Introduction

Abstract In August 2001, as this book was nearing completion, the novelist, newspaper columnist, and opera librettist Philip Hensher dared to suggest in the Independent that Britten’s music really isn’t much chop. August is a lazy news month in England and, on cue, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme picked up the gauntlet. Hensher was invited onto the programme to explicate his thesis; Colin Matthews, composer and chairman of the Britten Estate Limited, was pitted against him. The saintly Sue MacGregor participated in an illuminating exchange:HENSHER: The thing to remember about the War Requiem is that it was an official commission for the opening of Coventry Cathedral. It’s full of very highly sound, almost politically correct one might say, views on war, on the importance of reconciliation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The trouble is that no one ever listens to the music.MACGREGOR: Don’t they?HENSHER: I mean that metaphorically. I mean Stravinsky said that he couldn’t hear the music for all the Battle-of-Britten sentiment. What people are really listening to is the sentiment and not actually the quality of the music, I think, which is actually not that high.MACGREGOR: And you think Benjamin Britten’s reputation really doesn’t extend very greatly beyond our shores?