If you have enjoyed the Ten Pieces at BBC Bitesize, you may also enjoy this KS2 Music quiz all about Benjamin Britten's Storm Interlude from Peter Grimes.
In 2015 it was 70 years since this composition broke upon the ears of its first audience, in the closing weeks of World War 2. The piece was the first of Benjamin Britten's operas to be a big success.
Peter Grimes is still performed today, both in the UK and internationally. In fact, the Aldeburgh Festival staged a performance of Peter Grimes on the beach at Aldeburgh during the summer of 2013. See how much you know about this wonderful piece of music.
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You can find more about this topic by visiting BBC - KS2: Benjamin Britten - ‘Storm’ Interlude from ‘Peter Grimes’
Britten had prior experience at evoking mood alongside 'visuals', as a composer of film-scores: and instrumental interludes had been done before by others (e.g. Borodin's Polovtsian Dances in Prince Igor, and far further back, Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba to cover the action during Solomon).
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The opera tells the story of a fisherman from the same corner of Suffolk as where Britten lived.
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Pears was Britten's personal and creative partner for almost 40 years.
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There is no 'White Horses' movement (well though one might feel there could/should have been).
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The original, standard musical-Italian instructions mean 'headlong and with fire' (perhaps suggesting thunderbolts not long to come!)
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The flutes (2 of them) and other woodwind play loud and high, but the piccolo section is intentionally even shriller.
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'Shake' (Ans.3) is also possible but generally less commonly used; at any rate it is only one of a range of potential 'ornaments' or articulations ~ beyond just playing the notes as they stand with the instrument's more usual technique. 'Roll' (Ans.4) normally applies only to drums, or occasionally other percussion instruments (plenty of that in this piece, amongst everything else!).
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These are snarling trombones and trumpets, playing in stark intervals of a fifth (you might like to look that up elsewhere and experiment with it; it plays quite a part in the atmosphere-building in our chosen pieces by Grieg and Mussorgsky, too).
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Well over half the pages of the full orchestral score contain an indication of change in one or the other (or, not infrequently, both!).
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It is a welcome, if temporary, respite from the 'aural onslaught'.
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