The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, op. 35
Song cycle
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.
Movements
- Oh my blacke Soule!
- Batter my heart
- Oh might those sighes and teares
- Oh, to vex me
- What if this present
- Since she whom I loved
- At the round earth's imagin'd corners
- Thou hast made me
- Death be not proud