3 Review(s)

Britten's setting of Edith Sitwell's poem 'Praise We Great Men', was left unfinished at his death. It was being written for Mstislav Rostrpovich to include in his first season with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington D.C, in 1977. The mauscript breaks of after 118 bars, near the end of the fifth of an intended ten sections. The fragment therefore amounts to at most half the work, but it is fully composed. A further two bars were found sketched in one of Britten's notebooks and were added to this score in 1985, when it was revised by the composer, Colin Matthews, ahead of its first performance.