Winter Words (song cycle)
Winter Words, Op. 52, is a song cycle for tenor and piano by Benjamin Britten. Written in 1953, it sets eight poems by Thomas Hardy.[1] The cycle is named after Hardy's last published collection, but the poems are from different parts of his collected poems.[2]
The cycle was premiered at the Leeds Festival in October 1953, with Peter Pears singing and Britten at the piano. It was dedicated to John and Myfanwy Piper -- Myfanwy Piper was the librettist of Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw, which was begun in 1953 and premiered the following year.[3]
A performance takes about 22 minutes.[3] The poems are:[4]
- "At Day-Close in November"
- "Midnight on the Great Western" (or, "The Journeying Boy")
- "Wagtail and Baby (A Satire)"
- "The Little Old Table"
- "The Choirmaster's Burial" (or, "The Tenor Man's Story")
- "Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches and Nightingales)"
- "At the Railway Station, Upway" (or, "The Convict and Boy with the Violin")
- "Before Life and After"
References[edit]
- ^ "Winter Words". Britten-Pears Foundation. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ^ Johnson, Graham (2003). Britten, Voice and Piano - Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten. Ashgate Publishing Limited. pp. 224–227. ISBN 9780754638728.
- ^ a b Benjamin Britten: Winter Words, song cycle for tenor & piano, Op. 52 at AllMusic. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ^ "Winter words: Song Cycle by (Edward) Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)". The LiederNet Archive. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
