Benjamin Britten – Canticle III: “Still falls the Rain”

In 1954, John Amis, a friend of Benjamin Britten’s at Boosey & Hawkes, asked him to compose a piece for performance on a memorial concert for Noel Mewton-Wood, the Australian pianist who had died recently at age thirty-one. Mewton-Wood was a relatively close associate of Britten’s; in addition to occasionally accompanying Peter Pears and performing at the Aldeburgh Festival, he had given the first performance of the revised version of Britten’s piano concerto in 1946. Mewton-Wood had come out very suddenly as a homosexual several years earlier, and soon thereafter “set up house”[1] with Bill Fedricks. When Fedricks died, Mewton-Wood killed himself in despair by drinking prussic acid. Britten had been greatly saddened by the news of Mewton-Wood’s death. In her diary entry for 7 December 1953, Imogen Holst wrote of his reaction: “He was looking grey and worried, and talked of the terrifyingly small gap between madness and non-madness, and said why was it that the people one really liked found life so difficult.”[2]

Throughout the earlier part of Britten’s career, his work as a songwriter had been focused on the composition of tightly unified cycles. These cycles generally set either an anthology of poems by various poets focusing on a single theme, such as Our Hunting Fathers and the Serenade, or a collection of verses by a single poet, generally also on a single theme or mood, such as On This Island, the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Within these cycles, though, there are few individual songs which retain their effectiveness divorced from their context within the larger work. In the late 1940s, however, Britten began occasionally to set poems that, “because of their length and the scope and spaciously developing presentation of their subject, demanded to be treated as entities: now the cycle of experience is within, not across, a span.”[3] He called these settings “canticles,” a description meant to acknowledge not just the religious nature of the texts (many of his other songs had been religious in nature), but also a “mood of spiritual elevation intense enough to demand realization in an ambitious musical structure.”[4]

When faced with the prospect of selecting a text for the Mewton-Wood commission, Britten, in an uncharacteristic move, chose one by a living poet—“Still falls the Rain,” from the British poet Edith Sitwell’s The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems (see Appendix A for the text). The poem, given the subheading “The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn,” was written in response to the Second World War, but Britten “explained to Edith Sitwell that in her poem’s ‘courage & light seen through horror & darkness’ he found ‘something very right for the poor boy.’ ”[5] It is quite likely that Britten had been introduced to the poem as early as 1941, when it was published in the Times Literary Supplement,[6] but Britten later explained that “he had been ‘deeply moved’ by the… poem, ‘& felt at last that one could get away from the immediate impacts of the war & write about it.’ ”[7] Canticle III: “Still falls the Rain” was composed in November 1954 and premiered 28 January 1955 at the Mewton-Wood memorial concert in London’s Wigmore Hall, performed by Peter Pears, Dennis Brain, and Benjamin Britten.

Edith Sitwell’s poem is structured as seven free-verse stanzas, the first six of which begin with the line “Still falls the Rain.” The poem draws on the Passion scene for its imagery, with each verse more intensely portraying the agony of the crucifixion, which Sitwell uses as a parallel for the German bombing of London. The final stanza, a mere three lines long, gently transforms this overwhelming hopeless despair into a quiet hopeful optimism—“courage & light seen through horror & darkness.” Despite its use of free verse, the tone and use of imagery in the poem recall the poetry of Jonson, Donne, Marlowe, and other English poets of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The poem climaxes, in fact, with a quote from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. This was a language with which Britten was intimately familiar; he had previously set John Donne (The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, op. 35 [1945]), Francis Quarles (Canticle I: “My beloved is mine,” op. 40 [1947]), and realized a number of Henry Purcell’s works, including at least five of the Divine Hymns from Harmonia Sacra, which provided a model for the canticles.[8]

In structuring the canticle, Britten took his cue from the text itself. In response to the six major free-verse stanzas, he devised a series of six rhythmically free recitatives (“verses”), each of which begins with the same setting of the “Still falls the Rain” phrase (Example 1).

