In 1970 I had been working for three years as a part-time assistant to Britten. The pieces I had been mainly involved with, The Golden Vanity and The Prodigal Son, had not, I thought, been among his best. But Owen Wingrave was different. I had made the vocal score, and copied out the full score with the help of my brother Colin. On 16 November 1970 I went to the first full orchestral rehearsal at Morley College and wrote in my journal: ‘The music is astonishing, the sounds are constantly new & masterly . . . Individual moments stand out as exceptional: the music for Owen’s first aria in Act I – strings & harp, reminiscent of Lucretia with the same uncanny, brooding quality; the Paramore interlude, long strong lines & a heavy staccato bass – rather like the Passacaglia from Peter Grimes. Best of all, Owen’s ‘Peace’ aria in Act II . . . The expansiveness of the score is very welcome, much more like the old Britten. Also there is much more harmonic movement than of late.’
Like The Turn of the Screw, Owen Wingrave is based on a Henry James ghost story. The young Owen’s pacifist convictions compel him to reject the army career his family had planned for him. If there is a fault in the libretto, it may be that their complete opposition to Owen is too relentless. His terrifying grandfather, Sir Philip, a retired general (a part written for Peter Pears) disinherits him; he is also rejected by his unyielding fiancée, Kate. Kate dares Owen to spend a night in a room in the family house that is said to be haunted by the ghost of an ancestor who once killed his own young son in a fit of rage. Owen accepts, and is found dead the following morning. The arbitrary tragedy of his death, however, is subsidiary to the real point of the opera, which is about Owen finding his true self and asserting his independence from the repressive convention his family represents.
In his climactic aria in Act II he proclaims: ‘In peace I have found my image, / I have found myself.’ ‘Peace’ here does not stand simply for pacifism but for all the values Britten stood for, including his own sexual choices. Over a series of quiet triads, the percussion float a gamelan music that symbolises freedom and ideal beauty. Then, in a chillingly expressionistic passage, with brilliant use of Sprechstimme, Owen confronts the apparitions of the ancestor and his son and declares his victory over them. Kate appears and their anguished duet ends with her accusing Owen of cowardice; in reply, he enters the haunted room to an exultant C major chord with added sixth over a bass G: a similar chord to those at the end of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde – both, as here, ecstatic gestures of acceptance. It is one of the greatest moments in Britten’s music.
Owen Wingrave was of course initially written for television. It was performed at Covent Garden soon afterwards, but then was rather neglected, until in 2006 I was asked to make a chamber version, which has resulted in many more performances of this important work.
David Matthews