Benjamin Britten's Musical Characterization of the Madwoman in Curlew River

Abstract This article focuses on the musical depiction of madness in Benjamin Britten's parable for church performance, Curlew River. The article demonstrates that Britten transforms motives by chromatic (modulo-12) transposition and inversion when associating them with the Madwoman, and diatonic (modulo-7) transposition when associating them with the rational, masculine characters of the story. Consequently, he forges familiar associations between chromaticism and madness, on the one hand, and diatonicism and rationality, on the other. Furthermore, Britten marks the Madwoman's music for difference through immobilizing harmonies (i.e., dissonant vertical stacks of notes) and inversional symmetry. Though inversional symmetry in music carries many potential meanings, two pertinent interpretations—coded sexuality and disability—formerly were accompanied with a shared stigmatization. In contrasting the post-tonal relationships present in the Madwoman's music with the, at times, diatonic and stable music of the other characters, the article will show the familiar framing of madness with normal rationality. The article suggests varied methods of pitch organization as a possibility to be considered alongside other means of musical characterization (such as motive and tonal symbolism) in the analysis of twentieth-century dramatic musical works.