''Phantasy Quartet'', Op. 2, is the common name of a piece of

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, o ...

, 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 type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

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 cello ...

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

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

broadcast.

History

Britten composed ''Phantasy Quartet'' at age 18 as a student at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) 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 pe ...

, 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 an ...

, who played the first performance in a

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 the ...

, 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 that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...

, in an

arch form In music, arch form is a sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement. The sections need not be re ...

with elements from the

sonata form The sonata form (also sonata-allegro form or first movement form) is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of t ...

. 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 (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos * Theme (computing), a custom graphical appearance for certain software. * Theme (linguistics), topic * Theme ( ...

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 François Leleux (born July 1971 in Croix, Nord) is a French oboist, conductor, and professor. His professional career began at 18 when he became principal oboe at the Paris Opera. He went on to win a solo position at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Or ...

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 swi ...

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 database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

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 Chamber music by Benjamin Britten 1932 compositions Compositions for oboe Fantasias (music)