When Benjamin Britten's centenary was celebrated in 2013, schools and youth choirs were invited to perform one or more of the songs from his collection Friday Afternoons, to mark the composer's birthday on 22 November. The songs were written in the 1930s, for the pupils of Clive House Preparatory School in Prestatyn, North Wales, where the composer's brother was headmaster, and where singing was timetabled on Friday afternoons. The centenary invitation was taken up with an enthusiasm that far exceeded the most optimistic expectations of the Britten100 planning team, with close to 70,000 young people singing in a multitude of performances all round the world.
To keep the momentum of the project going, a set of new folksong settings in different styles was commissioned for 2014 from an eclectic group of composers including Sally Beamish, The Unthanks, John Woolrich, Talvin Singh, Jason Yarde and Zoë Dixon, whose influences ranged from classical and folk to jazz and Indian music. Subsequent years saw the commissioning of single-composer anthologies from Nico Muhly, Jonathan Dove, Luke Styles and Errollyn Wallen, all supported by a substantial portfolio of learning resources.
With Friday Afternoons now firmly established as an ongoing project, on 22 November 2019 it was relaunched, with a new website that presents Britten's original songs and all the additional songs commissioned over the past six years in a really engaging way. It includes downloadable scores including piano accompaniments, backing tracks for schools or choirs that need them, plus curriculum-based teaching materials, including videos and case studies of national projects to showcase the breadth of the project and encourage deeper engagement.
Five Friday Afternoons Ambassadors have been appointed to act as a creative advisory group to the project. Tom Appleton, Emily Barden, Charlotte Brosnan, Dominic Ellis-Peckham and Charles MacDougall are all professional choral leaders and their role is to develop online and in-person resources that help classroom teachers and music specialists to get to know the songs and improve their skills and confidence. They had already started running Friday Afternoons workshops around the UK before the current Covid-19 lockdown, and hope to resume doing so in the future. In the meantime, the new website includes videos in which they demonstrate approaches to teaching some of the songs and show how they can be used to develop children's ability to keep a steady pulse, maintain a smooth legato, sing in two or more parts and communicate texts clearly.
All this is provided by Britten Pears Arts – the new name for the overarching musical charity recently formed by the merger of Snape Music and the Britten-Pears Foundation. It now runs Snape Maltings Concert Hall and all the activities that take place there and at The Red House, the former home of Benjamin Britten and his life partner Peter Pears, which houses their extensive library and archive.
The revamp of the Friday Afternoons website and song bank was undertaken in response to a 2018 evaluation which revealed that some classroom teachers found the repertoire overly sophisticated or had difficulty putting together a coherent concert programme from the now sizable collection of pieces. This was despite the fact that a system of dots had already been devised to indicate the level of difficulty of each piece for both singers and accompanists – one respondent to the evaluation commented that it was ‘a good starting point, but it is a bit overwhelming for the majority’, while another said: ‘A lot of our classes find [Friday Afternoons] a bit highbrow. That is a good thing as long as it is approached in the right way.’
Others were keen to praise the USP of the project – its musical quality, and the fact that it sets out to introduce children and young people to contemporary classical repertoire, creating challenging, aspirational and exciting music-making experiences for both performers and audiences.
Friday Afternoons contributor: composer Errollyn Wallen (image credit: Matt Jolly)
This ethos will stay at the heart of the commissioning strategy, says Callum Given, acting head of learning and inclusion at Britten Pears Arts, who is currently managing Friday Afternoons. ‘We have a responsibility as the kind of arts organisation we are to encourage young people to sing high-quality repertoire. These are songs for children rather than children's songs. But our aim with these new resources and future strategy is to make sure there are accessible routes in to the collection for teachers and singing leaders, whether they are working with very young classroom groups or with experienced singers right up to national youth choir level.’
