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Benjamin Britten arr. Anna Clyne: A Hymn to the Virgin

Nicholas Collon conductor
London Sinfonietta

Anna Clyne's arrangement of A Hymn to the Virgin is a London Sinfonietta commission.

Anna Clyne arranged this stripped-back version of Britten's A Hymn to the Virgin for London Sinfonietta's REMIX festival, a collaboration with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment which presented the best musical remixes from the Baroque to the present day. This recording was made at the world premiere on 15 October 2010.

Britten wrote A Hymn to the Virgin at the age of just sixteen while serving a spell in the school sanatorium. Originally scored for eight-part chorus and divided into two separate choirs for antiphonal effect, this short work sets an anonymous text that Britten found in the Oxford Book of English Verse:

Of one that is so fair and bright
Velut maris stella,
Brighter than the day is light,
Parens et puella:
I cry to thee, thou see to me,
Lady, pray thy Son for me
Tam pia,
That I may come to thee.
Maria!

All this world was forlorn
Eva peccatrice,
Till our Lord was y-born
De te genetrice.
With ave it went away
Darkest night, and comes the day
Salutis
The well springeth out of thee.
Virtutis.

Lady, flow’r of ev’rything,
Rosa sine spina,
Thou bare Jesu, Heaven’s King,
Gratia divina:
Of all thou bear’st the prize,
Lady, queen of paradise
Electa:
Maid mild, mother es Effecta.
Effecta.

The British-born, New-York-based Anna Clyne says that she had at first planned to take Britten’s “original score off in a new, almost unrecognisable direction, fusing the live ensemble with winding and stark electronics. However, having attempted many different angles, I kept coming back to the original in its simplest pure form. I therefore decided to make an acoustic arrangement, staying almost entirely true to the source”.

Published by Boosey and Hawkes

Programme Note © Keith Potter