Berkeley, Britten and Auden

Lennox Berkeley had the distinction of being the very first composer to set the poetry of W. H. Auden. Berkeley may have found the younger man intimidating, but he was clearly impressed with his work. Two of his Auden songs were premiered at the Oxford University Musical Club and Union in 1927 – in a rather hesitant performance by the future Poet Laureate, Cecil Day Lewis. The concert was not a triumph; Day Lewis suffered an attack of nerves in the second song, which was received ‘with a sustained outbreak of silence’. But Auden must have approved of what he heard as he presented Lennox with a copy of Oxford Poetry 1926, which he himself had co-edited.

The relationship between Berkeley, Auden and Benjamin Britten, a composer more immediately associated with the poet, was explored in this year’s Berkeley Day at the Royal Academy of Music. A pre-concert panel of experts featured the distinguished accompanist and prolific writer on song, Graham Johnson, and Peter Parker, biographer of Auden’s great friend Christopher Isherwood.

Johnson reflected on Auden’s relaxed attitude to composers; he was not someone who insisted on rigorous adherence to text and structure. “Treat the words simply as raw material and change or cut anything as you feel inclined,” Auden once told Berkeley. Peter Parker spoke about the complicated emotional interplay between the three men, about Britten and Auden’s pacifism, and Lennox’s growing dissent from their standpoint.

Berkeley and Auden were not lifelong intimates, but stayed in touch across the decades, and in 1958 Berkeley composed his Five Poems by W. H. Auden, which was sung by tenor Rupert Charlesworth at the recital that followed the discussion. Charlesworth also performed both composers’ settings of Night Covers Up the Rigid Land. Britten was the first to set this poem; it is dedicated to him and may be about Auden’s relationship with him. A month or two later Berkeley produced his own setting. Perhaps, pointed out Chairman Petroc Trelawny, mediator of the discussion, Berkeley was sensitive to suggestions of ‘muscling in’ on another relationship, as the song wasn’t first heard in public until 1977, after Britten’s death. Graham Johnson countered that the setting could be interpreted as an acknowledgment that Britten was unattainable: ‘You love your life and I love you/So I must lie alone’.

Accompanied by pianist William Vann, soprano Ruth Jenkins performed Britten’s Song Cycle On this Island, and mezzo-soprano Katie Bray brought the recital to a joyous conclusion with a sparkling account of the Britten Cabaret Songs.

Coordinated by the Society’s Vice-Chairman Eithne Herbage, with essential support from the Academy’s Director of Artistic Planning, Nicola Mutton, and Vice Principal, Mark Racz, the Berkeley Days are made possible by a generous donation from Mr Noriyuki Ida, in memory of his daughter Kumiko, former R.A.M. student and LBS Committee Member.