Example 1. Verse refrain

Interspersed between these recitatives is a series of interludes, taking the form of a theme and variations (see Table 1). Each verse draws its accompanimental texture and motivic materials from the preceding interlude. Further clarifying the structure, Britten wrote the piece for tenor, horn, and piano. Throughout the canticle, the voice and horn are heard separately: the voice sings the recitatives, while the horn plays the interludes. This holds true until Variation VI, when, for the first time, the horn and voice are heard together, without piano, in a setting of the final stanza of the poem.

Table 1. Structure of Canticle III: “Still falls the Rain”

This structure is identical to that used in The Turn of the Screw, which Britten had completed earlier in 1954. This opera is structured as a series of sixteen scenes, with a theme and variations acting as interludes between scenes. Each interlude provides the musical material for the subsequent scene. Canticle III is an even further concentrated working-out of this formal design, with the verses acting as analogs to the scenes of the opera. Britten was fully aware of the close relationship between the opera and the canticle; a few months after the premiere, he told Sitwell that “The Turn of the Screw and Canticle III made him feel ‘on the threshold of a new musical world.’ ”[9]

The horn and piano begin the canticle with a statement of the theme. Melodically, the theme consists of three gestures. The first is a gesture rising up a whole tone scale a tritone from Bb to E before dropping back a perfect fourth to B, one half step higher than it began. The second gesture begins a major sixth higher than the first, on G, and states the initial gesture in inversion. The third gesture sequences on this motive, alternating between the prime form and its inversion, before cadencing once more on Bb. This cadence subverts the natural expectation we have of the motive (that is, a final drop of a perfect fourth to D#) by continuing one step further on the whole tone scale to A#, displaced by one octave and enharmonically spelled as Bb (see Example 2).

Example 2. Thematic construction

Many attempts have been made to ascribe some kind of serial procedure to this theme, generally beginning with the excited discovery that the theme makes use of all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale. However, no one has convincingly shown evidence of any such procedure; most theorists who attempt this approach either allude to serial processes in passing as though they were obvious, or attempt briefly to find evidence of serialism before tacitly conceding defeat and quietly moving on to other aspects of the piece.[10] The truly significant feature of the theme lies in its manipulation of the initial motive. The appearance of all twelve pitches in the theme is due, not to any awkward attempt at tone-row construction and serial processes, but to Britten’s use of two whole-tone fragments a semitone apart as germ material.

The most prominent chord type throughout the theme is that of a perfect fourth stacked atop a major second (for example, Gb-Ab-Db in measure one). This unifies the harmony with the whole tones and perfect fourths of the melody. Harmonically, the theme consists of a series of diatonic collections which use the whole-tone fragments as common tone pivot gestures on which to modulate. The first three measures, for example, make use of the five flat diatonic collection,[11] with a chromatically inflected G in measure three. In measure four, the piano drops down to an octave E, anticipating the high point of the horn as it ascends the scale fragment. Measures five through seven then make use of the one sharp collection. The horn melody is used once again to modulate to the four sharp collection (Gb is redefined as F#) in measure nine, and then to the one flat collection in measure eleven. At this point, the melody begins its sequence to the final cadence. As previously mentioned, this cadence is achieved melodically by extending the whole-tone motive in measure thirteen one note further to return to the initial Bb. This subtle shift from “development into denouement”[12] is reinforced in the harmony by the use of an F dominant ninth chord at this point, providing a strong dominant preparation for the horn’s arrival on the tonic (Bb). Britten avoids stumbling into banality by allowing the shift to the tonic to be implied, more than explicitly stated; the arrival on Bb is stated by horn alone, rather than being reinforced by any kind of Bb chord or chord tones in the piano.

Following the horn’s cadence on Bb is a coda in which the piano plays a rising chord progression recalling the opening three measures of the theme (see Example 3). This cadence is the device Britten uses to transition from the harmonic ambiguities of the interludes to the Bb clarity which characterizes the harmonic material of the verses.

