Music

Benjamin Britten

1913–1976 · English

20th-century British / Modernism

Benjamin Britten was the leading British composer of the mid-20th century and the most important English opera composer since Purcell. Peter Grimes (1945) revived English opera, and his music is closely tied to the Suffolk coast, where he founded the Aldeburgh Festival with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears.

How to spot them

▸Sea music: the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes paint dawn over the North Sea with high, thin violins and flutes against low brass, and a violent storm
▸The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra: a stately Purcell theme passed through each section of the orchestra, then a rollicking fugue where the theme returns in the brass
▸Clear, economical textures, often built on repeated patterns or a single ostinato, with sharp contrasts of high and low
▸Writing for boys' voices and harp (A Ceremony of Carols), and the distinctive tenor of Peter Pears in song cycles and operas

Key works — listen

Peter Grimes, Op. 33 (1945)

Opera about a Suffolk fisherman, after George Crabbe; contains the Four Sea Interludes

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 (1945)

Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, written for an educational film

War Requiem, Op. 66 (1962)

Sets the Latin Requiem Mass alongside Wilfred Owen's poems; for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral

A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 (1942)

Medieval carol texts for treble voices and harp, written at sea

Simple Symphony, Op. 4 (1934)

String piece built from his childhood tunes; includes "Playful Pizzicato"

Billy Budd, Op. 50 (1951)

All-male naval opera after Herman Melville, libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier

Quick-fire facts

•He was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 22 November 1913 — St Cecilia's Day, feast of the patron saint of music
•His Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra takes its theme from Purcell's incidental music to Abdelazer
•He founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 with Peter Pears and Eric Crozier
•The War Requiem was premiered in Coventry Cathedral on 30 May 1962
•A pacifist, he lived in the United States from 1939 to 1942 and registered as a conscientious objector
•In 1976 he became the first composer to be made a life peer, as Baron Britten of Aldeburgh
•He studied composition with Frank Bridge, honoured in his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937)
•His opera Gloriana was written for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, and his last opera was Death in Venice (1973)

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Sources

Britten Pears Arts — Britten Pears Arts
Encyclopaedia Britannica — Benjamin Britten
Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Britten, Benjamin