{"id":3979,"date":"2011-07-08T11:42:41","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T11:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=3979"},"modified":"2025-10-29T19:08:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T02:08:28","slug":"serious-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/serious-listening\/","title":{"rendered":"Serious Listening"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Benjamin Britten<\/p><\/div>\n

by Rebecca Durham<\/address>\n

If you want to hear music by Benjamin Britten that is almost never performed and music that offers sounds you have rarely heard, then you will want to attend Intermezzo\u2019s concert on Monday, July 11th<\/sup>.<\/h4>\n

The series\u2019 second program of the summer is all about the British \u2013 composers and poets that is. Ralph Vaughan Williams looked to A.E. Housman as inspiration for his song cycle \u201cOn Wenlock Edge,\u201d which will be performed by tenor Brian Stucki.\u00a0 Benjamin Britten set \u201cSongs and Proverbs of William Blake\u201d to be performed by baritone Michael Chipman and pianist Jason Hardink. To close the program Vaughan Williams gets the last \u201cword\u201d with a performance of his Piano Quintet in C Minor.<\/p>\n

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Brian Stucki, photo by Laura Durham<\/p><\/div>\n

To begin, Brian Stucki (read our artist profile here) will perform \u201cOn Wenlock Edge\u201d a group of poems from A.E. Housman\u2019s \u201cA Shropshire Lad\u201d set by the venerable Vaughan Williams. The composer had just returned from Paris where he had spent some time with Maurice Ravel. The Englishman said he had returned home \u201cwith an attack of French fever\u201d, but Ivor Gurney claimed the song cycle to be \u201cpurely English words retranslated and reinforced by almost purely English music \u2026 The French mannerisms must be forgotten in the strong Englishness of the prevailing mood – in the unmistakable spirit of the time of creation.\u00a0 England is the spring of emotion, the centre of power, and the pictures of her, the breath of her earth and growing things are continually felt through the lovely sound.\u201d\u00a0 As it happened, Ravel, played the piano in the first French performance of the work in February 1912 and reported to his friend, \u201cEveryone is agreed that your lyric poems were a revelation\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Baritone Michael Chipman<\/p><\/div>\n

Baritone Michael Chipman reminds listeners that Britten\u2019s song cycle \u201ccouldn’t be more different, stylistically\u2026Where Vaughan-Williams uses traditional folk tunes and tonal harmonies, Britten creates music out of whole cloth, borrowing nothing from traditional tunes, writing most of the music in whole tone scales, jagged rhythms and tight atonal harmonies\u201d. Chipman is approaching the Britten\/Blake song cycle for the first time. He points out that, \u201cBritten is always very sensitive to text, and these William Blake texts are dense, esoteric and somewhat arcane. My sense in learning this music is that Britten tried to capture all of those qualities with his music. The general tone of the poetry and music is dark, cynical and harsh, and Britten is almost completely relentless in refusing to give the listener a moment of tonal reprieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britten customarily wrote for tenor Peter Pears, but he composed these songs in 1965 for baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.\u00a0 Perhaps the colors and character of the texts called for a darker baritone quality and timbre. Pears did have some input, however, as he was the one who selected the texts and their sequence, taking care that the proverb set the tone for the poem that followed. Audiences anticipating their encounter with this song cycle might do well to heed the words of Britten, himself:<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t just day-dream when listening to it, but listen seriously to the music that you feel one day you may like. I am afraid many people like music only for the ideas it gives them…it is not the music they enjoy, but the associations stirred up by this music. The fullest benefit and enjoyment to be got from listening to music is a much deeper thing\u2013the appreciation and love of the tunes for themselves, the excitement of the rhythms for themselves, the fascination of the harmony and the overwhelming satisfaction which a well-constructed piece of music gives you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Intermezzo
\nJuly 11, 2011 7:30 PM
\nVieve Gore Concert Hall, Westminster College
\nTickets: $15 general and $12 seniors; students admitted free<\/address>\n
Brian Stucki\u2014tenor
\nMichael Chipman – baritone<\/address>\n
Stephanie Cathcart\u2014violin<\/address>\n
Tina Johnson\u2014violin<\/address>\n
Julie Edwards\u2014viola<\/address>\n
Kevin Shumway\u2014cello<\/address>\n
Jason Hardink – piano<\/address>\n
Jed Moss\u2014piano<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to hear music by Benjamin Britten that is almost never performed and music that offers sounds you have rarely heard, then you will want to attend Intermezzo\u2019s concert on Monday, July 11th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[306,305,307],"class_list":["post-3979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-brian-stucki","tag-intermezzo","tag-michael-chipman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/BenjaminBritten.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 20:51:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3979"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97505,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3979\/revisions\/97505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}