Songs from the Chinese

Song cycle by Benjamin Britten

Songs from the Chinese is a song cycle for soprano or tenor and guitar composed in 1957 by Benjamin Britten (1913–76), and published as his Op. 58. It consists of settings of six poems translated from the original Chinese by Arthur Waley (1889–1966). It was written for, and first performed by, the tenor Peter Pears and the guitarist Julian Bream.^[1]^[2]^[3]

A performance typically takes about 10 minutes. The songs are:^[4]

"The Big Chariot"
"The Old Lute"
"The Autumn Wind"
"The Herd-boy"
"Depression"
"Dance Song"

In 1959, the critic Jeremy Noble wrote "as a whole, they make a statement about life (and particularly the transience of youth and beauty) as poignant and personal as Mahler's own settings from the Chinese".^[5] (The Mahler settings are those in Das Lied von der Erde.)

References

^ Carpenter, Humphrey (1992). Benjamin Britten: A Biography. London: Faber and Faber. p. 380. ISBN 0-571-14324-5.
^ Evans, Peter (1979). The Music of Benjamin Britten. London, Melbourne and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons. pp. 362–365. ISBN 0-460-04350-1.
^ "Songs from the Chinese". Britten-Pears Foundation. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
^ "Songs from the Chinese : Song Cycle by (Edward) Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)". The LiederNet Archive. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
^ Noble, Jeremy (1959). "Britten's Songs from the Chinese". Tempo (52): 25.

Benjamin Britten

List of compositions

Opera and operetta

Paul Bunyan (1941)
Peter Grimes (1945)
The Rape of Lucretia (1946)
Albert Herring (1947)
The Little Sweep (1949)
Billy Budd (1951)
Gloriana (1953)
The Turn of the Screw (1954)
Noye's Fludde (1958)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960)
Owen Wingrave (1971)
Death in Venice (1973)

Church parables

Curlew River (1964)
The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966)
The Prodigal Son (1968)

Film/Ballet

Orchestral

Sinfonietta (1932)
Simple Symphony (1934)
Soirées musicales (1937)
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937)
Mont Juic (1937)
Sinfonia da Requiem (1940)
Matinées musicales (1941)
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946)

Concertante

Piano Concerto (1938, rev. 1945)
Violin Concerto (1939, rev. 1958)
Young Apollo (1939)
Diversions for Piano Left Hand and Orchestra (1940 rev. 1954)
Cello Symphony (1963)

Vocal/Choral Orchestral

Our Hunting Fathers (1936)
The Company of Heaven (1937)
Les Illuminations (1939)
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943)
Saint Nicolas (1948)
Spring Symphony (1949)
Nocturne (1958)
Cantata academica (1959)
War Requiem (1961)
Cantata misericordium (1963)
Children's Crusade (1969)
Phaedra (1975)

Vocal

Beware! Three Early Songs (1922–26)
Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940)
The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945)
Britten's Purcell realizations (1945)+
5 Canticles (1947–75, including Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952), Canticle III: Still falls the rain (1954) and Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi (1971)
A Charm of Lullabies (1947)
Winter Words (1954)
Songs from the Chinese (1957)
Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente (1958)
Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (1965)
The Poet's Echo (1965)
Who Are These Children? (1969)
A Birthday Hansel (1975)