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]

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

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

References

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