Britten's Fourth Creative Decade

Though it is with the best of intentions that we mark off each decade of an artist's life as the signal for a special renewal of interest in his work, we ought not to expect him to relish so artificial a process, still less to reflect it in the chief phases of his creative activity. Yet, assuming that this has not become merely repetitive, a decade can serve well enough in the measurement of stylistic developments. And in Britten's case we can, without stretching points too implausibly, find a fairly workable correspondence to divisions that emerge from an examination of his aims and methods. Obviously, the very eventful decade from his op. 1 (of 1932) onwards needs to be much subdivided in any intelligible account; but from, say, the Serenade of 1943 (his 30th year), we can pick on certain of his works at roughly ten-year intervals which, notable achievements in themselves, also provide revealing clues to the series that were to follow: The Turn of the Screw in 1954 and Curlew Riverin 1964 can be assigned such key positions. It may be that we shall come to see Death in Venice of 1972/3 as another, but I propose to regard it as the culminating work of the decade initiated by the first of the church parables.