ABSTRACT
The 'olde English' way of doing things had long included a patriotic tendency to travel into the past, more specifically into the Elizabethan era. This chapter focuses on Britten's travels within his own country in terms of how the musical style and literary culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enriched his compositions and gave him another framework in which to define, and celebrate, his Englishness. The elegiac tone of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder comes to mind here, an unlikely alliance between the English neo-Baroque and the Viennese Successionist. The most overtly significant preparatory work for Gloriana is undoubtedly the beautiful Lachrymae for viola and piano – the only solo work for the composer's preferred string instrument that was published during his lifetime. In Britten studies, the many Purcell realisations are almost as rich a field as the folksong arrangements. The life and the career of the poet Francis Quarles stand chronologically between those of Shakespeare and Purcell.