Example 3. Harmonic material of the coda

On a very basic level, the variations function by expanding and contracting by a certain amount the intervals of the whole tone fragment stated in the theme (see Table 2). Thus, in each variation, it is the contour of the melody which remains constant. As is typical of most of Britten’s music, rhythm as a musical element is important only insofar as it helps to generate the character of each section. There is no evidence of any kind of systematic rhythmic transformation within the variations, and, in fact, a glance at the theme suggests that he intentionally avoided infusing it with any distinctive rhythmic profile so as to allow for greater flexibility in later variations.

Table 2. Variation characteristics

The verse following each variation draws the musical material in its accompaniment from the preceding interlude. The musical material and mood of each variation are often established as a foreshadowing of the text which is about to be sung. Thus, the variations, far from being merely independent interludes between stanzas, are inextricably bound up with the text itself, often functioning as a kind of preemptive word painting (see Table 3). For example, Variation I features an accompaniment figure of pulsing staccato eighth notes in 6/8 (which had, in turn, been foreshadowed slightly in Verse I in the setting of the words “the nineteen hundred and forty nails”— see Example 4 below). This texture appears in the piano part in Verse II as musical illustration of the “pulse of the heart that is changed to the / hammer-beat…”; three times during the verse (after “pulse of the heart,” “hammer-beat,” and “sound of the impious feet”) the piano states a string of six staccato eighth notes marked as “in prior tempo.”

Table 3. Influence of the text on the music

The principal tension in Canticle III derives from the contrast between the interludes and the verses. This is not achieved through obvious shifts in texture or character, but through the contrast between the harmonic ambiguities of the interludes and the insistent Bb tonal clarity of the verses.[14] The theme itself is tonally ambiguous. Any tonality it has is only established with the final cadence on Bb, and even that is seen only in retrospect after hearing the verse. The first verse, on the other hand, is anchored solidly on Bb. Thus Britten begins the piece by establishing a conflict between tonality and atonality. As the piece progresses, he begins a process of reconciliation between these extremes— the verses slowly loosen their grip on Bb, while the variations begin to grow more tonal (though not without a brief relapse in Variation IV), eventually meeting in the text of the final stanza and achieving unity in Variation VI.

In the beginning of the piece, the theme is tonally ambiguous, as has been mentioned. Tonality is established in the final measure through the cadence described above and illustrated in Examples 2 and 3, establishing the tonality of the first verse. The only accompaniment in this verse is an open-fifth chord on Bb which punctuates the vocal line. Only once does it move— up a semitone to an open-fifth chord on B at “the nineteen hundred and forty nails” (see Example 4), emphasizing the motive being introduced in the voice at this point, which will come into play in the next variation. The vocal line itself focuses strongly on Eb, but this comes across as a kind of suspension attempting, but failing, to resolve itself.

Example 4. Verse I (excerpt)

The first variation takes up the pulsing motive the voice introduced in Verse I as a pulsing eighth note rhythmic accompaniment in 6/8. The horn states the theme over this figure, its tones expanded now to thirds. The harmonic material of the accompaniment is altered to accommodate the varied melody, but the basic harmonic structure remains the same. For example, the first three measures exhibit a shift in the bass line from Gb to B. This parallels the shift between the opening low Gb of the theme and the horn’s B in the fifth measure, following the first statement of the germ motive (Example 5):

Example 5. Comparison between first gestures of Theme and Variation I

Variation I goes on to move up to an open-fifth chord on F# with a B in the bass at the end of the horn’s second statement (measure six of the variation). A glance at the theme will show a similar harmonic sonority in measure nine, the parallel spot at the end of the horn’s second gesture. As mentioned above, Verse II takes on the pulsing eighth notes of Variation I as an accompaniment figure. The semitone rise seen in Verse I is repeated here, but this time, it goes one semitone further, to C, before returning to Bb at the beginning of Variation II (Example 6).

Example 6. End of Verse II

At this point, we encounter a subtle example of Britten’s attention to detail in deriving the canticle’s form from the structure of the poem. The transition between the second stanza and the third stanza is the only case (with the obvious exception of the last stanza) in the poem in which a stanza does not visually begin with “Still falls the Rain.” Rather, Sitwell chooses to elide the end of the previous stanza onto the beginning of the next stanza. Reflecting this subtle shift in structure, this is the only point in the canticle in which a verse spills over into a variation. By overlapping the vocal line “On the Tomb” with the beginning of the horn line in Variation II, an elision is created between the end of Verse II and the beginning of Variation II and, thus, the beginning of Verse III.

