Presented by Lucy Walker

Among the many collaborations between Britten and WH Auden are several songs in a ‘cabaret’ style. Four of these, composed between the late 1930s and early 1940s, were published in 1980, four after Britten’s death: ‘Tell me the Truth About Love’, ‘Funeral Blues’, ‘Johnny’ and ‘Calypso’. They were written for the singer Hedli Anderson, a friend of Britten’s and a performer with a remarkable vocal range. (Britten and Pears would occasionally perform one or two of them, although they didn’t record any together.) The texts are full of Auden’s customary virtuosity: by turns witty (in ‘Tell me the truth about love’ and ‘Calypso’), bitter-sweet (in ‘Johnny’) and powerfully moving (in ‘Funeral Blues’). Britten’s settings, fusing jazz, blues, and parodies of other musical styles, match the poems perfectly.

Auden and Britten shared a house in Brooklyn, NY for a few months in the early 1940s: the crumbling brownstone was known as ‘February House’ because several of its residents had birthdays in February. Auden was born on 21 February 1907, and we celebrate his 111^th birthday in this ‘Work of the Week’.