“Thus he is mine”: reconciling queerness and English musical tradition in Britten's Canticle I

This thesis demonstrates that Britten’s works were intended to arouse examination of the tension between queerness and tradition as a reflection on the cultural climate in postwar Britain. I address the enduring fixation with Britten’s “symptoms” as they permeate existing scholarship and affect contemporary readings of his life and creative output. The fixation manifests most often through readings of his work that essentialize his homosexuality, thereby reducing the depth of interpretations possible. This thesis examines Britten’s use of early English music to engage moral and ethical topics that were of concern to him, namely matters of innocence and social responsibility.

In his setting of Purcell’s “Lord, what is Man?” (Z. 192), Britten adapts Purcell’s form to implicate listeners in the contemplation of an ascent to divine ecstasy, a process classified by Glenn Bennett as a “cycle of experiences.” In his first Canticle, Britten revisits the conflicting traditionalist and non-conformist leanings that inspired his earlier reconstruction of the Purcell. In both instances, the contemplation inspired by Britten’s text (and text-painting) does not merely “out” the composer, but instead poses moral questions to the listener. Furthermore, the musical setting of the Canticle situates queerness within the landscape depicted in the text, thus affirming its presence without reducing the work to voyeuristic spectacle. These analyses in this thesis, which are reparative in nature, allow for Britten’s queerness to exist within our perception of his works without overshadowing the other, often more pressing, complexities there.