On The Singing Style And Composing Characteristics Of Benjamin Britten’s Art Songs

In the historical development of European music,British music is a special presence,and many scholars do not consider it as their first choice of research topic due to its relatively short development in music history and limited selection of musicians and their works to study.Additionally,in the early stages of British music development in the 19 th century,most of it was influenced by German and French music and lacked distinctive national characteristics.As majoring in vocal arts performance,the author became fascinated with Benjamin Britten’s art songs during his time studying in the United States.It is believed that Britten is a representative figure in British music history,and his unique musical style and creative techniques are worthy of our study and reference.This article consists of four chapters and ten sections.The research starts from the historical development of British art songs,then discusses the characteristics of Britten’s art songs,and further refines the creative techniques of Britten’s art songs.It then analyzes the music and singing of two of Britten’s early works,and finally compares the performance versions of the two works.Following the research approach of this article,the creative style and singing characteristics of Britten can be summarized.This achievement can be used for singing and learning other works of Britten,providing effective references for the subjectification of Britten’s art song singing.The theme of the first chapter is the developing process of British art songs,which is divided into three sections.Firstly,it elaborates on the definition of art songs and particularly supplements the commonalities and differences between art song cycle,art song singles,and opera arias.Then,it traces the development history of European and British art songs,from a historical perspective to understand how British art songs were developed,why there was a rupture between British art songs and other European ones during their development,what genres were studied by the first generations of composers,and what kind of self-characteristics were developed in different genres? The final section of this chapter discusses the basic characteristics of European and British art songs,distinguishing their commonalities and differences from a macro perspective,and summarizing the unique style of British art songs.The theme of the second chapter is the analysis of the characteristics of Britten’s art songs,which is divided into three sections.This chapter begins with a brief introduction of Britten’s life and works,and analyzing the influence of Henry Purcell on Britten’s compositions,and citing representative works from Britten’s two creative periods.The second section describes the basic characteristics of Britten’s art song cycle from four aspects: theme and thought,poetic enthusiasm,multilingual and cultural features,and instrumental accompaniment.In the final section of this chapter,a brief analysis is conducted on Britten’s creative techniques in art song composition,using the song cycle "On This Island" and "Les Illuminations" as the main examples.The theme of the third chapter is a detailed analysis of Britten’s two song cycles,"On This Island" and "Les Illuminations".The author conducts an in-depth study of the fourteen individual songs from the two cycles from three perspectives: translation of the poetic text,exploration of the musicality of the songs,and singing suggestions.The research methods involve analysis of musical form,harmony,music aesthetics,performance techniques,interpretation of musical term,and summarization of the difficulties of the songs.The theme of the fourth chapter a comparing analysis of the versions of the two musical cycles "On the Island" and "Les Illuminations" mentioned above.The performers cited in this chapter are Peter Pears,Ian Bostridge,Barbara Bonney,and the author.In addition to linguistic descriptions,this chapter uses music engineering software to assist the author’s research in comparing different versions.The software involved includes Vmus Net developed by China,Melodyne developed by Celemony,Auto-Tune developed by Antares,Sonic Visualiser developed by Center for Digital Music from Queen Mary University of London,i Zotope RX7 developed by Sony Corporation.Through interdisciplinary research and visual analysis,the most objective and accurate description of the singing performance of the works is made.