Mixing Britten’s folk songs with poetry and soundscapes, soprano Marci Meth took inspiration from the composer himself to create an album inspired by and embedded in the countryside that he loved

1. Benjamin Britten
'Nature was etched in Britten's music': the birdwatching
composer
Mixing Britten’s folksongs with poetry and soundscapes,
soprano Marci Meth took inspiration from the composer
himself to create an album inspired by and embedded in the
countryside that he loved
Marci Meth
Tue 21 Jul 2020 13.09 BST
42 22
here’s no place like home, and no one knew that better than Benjamin Britten. He
began composing folksong arrangements in 1941, when he was homesick in the US.
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2. TThose songs brought him back to Suffolk – to the people and landscape he loved.
Accepting the inaugural Aspen award in 1964, Britten said: “I belong at home – there –
in Aldeburgh … and all the music I write comes from it.”
I had been studying Britten’s folksong arrangements for a year when I read that. I knew
intuitively that his songs were rooted in the land, and I decided I needed to go to Aldeburgh to
hear the music of that place for myself.
From my home in Paris I travelled to Suffolk, where Britten created the Aldeburgh festival
(cancelled this year for the first time in its 72-year history). The trip was the beginning of a five-
year journey towards the creation of a recording called The Wild Song, which pays tribute to
Britten’s relationship with nature.
Benjamin Britten birdwatching in Aldeburgh in the 1950s. Photograph: Britten Pears Arts
I had learned in Paul Kildea’s biography of the composer that in the 1950s Britten presented
concerts at the festival combining spoken and sung poetry. Dr Christopher Hilton, Head of
Archive and Library at Britten Pears Arts showed me concert programmes from the festival’s
early years, which revealed how Britten paired music with poetry of the same era and/or theme.
In one event called Verse and Music at the 1953 festival, Yeats’s The Second Coming and William
Blake’s Hear the Voice of the Bard were matched with Bach’s chorale Christ ist erstanden. A
festival in 1956 featured a programme called The Heart of the Matter, which revolved around
Britten’s Canticle No 3, Op 55 with both spoken and sung poetry by Edith Sitwell. These concert
programmes confirmed that my idea for the structure of The Wild Song – mixing spoken word

3. with Britten’s folksong arrangements – was something that Britten might have approved of.
Which was important to me.
Another concert programme showed that in 1952 Britten included
three films by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in his
festival. Nature was not separate from Britten’s music or his
programming, it was deeply etched in it. Britten was an avid
birdwatcher and longstanding member of the RSPB (his subscription,
for at least some of that time, was a present from his sister Barbara).
Britten attached his membership badge to his car and gave gift
memberships to friends, including the Royal Opera House director George Lascelles, the Earl of
Harewood. There is a strong link between the RSPB and Suffolk – one of the charity’s greatest
successes was the return of avocets to breeding in the UK in 1947 (the bird is now the RSPB logo)
after an absence of 100 years. This took place at Minsmere, close to Aldeburgh. Perhaps Britten’s
interest in birdwatching was sharpened by the knowledge that his own part of the world hosted
one of the UK’s major sites of ornithological interest.
Certainly, the natural soundscape of Suffolk and the birds Britten loved are reflected in his
music. Yehudi Menuhin once said: “If wind and water could write music, it would sound like
Ben’s.” Paintings in sound, his Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes are infused not only with
the Suffolk seascape but also with the sounds of birds, the redshanks and the reed warblers that
Britten would have heard on the daily “composing walks” he took after lunch to reflect on his
morning’s work.
At almost every one of his Aldeburgh festivals, Britten included environmentally themed
concerts, lectures and films. There were concerts on “Water Music and Music of the Sea”,
lectures on nature protection, bird life in East Anglia, the flora of Suffolk, the satisfaction of
birdwatching, the conservation of wildlife in Africa and symposiums on herring and sprat. Films
by the RSPB featured in five different festivals. In 1971 he shared a film called The Last of the
Wild, about threatened wildlife. In 1969, there was a beachcombing expedition in association
with the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society. All of this was woven into his musical programmes.
Yehudi Menuhin
once said, 'if wind
and water could
write music, it would
sound like Ben’s'

4. 1951 Aldeburgh festival cover featuring an avocet. Photograph: Britten Pears Arts
The concept of an “environmentalist” did not exist in the 1950s when Britten began
programming environmental films and lectures. It is clear that in his dedication to the
preservation of his natural surroundings in Suffolk he was ahead of his time.
My album frames Britten’s folksong arrangements with poetry by WB Yeats read by Simon
Russell Beale and nature soundscapes by composer Mychael Danna. We recorded it at the Britten
Studio in Snape Maltings and created the album’s visuals in and around Aldeburgh, too – it felt
important to do all of the work on site because the landscape has changed little since Britten
lived there. The sounds we hear there today are probably very similar to what Britten heard 70
years ago.

5. We've never had a better chance ...
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The folksongs Britten arranged come from an oral tradition that is linked to the land and the
men and women who tended it. They cover love, loss and faith, they celebrate resilience in the
midst of uncertainty and suffering. I paired some of the songs on the album with poems by WB
Yeats on a similar theme, as Britten did in his festivals of the 50s. Yeats’s language seemed to
resonate so naturally with the lyrics in the folksongs.
The final edit of Britten’s songs and Yeats’s poetry was complete when I came across an article
written by James Rebanks, a shepherd who lives and works in the Lake District. I wrote to ask
him if he might contribute to the project, too – his relationship with nature embodied the ideals
of the album. He recorded for us sounds from around his Cumbrian farm – the sheep, a running
brook, rain and rustling leaves – which were then incorporated into Mychael Danna’s
soundscape interludes.
The album has taken on a new resonance at a time when we have seen the global experience of
lockdown transform attitudes towards nature. This forced slowing down has opened our eyes to
the beauty and wonder which has always surrounded us. I am sure Britten would have been
pleased to learn that over the last few months there has been a rise in birdwatching. Many more
of us are realising there is a larger rhythm that continues independent of our existence, which
we must nourish and safeguard. And yet the climate crisis grows worse by the hour, and
terrifyingly little has been done about it. This moment in history is an opportunity to think
about how we treat the Earth, our only home. It is exactly what Britten asked us to do as early as
1950. It’s not too late to listen.
• The Wild Song is available at www.thewildsong.com

6. comments 22
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Topics
Benjamin Britten
Classical music/Opera/British identity and society/Birds/Folk music/Poetry/features

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