Phantasy Quartet
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''Phantasy Quartet'', Op. 2, is the common name of a piece of chamber music by
Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
, a quartet for
oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. ...
and
string trio A string trio is a group of three string instruments or a piece written for such a group. From at least the 19th century on, the term "string trio" with otherwise unspecified instrumentation normally refers to the combination violin, viola and cell ...
composed in 1932. In the composer's catalogue, it is given as ''Phantasy'', subtitled: Quartet in one movement for oboe, violin, viola, violoncello. It was first performed in August 1933 as a
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broadcast.


History

Britten composed ''Phantasy Quartet'' at age 18 as a student at the
Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...
, after his first work to which he assigned an Opus number, the Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra. He dedicated it to the oboist
Léon Goossens Léon Jean Goossens, CBE, FRCM (12 June 1897 – 13 February 1988) was an English oboist. Career Goossens was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, and studied at Liverpool College of Music and the Royal College of Music. His father was violinist and ...
, who played the first performance in a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
broadcast on 6 August 1933, with members of the International String Quartet. The same players performed the concert premiere in London on 21 November that year. On 5 April 1934, it was performed in Florence for the
International Society of Contemporary Music The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music. The organization was established in Salzburg in 1922 as Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) following th ...
, as the first piece to win the composer international recognition.


Music

The music is in the form of a 16th-century
fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...
, in an arch form with elements from the
sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...
. As in Mozart's Oboe Quartet, the oboe has a solo function. The duration is given as 15 minutes. It has been called "consummately crafted". The music grows out of silence and in the end returns to it in symmetry. The first theme is a march, marked ''molto pianissimo'', with the cello beginning on the fingerboard of a muted cello, followed by viola, violin and finally the oboe. The
theme Theme or themes may refer to: * Theme (arts), the unifying subject or idea of the type of visual work * Theme (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos * Theme (computing), a custom graphical ...
becomes later also the source of themes in a fast section, similar to the development section of the sonata form. In the slow middle section, the strings alone introduce a theme in which the oboe joins. It is followed, in symmetry, by a recapitulation of the fast section, and then the march. The musicologist Eric Roseberry summarises: "If the pastoral slow section echoes the leisurely folkiness of an Englishry that Britten had not yet entirely rejected, the Phantasy as a whole generates a tension and harmonic grittiness which are harbingers of a less complacent outlook."


Recordings

A recording by oboist François Leleux with
Lisa Batiashvili Elisabeth Batiashvili ( ka, ელისაბედ ბათიაშვილი; born 7 March 1979), professionally known as Lisa Batiashvili, is a prominent Georgian violinist active across Europe and the United States. A former New York P ...
,
Lawrence Power Lawrence Power is a British violist, born 1977, noted both for solo performances and for chamber music with the Nash Ensemble and Leopold String Trio. Career Power started out as a violist (rather than beginning studies on the violin and switc ...
and Sebastian Klinger combines the quartet with Mozart's oboe quartet and other chamber music by the two composers.


References


External links

* Mary Lindsey Campbell Bailey
Léon Goossens’s Impact on Twentieth-century English Oboe Repertoire: Phantasy Quartet of Benjamin Britten, Concerto for Oboe and Strings of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Sonata for Oboe of York Bowen
(Dissertation, University of Cincinnati) ohiolink.edu 24 May 2010
Benjamin Britten (1913–76) / Phantasy, for oboe and strings (1932)
Jonathan Blumhofer
Benjamin Britten / Phantasy Quartet, for oboe & string trio in F minor, Op. 2
AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

Benjamin Britten / "Phantasy Quartet", op. 2
kammermusikfuehrer.de
Oboe Chamber Music
britishmusiccollection.org.uk
Listening to Britten – Phantasy Quartet, Op. 2
goodmorningbritten.wordpress.com {{Italic title Compositions by Benjamin Britten Musical quartets 1932 compositions