Britten’s style

Canon Melodies to be sung or played as a round often appear in Britten’s music. ‘Old Abram Brown’ in Friday Afternoons (1935) is a fine example. He could use canon to create a sense of space, as in ‘Now the Great Bear’ in Peter Grimes, or to hectic effect as in ‘This Little Babe’ in A Ceremony of Carols (1942).

Heterophony Closely related to canon (‘This Little Babe’ comes close), heterophony, in which a melody is heard simultaneously against variants of itself, appears in ‘Rats Away!’ in Our Hunting Fathers (1936), composed years before he encountered Balinese music. Economy His propensity to spin music from a pithy short phrase is also characteristic of Balinese music, which typically uses a simple melodic idea – known as a pokok (‘stem’) – both as the basis and originating germ of a piece of music. Rhythmic freedom In Albert Herring (1947, pictured above), Britten created chattering ‘ensemble recitatives’, each character singing a distinct musical phrase but so contrived that they did not have to be rhythmically aligned. This anticipated Curlew River’s loose coordination of instrumental and vocal parts.