Variation II converts the whole tones of the theme into semitones, retaining, as always, the basic contour of the theme. Harmonically, the variation still begins with the Gb-Bb dyad and moves to an F# sonority (measure six of the variation) before sliding back into the cadential figure. Verse III picks up on the chromatic lines of the variation, using them to illustrate the words “blood,” “breed,” “nurtures,” and “worm.” The accompaniment takes on the sixteenth note tremolo qualities of the preceding variation. Harmonically, the verse begins to stray even farther, reaching Db before settling back down into Bb.

Variation III is a “lively” (Britten’s tempo marking) three part invention between the horn and the piano, in which the whole-tones of the melody have been expanded into fourths. The contrapuntal nature of this variation tends to blur perception of harmonic material, but the opening Gb-Bb dyad is still clearly audible, as is the return to this sonority and resulting cadential figure (measure twelve of the variation). Verse IV retains the staccato eighth note fourths as punctuation to the vocal line. Here, for the first time, the verse breaks free entirely of its Bb anchor, leaping to an E minor chorale texture for the lines “Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us…” This is the only point in the canticle in which Britten allows himself to make use of any kind of archaism, despite the very real temptation to do so with such a suggestive text. These lines are set in a manner which brings to mind hymns or Renaissance English carols, with a kind of Lombard rhythm in 6/8 over an accompaniment of open-fifth chords moving in parallel motion. The word “mercy” is set as the longest melisma in the piece, beginning on the highest sung note in the piece. These elements work together to add strong emphasis to the poet’s prayerful petition. Eventually, however, even the E minor chorale brings us back to the familiar Bb open-fifth sonority.

Thus far, the variations have been exhibiting a subtle shift towards more tonal material. Variation IV breaks away from this trend, falling abruptly into dissonant atonality. The melody is reduced to a mere six pitches, approximating the contours of the opening notes of each of the principal gestures of the theme; the whole-tones of the theme have been, in effect, reduced to unisons. The harmony is highly dissonant, with chords featuring a high number of seconds. For the only time in the canticle, the Gb-Bb dyad is not present in the variation as a structural point, and the return to the cadential figure in the seventh measure is audible due only to gesture; the pitches only gradually become apparent. The subsequent verse breaks free of its Bb tonal anchor almost immediately, taking on the “agitated” rapidly repeated notes of the variation. This stanza contains some of the most disturbing imagery in the poem— lines such as “That last faint spark / In the self-murdered heart” seem particularly poignant considering the occasion of the canticle’s composition. By this point in the canticle, the distinction between verse material and variation material has grown slim; it is only on the last note of the verse that the accompaniment finally returns to its pure Bb open-fifth sonority.

Variation V, taking its cue from “the hunted hare” in the last line of the previous verse, features a hunting horn march in which the whole-tones of the theme have been expanded to fifths. This variation comes back in line with the trend towards tonality which had earlier been established, and the familiar harmonic structure points— the Gb-Bb dyad, the F# sonority, the cadential coda figure— have returned. In addition, the expansion of the theme to fifths results in a circle of fifths motion which begins more heavily to imply tonality. Bars ten through thirteen function as the final climactic gesture before the overall climax of the piece in the following verse, climbing to the highest note the horn plays in the canticle before dropping down a beat later to the lowest note— and loudest dynamic— the horn plays. Verse VI begins firmly anchored on Bb once again, although the Gb-Bb sonority of the variation has crept into the bass here. The dramatic gesture ending the prior variation is carried over into the climactic Marlowe quote (“O Ile leape up to my God…”), which is set off from the rest of the text by being declaimed fortissimo in the dotted rhythms of Variation V. After this climax, the Bb quietly returns. The slow chromatic rising from Bb seen in the other verses reaches its highest point here, rising to Eb, and thus coming into harmonic agreement with the persistent Gb-Bb figure in the bass. By this point, verse and variation have become inseparable; the verse has assumed the harmonic materials of the beginning of the variations.

