Songs from the Chinese

{{Short description|Song cycle by Benjamin Britten}}

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Songs from the Chinese is a song cycle for soprano or tenor and guitar composed in 1957 by Benjamin Britten (1913{{ndash}}76), and published as his Op. 58. It consists of settings of six poems translated from the original Chinese by Arthur Waley (1889{{ndash}}1966). It was written for, and first performed by, the tenor Peter Pears and the guitarist Julian Bream.{{cite book |title=Benjamin Britten: A Biography |last=Carpenter |first=Humphrey |author-link=Humphrey Carpenter |page=380 |publisher=Faber and Faber |location=London |year=1992 |isbn=0-571-14324-5 }}{{cite book |title=The Music of Benjamin Britten |last=Evans |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Evans (musicologist) |pages=362–365 |publisher=J. M. Dent & Sons |location=London, Melbourne and Toronto |year=1979 |isbn=0-460-04350-1 }}{{cite web |url=http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=509&sitesearchterm=songs+from+the+chinese |title=Songs from the Chinese |website=Britten-Pears Foundation |accessdate=25 April 2015 }}

A performance typically takes about 10 minutes. The songs are:{{cite web |url=http://www.lieder.net/lieder/assemble_texts.html?SongCycleId=11290 |website=The LiederNet Archive |title= Songs from the Chinese : Song Cycle by (Edward) Benjamin Britten (1913{{ndash}}1976) |accessdate=25 April 2015 }}

1. "The Big Chariot"
2. "The Old Lute"
3. "The Autumn Wind"
4. "The Herd-boy"
5. "Depression"
6. "Dance Song"

In 1959, the critic Jeremy Noble wrote "as a whole, they make a statement about life (and particularly the transience of youth and beauty) as poignant and personal as Mahler's own settings from the Chinese".{{cite journal

|journal=Tempo

|last=Noble

|first=Jeremy

|author-link=Jeremy Noble (musicologist)

|title=Britten's Songs from the Chinese

|issue=52

|year=1959

|page=25 }} (The Mahler settings are those in Das Lied von der Erde.)