB couldn't spell 'Waltz' correctly.
Btw2, the Britten Project would like audio incipits uploaded,
to accompany the printed ones. Any volunteers?

Two pieces by Lindsay Sloper (1826-1887), who was a pupil of Moscheles.

More Sloper.

Thank you very much for these Sloper pieces.
I haven't played the last two yet, but they do look fun pieces.
Peter.