Benjamin Britten wrote a lot of music for children, and he undertook The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra as an educational responsibility, in order to teach listeners the timbres of orchestral instruments. We have already listened to the piece with this aim in mind (see page 18). But Britten also set out to create a coherent and interesting musical composition. Listening to it again, we can review several of the concepts introduced in Unit I.

The work uses one basic theme — a short, rather bouncy tune by an earlier English composer, Henry Purcell (see page 88). Britten first displays the tune in a grand setting for full orchestra, harmonized with his own rich chords. Then he has each of the four orchestral choirs play it: woodwinds, brass, strings . . . but he knew he had to cheat when he got to the percussion. (The main percussion instruments are pitch-impaired and can’t play tunes.) It was clever, then, to prepare for the not-very-thematic percussion statement at 2:07 by freeing up the theme a little in the preceding brass and stringed statements, and afterward to remind us of the original tune, played verbatim by the full orchestra again. (Britten makes up for his cheat by a particularly brilliant percussion episode later.)

So far everything has been in the minor mode and in triple meter. But next comes a series of variations on the theme, versions of the theme varied in melody, rhythm, texture, mode, tempo — anything and everything. We study the variation form on page 169. The first section of the piece has given us a theme in the minor mode and its repetitions, but the first variations already switch to the major mode. Variation 3, in a swinging triple meter, is followed at once by a variation in duple meter. Many variations — Variations 1, 3, and 4, to begin with — involve a great deal of repetition of a single motive. There are variations in fast tempo that last for hardly more than half a minute, and others in slow tempo that take nearly three times as long. Along the way, in keeping with Britten’s teaching aims in the work, each variation features a particular instrument (or family of instruments) from the orchestra.

In variation form, variety is the order of the day. This central variation section of the Young Person’s Guide offers, in addition to the catalogue of instrumental sounds, an equally dazzling catalogue of the endlessly varied moods that can be represented in music.

At the end, Britten writes an extremely vigorous fugue, based on yet another version of the Purcell tune. We study fugue on page 126. For now, notice that this section of the Young Person’s Guide provides an excellent example of imitative polyphony.

And our virtuoso composer has still one more trick up his sleeve: He brings the tune back triumphantly just before the end, unvaried, while the fugue is still going on. Both can be heard simultaneously. This is non-imitative polyphony. The return of the tune wraps up the whole long piece very happily as a unique variety of A B A′ form.