Its text, assembled and partly written by W. H. Auden, with a pacifist slant, puzzled audiences at the premiere, and the work has never achieved the popularity of the composer's later orchestral song-cycles, Les Illuminations, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and the Nocturne.
"[4] Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was present, reproved the orchestra, with the result, Wyss recalls, that the players "pulled themselves together" in time for the next rehearsal held in Norwich on 21 September.
[8] Richard Capell in The Daily Telegraph wrote: It is Puck-like music, fantastically nimble and coruscating, having, like Puck, the advantage, if sheer will-of-the-wispness of movement and effect is the kind of activity wanted, of being without flesh or bones.
The voice in question belonged to clever Sophie Wyss, a Swiss singer, who before she performs the piece again should be coached in some of the niceties of English, for instance, the difference between the pronunciation of 'Ay' and 'Aye'.
Since, however, those parts which W. H. Auden has directly contributed to the text of Our Hunting Fathers remain obscure after a tenth reading, judgment of Mr Britten's composition as a whole would be unfair.
It was kindly received, either because the composer is the youngest of the products of East Anglia represented here, or because he so evidently knows exactly what sort of sound he wants to make at every moment, or because his singer, Miss Sophie Wyss, showed herself almost as clever as he is, or because his audience shares with him some sense of music or of humour, or both, to which we are strangers.
[2] It is in five sections: The Prologue is in a form akin to recitative and introduces the cycle's musical motto, described by Moore as "a descending major triad climbing back to the minor third".
In Moore's words, "The catch itself is marked by a fortissimo unison on the muted brass, after which the soprano isolates the two names 'German, Jew', signifying unambiguously who is the hunter and who the hunted.