Ambassadors L-R: Dominic Ellis-Peckham, Emily Barden, Charles MacDougall, Charlotte Brosnan and Tom Appleton (image credit: Britten Pears Arts)
Big Sing highlights from 2018 (image credit: Matt Jolly)
Asked about the criteria for new songs and the brief that is provided for the composers, Given says the starting point is always the Britten songs. Composers are asked to write between six and 12 songs for upper voices and piano, with the voices generally in unison but some optional divisions. ‘From our evaluation we learned more about the importance of texts; what really resonates with young people is the words. If we don't get them right they won't enjoy performing the songs. The texts can't be too literal – they have to spark the children's imaginations.
‘In terms of difficulty, it's up to us to ensure there is a balance – if the level one year has been fairly advanced we will guide the next year's composer towards providing something a little less challenging.
‘Our ambassadors are already helping with this; they are an incredible sounding board, with such a wide variety of classroom and youth choir experience between them. They know the repertoire really well and they are very good at helping singing leaders to find bridges between one piece that their choirs enjoyed and others they could tackle.’
The 2020 Friday Afternoons collection has been commissioned from Russell Hepplewhite, a composer of operatic, music theatre and choral music whose operas for young audiences have been critically acclaimed, and the author and former children's laureate Michael Rosen. Entitled Everything, it includes songs about the elements, human discovery, invention, movement, atoms and cells.
‘We'd seen examples of Russell's work with English Touring Opera [ETO] – his music combines accessibility with musical quality,’ says Given. ‘He has a lot of experience working with children and community groups, and has worked as a primary school teacher, so he knows what will appeal to children and understands their capabilities.’
Hepplewhite's recent successes have included The Price for W11 Children's Opera and a musical, Moonfleet, commissioned and staged by Salisbury Playhouse. On the day we spoke, his one-act opera Laika the Spacedog, commissioned by ETO, should have received its French premiere at the Opéra Comique in Paris.
‘That's obviously been postponed, sadly. It was a bit unexpected that a production that was designed to be performed by a touring company in a school hall with a half-hour get-in and get-out would end up at the Opéra Comique,’ he admits. ‘But in some respects it's even more of a privilege to have written these Friday Afternoons songs. It's such an enormous project in terms of its reach; an opera might be performed twenty times to a few thousand people, but these songs will be picked up all over the world.’
Working with Rosen was also a privilege that Hepplewhite relished. ‘Our brief was to provide a minimum of six and maximum of 12 songs and I confess I wanted to write as many as possible to capitalise on the opportunity! Michael is incredibly busy but he took this project very seriously and when he sent me the words they were always immediately settable. I work with many different librettists and that is not always the case.
Russell Hepplewhite has composed the latest collection of songs (image credit: Steve Burnett)
‘That's not to say I didn't tamper with Michael's texts in order to create a chorus or to cut a bit. He allowed me to respond musically and if that meant the shape or the rhyme scheme had to change that was fine by him.
‘We wanted to create songs for absolutely everybody to enjoy so the cycle is packed with rhymes, patter, curious facts, varied musical moods, and heartfelt melodies that children will hopefully find memorable and inspiring to sing. Some songs are a little more challenging than others, but the cycle is designed so that any of the songs could stand alone in a concert, or alternatively the cycle can be divided neatly into groups of songs that will work well together. For the most ambitious, performing the whole cycle should be quite a showstopper.’
Everything was to have been launched at Earth in Hackney on 4 May, with a complete performance by the London Youth Choir. At the time of writing, Rosen was still recovering from serious illness with Covid-19, and the official premiere will now take place in 2021. Before he was taken ill, Rosen said this about the commission:
‘It's so exciting for me to know that thousands of children will sing these and feel the spirit of the music and ideas in the songs. From a personal point of view, I very much hope we are keeping the intentions of Benjamin Britten alive by making new work for all children to sing.’
A selection of songs from Everything are available on the Friday Afternoons website (details below). The full collection will be released in 2021 – information will be published in a future edition of MT.
fridayafternoonsmusic.co.uk
brittenpears.org
russell-hepplewhite.co.uk
