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Dartmouth’s Handel Society
will present major works by Benjamin Britten and Ludwig van Beethoven at its
spring concert in two performances in Spaulding Auditorium on Saturday, May 20
at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 21 at 2 p.m. The Society commemorates the 30th
anniversary of Britten’s death with the New Hampshire premiere of his
full-scale cantata The Company of Heaven, commissioned in 1937 by the
BBC in celebration of Michaelmas Day.
Photo courtesy of the Hopkins Center for the Performing Arts
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Britten was a transformative figure in 20th-century English music, known for
his striking orchestrations, lyrical text settings, and broad-ranging
compositional output. From symphonic pieces and operas to song cycles and works
for solo instruments, Britten is considered to be one of Britain’s greatest
composers. Born in 1913, he began composing at the age of five and graduated
from the Royal College of Music at the age of 16. The Company of
Heaven is one of Britten’s lesser-known pieces, possibly because, after
its performance for the BBC, it was put aside at the beginning of World War II
and only published 50 years later. Another possible explanation for its absence
from the performing repertoire, according to Steven Ledbetter, was that Britten
considered it “incidental music” and not as important as his song cycles,
orchestral works, and operas. Ledbetter, a former director of the Handel
Society, was a visiting professor of music at Dartmouth and program annotator
for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Beethoven’s Mass in C major, Opus 86, was commissioned in 1807 by
Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. The composer was already beginning to revolutionize
the music of his day. The Mass in C major belongs to his so-called
“middle period,” and consequently does not display some of the more remarkable
characteristics of his later, more demanding, works. Yet it was sufficiently
different from the settings of the mass by his contemporary composers and those
who preceded him to cause the Prince to ask, “My dear Beethoven, what have you
done this time?” Insulted by what he took to be criticism of the piece,
Beethoven left Germany and returned to Vienna, dedicating the published version
to Prince Ferdinand Kinsky instead of its patron, Esterházy.
By LAUREL STAVIS
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