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‘We seek the sea’
By the age of twelve, then, Britten had set out his credentials as a composer of the sea in all its aspects. He had also undergone one of the key formative experiences of his creative life, through hearing a performance of Frank Bridge’s orchestral suite The Sea at the Norwich and Norfolk Triennial Festival in 1924 by which he was, according to his own recollection, ‘knocked sideways’. Given his limited musical experience at this time, it is not surprising that Bridge’s music should have had this effect; of equal importance, however, was that this was sea music par excellence and would have appealed to the young Britten as much for its subject as for its expressive power. For in this music Britten could identify his roots: the coastal landscapes and the sea that would become for him a creative necessity and would eventually see him settle in Suffolk for most of his mature composing life. Paradoxically, however, Bridge’s music, and the lessons with the composer that followed, initially acted in the opposite direction, pulling Britten away from his roots to embrace a cosmopolitan, European outlook. Through the course of his lessons with Bridge, Britten was introduced to a range of modern music emanating from the continent, and became keen to identify himself as an English composer with a line that could be traced back through the music of Bridge and also Elgar, which shared a ‘direct admission of continental contemporary influence’, while remaining ‘characteristically English’, rather than through what he regarded as the more parochial ‘folksong group’. The shift in Britten’s stylistic development effected under Bridge’s supervision was soon matched by a move away from Suffolk to London, initially to study at the Royal College of Music. By 1935 Britten was working as a composer for the GPO Film Unit, and becoming acquainted with a number of literary figures who were to have a profound and enduring influence on his life and work. Chief among these was W.H. Auden, also then working for the GPO. Their collaboration on Paul Rotha’s documentary The Way to the Sea provided Britten with a new opportunity to link his music with the sea and the navy. For although the documentary deals primarily with the construction of a railway line, the focus, as the title makes clear, is on the line’s destination—to the sea, to ships and thence, in the context of the country’s rearmament through the 1930s, potentially to war.
The music in this section depicts the final moments before the sea is reached, vividly matching Auden’s text and culminating in a resounding ff statement of the main theme:
50, 60, 70 m.p.h. [miles per hour]
To the last straight run to the rolling plain of ships and the path of the gull / We seek the sea
Holograph, pencil and red pencil on paper |
