''The Holy Sonnets of John Donne'' is a

song cycle A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice ...

composed in 1945 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 ...

for tenor or soprano voice and piano, and published as his Op. 35. It was written for himself and his life-partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and its first performance was by them at the Wigmore Hall, London on 22 November 1945. Britten began to compose the cycle shortly after visiting, seeing the horrors of, and performing at, the liberated Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The cycle was recorded for

Decca Decca may refer to: Music * Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label * Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group * Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label * Decca Studios, a recording facility in We ...

by the original performers in November 1967 in

The Maltings, Snape Britten Pears Arts is a large music education organisation based in Suffolk, England. It aims to continue the legacy of composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, singer Peter Pears, and to promote the enjoyment and experience of music for all ...

with John Mordler as producer and Kenneth Wilkinson as engineer. The cycle consists of settings of nine of the nineteen ''

Holy Sonnets The ''Holy Sonnets''—also known as the ''Divine Meditations'' or ''Divine Sonnets''—are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne (1572–1631). The sonnets were first published in 1633—two years after Donne's death. They ...

'' of the English metaphysical poet

John Donne John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...

(15721631). The following numberings are those of the Westmoreland manuscript of 1620, the most complete version of those sonnets. # IV: "Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned" # XIV: " Batter my heart, three person'd God" # III: "Oh might those sighes and teares return againe" # XIX: "Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one" # XIII: "What if this present were the world's last night?" # XVII: "Since she whom I lov'd hath pay'd her last debt" # VII: "At the round earth's imagined corners" # I: "Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?" # X: "

Death be not proud "Sonnet X", also known by its opening words as "Death Be Not Proud", is a fourteen-line poem, or sonnet, by English poet John Donne (1572–1631), one of the leading figures in the metaphysical poets group of seventeenth-century English literat ...

" The concluding song, "Death be not proud", is a

passacaglia The passacaglia (; ) is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used today by composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre. Origin The ter ...

, one of Britten's favorite musical forms.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holy Sonnets of John Donne Song cycles by Benjamin Britten 1945 compositions Poetry by John Donne Classical song cycles in English Musical settings of poems by John Donne