MUSIC CHRONICLE
Rhythm and harmony are kept at a simple level. "Modernism"
creeps in shyly through dissonances in the dramatic climaxes and the
occasional use of polytonality. The classic differences between major
and minor keys are blurred somewhat but the basic tonal relationships
as we know them from Romanticism are never entirely dispensed with.
This preservation of traditional tonality is imperative to Britten's treat–
ment, since it is the only possible basis for a clear, homophonic melody,
which, in turn, is the only way to project a story clearly and sharply.
For all his occasional modernisms Britten is an heir of Puccini.
Sometimes he imitates Puccini's techniques directly, as in the opening,
which is almost a replica of the opening of
Turandot,
and in a dramatic
duet which is sung independently while a song from the Common
Prayer Book resounds from a nearby church. This device patently smacks
of the first-act finale of
Tosca,
in which the drama unfolds to the
sounds of the
T e Deum.
Moreover, Britten even shapes his melodies
according to the dramatic lyricism of the Italian master. His only de–
parture from
verismo,
from Puccini's realism, is to include, perhaps for
the sake of greater structural coqerence, absolute forms of music in the
orchestral interludes.
In the final analysis
Peter Grimes
places itself in the stock tradi–
tion of grand opera, a form of art that, at every important juncture of
its evolution, acted first and foremost as the vessel of ideas of the
social stratum that supported it. The grand opera had always emphasized
its dramatic over its musical content. When in the sixteenth century Peri
and Caccini devised the first of all operas for the Camerata, a group of
rich Florentine traders, they hit upon a melodic line that would reflect
every nuance of speech inflection. Soon afterwards Monteverde created
homophony practically singlehanded in an effort to project his operatic
plots with even greater vividness. And Gluck, although inclined towards
abstraction, insisted also on subordination of music to poetry in opera.
Beginning with Wagner, however-that is, by the time the mid–
dle class had achieved all its political and economic goals-the social
ideas that had given the form its content began to lose their dynamism.
The attention of opera, hitherto something of a rebel among the arts,
was henceforth deflected to the great middle-class problem of discom–
fort in civilization, and faces us suddenly with a realism that invokes
sympathy for heroes whose suffering stems from their unconventional,
antimoral attitudes. Boris Godunov is a usurper, La Traviata a harlot,
Tosca a woman who betrays her lover, Wozzeck a murderer. In siding
with the socially culpable, opera becomes a symbol for the estrangement
of man from the morality which the middle class has made.
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