In Variation VI, the shift to tonality in the theme is complete, and, for the first time, horn and voice are heard together, without piano, the horn playing a version of the theme fit into a Bb major tonality, while the voice sings the same line inverted across G (see Example 7). It is here in the poem that Sitwell transforms the despair of the previous stanzas into an optimistic hope, and it is here that Britten reconciles the conflicting harmonic systems he set in motion at the beginning of the piece; the whole-tone harmonic vagaries of the theme have now become simple diatonicism, and the three gestures of the theme now clearly correspond to the three final lines of the poem; Britten has brought “courage & light” from “horror & darkness.” The horn and voice cadence in unison on Bb, singing together as the voice of God reaffirming His love, while the piano quietly restates the cadential figure from the theme’s coda, slightly extended and in octaves.

Example 7. Thematic transformation in Variation VI

Canticle III: “Still falls the Rain” is an example of a piece in which the composer has worked to insure that every element is unified and integrated into the piece as a whole. Each element is wholly dependent on every other element in the piece; musical material and structure are derived from the text, and the text, in turn is foreshadowed and anticipated by this material. The tension and drama in the canticle derive from the process of integrating the seemingly disparate materials of the two alternating sections— verse and variation— into a unified sound. The genius of the piece lies in the fact that “the music under such ponderous discussion is in fact of a lucidity bordering on the transparent;” the canticle stands as a prime example of the “adaptation of abstract compositional procedures to specifically expressive ends.”[15]

Appendix A: The Text

Still Falls the Rain

(The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn)

Still falls the Rain—

Dark as the world of man, black as our loss—

Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails

Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain

With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the

hammer-beat

In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:

Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and

the human brain

Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain

At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.

Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy

on us—

On Dives and on Lazarus:

Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain—

Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:

He bears in His Heart all wounds— those of the light

that died,

The last faint spark

In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad un-

comprehending dark.

The wounds of the baited bear—

The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat

On his helpless flesh…the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain—

Then— O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me

doune— ? —

See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:

It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart

That holds the fires of the world— dark-smirched with

pain

As Caesar’s laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man

Was once a child who among beasts has lain—

“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood,

for thee.”

Bibliography

Britten, Benjamin. Canticle III: “Still falls the rain,” op. 55. London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1956.

Brown, David. “Britten’s Three Canticles.” The Music Review 21 (1960): 55-65. One of the earliest articles written on these pieces. Brown uses the first three canticles (Canticles IV and V weren’t composed until 1971 and 1974, respectively) to chart Britten’s development as a composer during the period. He provides a good overview of the form and structure of the canticle, but falls into the trap of attempting to trace serial processes in the piece.

Carter, Humphrey. Benjamin Britten: A Biography. London: Faber and Faber, 1992. Pages 365-366 discuss the historical background of the canticle relatively thoroughly.

Day, Timothy. Liner notes for Benjamin Britten: The Canticles. London 425 716-2. Brief historical background of the piece.

Evans, Peter. The Music of Benjamin Britten. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pages 407-410 provide an overview and brief analysis of the canticle, focusing mainly on variation technique.

Goleeke, Thomas. “The Canticles of Benjamin Britten: A Consideration of Texts.” The NATS Journal 49, no. 4 (March/April 1993): 4-8. Provides a relatively thorough background and analysis of Sitwell’s poem.

Gordon, Samuel S. “Benjamin Britten’s Canticles I, II, and III: A Structural and Stylistic Analysis.” DMA diss., Indiana University, 1974. Gordon discusses the canticle in some detail, focusing primarily on the text and its relation to the music. His comments tend to be aimed more toward aiding performers with interpretational issues than theoretical concerns.

Whittall, Arnold. The Music of Britten and Tippett: Studies in themes and techniques. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Pages 162-164 provide a very brief discussion of the canticle in the context of Britten’s output during the period.