The Holy Sonnets of John Donne
The Holy Sonnets of John Donne is a song cycle composed in 1945 by Benjamin Britten for tenor or soprano voice and piano, and published as his Op. 35. It was written for himself and his life-partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and its first performance was by them at the Wigmore Hall, London on 22 November 1945. Britten began to compose the cycle shortly after visiting, seeing the horrors of, and performing at, the liberated Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The cycle was recorded for Decca by the original performers in November 1967  in The Maltings, Snape with John Mordler as producer and Kenneth Wilkinson as engineer. The cycle consists of settings of nine of the nineteen "Holy Sonnets" of the English metaphysical poet John Donne (15721631). The following numberings are those of the Westmoreland manuscript of 1620, the most complete version of those sonnets. The concluding song, "Death be not proud", is a passacaglia, one of Britten's favorite musical forms.