One Off (Britten: The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra)

Member Name: Pingu

Product:	Britten: The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra
Date:	14/07/00 (36 review reads)
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Throughout the history of Western art music there have been very few English composers who have managed to hold a place on the world stage. Purcell, possibly Holst and Birtwistle. Britten was possibly the greatest. His was a truly powerful voice.

The thing he is most renowned for, very unfairly, is the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, a set of variations on the Rondo from Purcell's Abdelezar, which introduces the instrumental families one at a time. It is a stunning piece, showing off a phenomenal gift for counterpoint, but hardly Britten's masterpiece.

What he was best at was choral and vocal music. He is widely acknowledged as having been the greatest 'setter' of the English language, and his music for Tenor voice is often profound. He also wrote a great deal for boys' choirs, much of it performable by amateurs.

My all-time favourite of his works, though, is the War Requiem, which is absolutely stunning. A mixture of the Catholic Requiem for the Dead and the poetry of Wilfred Owen, this is an often bitter work attacking the follies of war. But it contains some of his most profound writing for Tenor, as well as some superb violent choral passages.

Britten, particularly the War Requiem, just has to be heard. The only thing I can't always listen to are his operas.

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