Benjamin Britten wasn’t notably devout, a token Anglican at best. But he respected the Church. He was drawn to its ways. And there’s a whole tranche of his output that engages in a sincere manner with religion – which is why this year’s Aldeburgh Festival had a special exhibition called Spiritual Britten running at the Red House where he lived.
It focused on his standard works where music and belief connect – from War Requiem to the Church Parables and a setting of the medieval mystery play Noye’s Fludde. But it also looked beyond, to lesser-known scores like AMDG: his choral settings of poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins composed in America in 1939 and taking their title from the Jesuit motto Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
