Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
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The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings is a song cycle written in 1943 by the English composer Benjamin Britten, scored for tenor accompanied by a solo horn and a small string orchestra. Composed during World War II at the request of the horn player Dennis Brain, it is a setting of a selection of six poems by British poets on the subject of death.
The prologue and epilogue which frame the songs are both performed by the horn alone, and in these movements Britten instructs the player to use only the horn's natural harmonics; this lends these short movements a distinctive character as some harmonics sound sharp or flat to an audience accustomed to the western chromatic scale. The epilogue is to sound from afar, and to this end the final song does not include a part for the horn in order to allow the player to move off-stage.
The piece has become a central part of the repertoire of tenors and horn players. Britten's lifelong companion Peter Pears was the tenor in the first performances, and they recorded it together more than once.
Movements
- "Prologue" (horn solo)
- "Pastoral", a setting of "The Evening Quatrains" by Charles Cotton (1630–1687)
- "Nocturne", "Blow, bugle, blow" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
- "Elegy", "The Sick Rose" by William Blake (1757–1827)
- "Dirge", the anonymous 15th-century "Lyke-Wake Dirge".
- "Hymn", "Ode To Cynthia" by Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
- "Sonnet", "To Sleep" by John Keats (1795–1821)
- "Epilogue" (horn solo; reprise of Prologue, played offstage)
External links
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