Britten – Lament – saxo or cello & guitar
duration: around 4′
Description
cello & guitar version
saxo & guitar version
Mont Juic, Op12 suite of Catalan dances for orchestra III Lament Andante moderato In memory of Peter Burra (who was killed in an aircraft crash in April 1937)
By the time the work was written, the Spanish Civil War had broken out, and the third movement Lament (in C minor) was written as a tribute to the region of Catalonia. It includes a solo alto saxophone and is based on the Sardana. It is subtitled « Barcelona, July 1936 », a clear reference to the Civil War that had broken out on 18 July.
Berkeley and Britten both attended the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in Barcelona, Spain in 1936. Berkeley had been living abroad for some years and had never previously met Britten. They soon became close friends. Another friend of Berkeley’s, Peter Burra, was also present, and he also became a friend of Britten’s.
At the Festival, Britten accompanied the violinist Antonio Brosa in the first performance of his Suite for violin and piano, Op. 6. The highlight of the Festival, which Britten, Berkeley and Burra all attended, was the posthumous world premiere of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, « To the memory of an angel », which was performed on Sunday 19 April, with the soloist Louis Krasner, under the conductor Hermann Scherchen.
The next day, the trio visited Montjuïc, the hill that dominates the Barcelona landscape. On the Wednesday, 22 April, they attended a Festival of Folk Dance on the Exposition Grounds on Montjuïc, where they heard various Catalan folk tunes. Later that day Berkeley and Britten jotted down some of the melodies in a Barcelona café.
The following year, back in England, they decided to jointly write an orchestral suite based on some of the dance melodies they had heard on Montjuïc.
