The Holy Sonnets of John Donne

Song cycle by Benjamin Britten

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne is a song cycle composed in 1945 by Benjamin Britten for tenor or soprano voice and piano, and published as his Op. 35.^[1] It was written for himself and his life-partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and its first performance was by them at the Wigmore Hall, London on 22 November 1945. Britten began to compose the cycle shortly after visiting, seeing the horrors of, and performing at, the liberated Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.^[2]^[3]

The cycle was recorded for Decca by the original performers in November 1967 in The Maltings, Snape with John Mordler as producer and Kenneth Wilkinson as engineer.^[4]^[5]

The cycle consists of settings of nine of the nineteen Holy Sonnets of the English metaphysical poet John Donne (1572–1631). The following numberings are those of the Westmoreland manuscript of 1620, the most complete version of those sonnets.^[6]

IV: "Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned"
XIV: "Batter my heart, three person'd God"
III: "Oh might those sighes and teares return againe"
XIX: "Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one"
XIII: "What if this present were the world's last night?"
XVII: "Since she whom I lov'd hath pay'd her last debt"
VII: "At the round earth's imagined corners"
I: "Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?"
X: "Death be not proud"

The concluding song, "Death be not proud", is a passacaglia, one of Britten's favorite musical forms.

References

^ Evans, Peter (1979). The Music of Benjamin Britten. London, Melbourne and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons. pp. 349–354. ISBN 0-460-04350-1.
^ Carpenter, Humphrey (1992). Benjamin Britten: A Biography. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 227–228. ISBN 0-571-14324-5.
^ "The Holy Sonnets of John Donne". Britten-Pears Foundation. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
^ Liner notes to CD London 417428-2
^ A performance by Pears on You Tube
^ "The Holy Sonnets of John Donne". recmusic.org. Retrieved 20 April 2015.

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)