Here’s a manifestly and undeniably Good Thing. Aldeburgh Music’s Friday Afternoons - a globe-encompassing project to get schoolchildren singing, is now in its second year, and, again, the Guardian is joining with Aldeburgh to live-stream it (click here). Last year, that meant Britten’s own music - his Friday Afternoon collection of simple but haunting tunes written for his schoolteacher brother pupils’ Friday afternoon singing lessons. 67,000 young people across the world took part in 2013’s communal singing; such was its success that for 2014 Aldeburgh Music commissioned a brand-new songbook from nine contemporary composers, with Britten’s arrangements of folk songs a starting point. This year’s songs include both new tunes and arrangements from Gwyneth Herbert (one of my personal favourites), Jason Yarde, The Unthanks, Rachel Portman, and 14-year-old Zoe Dixon, who won Aldeburgh’s song-writing competition last year.
At the brilliantly accessible website, schools have been able to see, study, and hear each new score, and to choose the songs – all based on the words of original folk-songs – that they most want to perform. Tomorrow is the climax of all their work, and via the live-streams, you’ll be able to hear these new songs sung by the choral forces for which they were intended, starting at 11.30am (GMT) in Greece, at then at noon by an 800-strong ensemble from Suffolk at Britten’s Snape Maltings Concert Hall, and later in Brussels, London, and Wigan.
What’s impressive about Friday Afternoons is of course the scale of the singing the project has inspired and realised and the thousands of voices that we’ll hear tomorrow. More importantly, it’s the continuation of Britten’s legacy in the shape of the new repertoire the project has produced, and which Aldeburgh has given, for free, to anyone who wants to perform them in the future. And more than that, the example of Zoe Dixon, Nico Muhly, John Woolrich, and all of the other composers this year ought to be a genuinely creative inspiration for schools, music teachers, and pupils, to write and sing their own songs. That is the best possible continuation of Britten’s legacy.
