Benjamin Britten was without doubt the leading British composer of the postwar period. Born in Lowestoft in Suffolk, he began composing at the age of five and completed a string quartet within four years. He studied theory with Frank Bridge, who shared his distaste for the
prevailing English pastoral style, preferring such Continental figures as Bartok and Schoenberg; later composition studies with John Ireland at the Royal College of Music were therefore disappointing. A project to study with Berg in Vienna in 1934
fell through, but the success of his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge at the 1937 Salzburg Festival established Britten on the international scene.
At the same time Britten was writing documentary film music for the postal service, as part of a team which included the poet W.H. Auden, with whom he went on to collaborate on other projects. When Auden left for the United States in 1939, Britten followed, together with the singer Peter Pears. Pears became his lifelong companion and lover, and their artistic relationship proved uncommonly fruitful. They were ardent pacifists and
conscientious objectors during World War II and, after returning to England in 1942, toured as a duo (with Britten at the piano) giving concerts in hospitals and bombed areas.
During the war Britten worked on his first major opera, Peter Grimes, based on George Crabbe's depiction of a rough yet poetic fisherman as an outsider in a closed community. The music shows Britten's huge talent for scene-setting, especially in the four orchestral
Sea Interludes that capture the austere atmosphere of the Suffolk coast.
Peter Grimes also reveals a typical sympathy with his main character, the
violent and tragically complex Grimes, sung by Pears in the first production in 1945.
The work was an instant success and Britten's operatic output for the rest of his life was prolific. Several works are
chamber operas, among them The Turn of the Screw and The Rape of Lucretia, for which he formed the English Opera Group in 1946; they were often performed at the
Aldeburgh Festival, inaugurated in 1948. He and Pears settled in this Suffolk coastal town, where they remained for the rest of their lives. Britten composed two
full-scale operas for Covent Garden, Billy Budd (1952) and Gloriana (1953), and the ballet
The Prince of the Pagodas (1956).
Britten's pacifism re-emerged with the
War Requiem, written in 1962 for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. Probably his greatest work for the concert hall, it combines the requiem text with the war poems
of Wilfred Owen. Here, again, Britten shows his genius for matching significant music to the subject.
Britten and Pears were great travellers visiting Shostakovich and the cellist
Rostropovich in the Soviet Union. Their tour of the Far East included Bali, where Britten was deeply impressed by the traditional gamelan music. He used gamelan effects extensively in his final opera,
Death in Venice (1973), based on Thomas Mann's novella. Again he identified with his main character, Aschenbach, whose one-sided infatuation with the boy Tadzio (played by a dancer) is expressed largely in soliloquy. It was Pears's most demanding role.
By the time Death in Venice was completed Britten's health was failing and he returned to
smaller-scale instrumental music with the still forward-looking Third String Quartet (1975). In the year of his death, he became the first British musician to receive a peerage in recognition
of his achievements.
Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Op. 31
Young Person's guide to the Orchestra
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge
War Requiem
Peter Grimes