While receiving the Aspen Award in 1964, Benjamin Britten stated that almost everything he had written was occasional music. For the British, all these specific assignments for certain customers were not 'snacks', but rather the fulfillment of an artistic credo. Britten seems to have once said to colleague Michael Tippett: "I would be a Court composer, but for my pacifism and homosexuality." Britten
… expert Donald Mitchell commented: "Britten if he said it did not mean courtier composer a royal servant but someone willing and, above all, able to provide music of character and quality for public occasions even to find them a source of inspiration. ! " (taken from Humphrey Carpenter's biography.) In that regard, Britten's "War Requiem" was Successful in every way, because this music served not only a public purpose (the reopening of Coventry Cathedral in 1962) but also because it allowed Britons to bring his pacifist ideals to the attention of the British people. What is possible in large, can also in small. Britten's music for oboe was in all cases written for a particular oboist, who in most cases also premiered the work. Early works include the Phantasy op.2, which won Britten the Cobbett Prize in 1932, and the two Insect pieces (1935), which were published posthumously. The "Temporal variations" were written in 1936 by Montagu Slater, the later librettist of the opera "Peter Grimes". Finally, the "Six metamorphoses", were inspired by mythological figures from Ovid's Metamorphoses. (HJ) _more
