Simple Symphony, Op. 4

Program notes

About the Work

Britten was twenty and in his last year at the Royal College of Music when he went back to the music he had written as a boy. Between December 1933 and February 1934 he made a short symphony for strings out of it, and his note in the score says exactly where the material came from: the work is “entirely based on material from works which the composer wrote between the ages of 9 and 12”. He added that although the development of the themes was often new, “there are large stretches of the work which are taken bodily from the early pieces”.

There was plenty to choose from. Britten had composed constantly as a child, and by his early teens he had a drawer full of piano pieces, suites, sonatas and songs. For the Simple Symphony he took eight tunes written between 1923 and 1926, two for each of the four movements, and gave them the craft of a young professional. It is an affectionate piece, not a joke at his younger self’s expense: he plainly still liked the tunes.

He conducted the first performance himself, in Norwich on 6 March 1934, with a local string orchestra made up largely of amateurs. The score can be played by a full string orchestra or by a string quartet, and it was meant to be within reach of young and amateur players. In this programme it serves as a bright curtain-raiser for the strings alone.

The dedication points back to the same years as the tunes. Audrey Alston was the viola teacher of Britten’s boyhood, and the piece is inscribed to her.

The four movements carry alliterative titles that announce the tone of the whole thing: Boisterous Bourrée, Playful Pizzicato, Sentimental Saraband and Frolicsome Finale. The forms are the old ones a schoolboy composer would have met in his piano lessons, a Baroque dance, a scherzo, a slow dance and a quick finale, and the whole symphony lasts under twenty minutes.

What to Listen For

Each movement is built from two childhood tunes, so it helps to listen for a pair of contrasted ideas each time: a first theme that sets the character, and a second that answers it.

Boisterous Bourrée. A bourrée is a quick Baroque dance, and this one lives up to its adjective. The two themes come from a piano suite of 1925 and a song of 1923.

Playful Pizzicato. The title describes the sound: the strings are plucked, not bowed. The material comes from a piano scherzo and a song, both of 1924, and the movement’s catchy main tune has made it the most popular part of the work.

Sentimental Saraband. The slow movement, named after the stately Baroque dance in triple time, and the place where the string orchestra is allowed to sing. One of its two sources is a waltz for piano that Britten wrote in 1923, at nine or ten.

Frolicsome Finale. A quick close, drawn from a piano sonata of 1926 and a song of 1925.