Benjamin Britten

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Biography

Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist and a talented amateur musician. He showed musical gifts very early in life, and began composing prolifically as a child. He was educated at Old Buckenham Hall School in Suffolk, a small all-boys prep school, and Gresham's School, Holt. In 1927, he began private lessons with Frank Bridge; he also studied, less happily, at the Royal College of Music under John Ireland, with some input from Ralph Vaughan Williams. Although ultimately held back by his parents (at the suggestion of College staff), Britten had also intended to study with Alban Berg in Vienna. Britten was a prolific juvenile composer; some 800 works and fragments precede his early published works. His first compositions to attract wide attention, however, were the Sinfonietta Op. 1, "A Hymn to the Virgin" (1930) and a set of choral variations A Boy was Born, written in 1934 for the BBC Singers. The following year he met W. H. Auden, and they collaborated on the song-cycle Our Hunting Fathers Op. 8, radical both in politics and musical treatment, and other works. Of more lasting importance to Britten was his meeting in 1937 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and inspiration as well as his life partner. In the same year he composed a Pacifist March (words, Ronald Duncan) for the Peace Pledge Union, of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member, but the work was not a success and soon withdrawn.

In early 1939, Britten and Pears followed Auden to America, where Britten composed Paul Bunyan, an operetta (to a libretto by Auden), as well as the first of many song cycles for Pears. The period in America was also remarkable for a number of orchestral works, including Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Op. 10 (written in 1937 for string orchestra), the Violin Concerto Op. 15, and Sinfonia da Requiem Op. 20 (for full orchestra).

Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, and both applied for recognition as [[conscientious objector]s; Britten was initially refused recognition, but gained it on appeal. He completed the choral works Hymn to St. Cecilia (his last collaboration with Auden) and A Ceremony of Carols during the long sea voyage. He had already begun work on his opera Peter Grimes based on the writings of Suffolk poet George Crabbe, and its première at Sadler's Wells in 1945 was his greatest success so far. However, Britten encountered opposition from sectors of the English musical establishment and gradually withdrew from the London scene, founding the English Opera Group in 1947 and the Aldeburgh Festival the following year, partly (though not solely) to perform his own works.

Peter Grimes was the first in a series of English operas, of which Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954) were particularly admired. These operas share common themes. For example, most feature an 'outsider' character, who is excluded or misunderstood by society. Often this is the eponymous protagonist, as in Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave. He was appointed a Companion of Honour (CH) in the Coronation Honours, 1953.[1]

An increasingly important influence was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour with Pears in 1957, when Britten was struck by the music of the Balinese gamelan and by Japanese Noh plays. The fruits of this tour include the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) and the series of semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). The greatest success of Britten's career was, however, the musically more conventional War Requiem, written for the 1962 consecration of the newly reconstructed Coventry Cathedral.

Britten developed close friendships with the Russians Dmitri Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich in the 1960s: he composed his Cello Suites, Cello Symphony and Cello Sonata for the latter, and conducted the first Western performance of the former's Fourteenth Symphony. Shostakovich dedicated this score to Britten, and often spoke very highly of his music. Britten himself had previously dedicated 'The Prodigal Son' (the third and last of the 'Church Parables') to Shostakovich. He was honoured again by appointment to the Order of Merit (OM) on 23 March 1965.[2]

In the last decade or so of his life, Britten suffered from increasing ill-health. His late works became progressively more sparse in texture. They include the opera Death in Venice (1973), the Suite on English Folk Tunes "A Time There Was" (1974) and Third String Quartet (1975)— which drew on material from Death in Venice— as well as the dramatic cantata Phaedra (1976), written for Janet Baker.

Having previously declined a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage on 2 July 1976 as Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk.[3] A few months later he died of heart failure at his house in Aldeburgh. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul's Church there. His grave lies next to that of his partner, Sir Peter Pears, and close to the grave of Imogen Holst, another close friend.

 

References

   1. ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 39863, page 2976, 26 May 1953. Retrieved on 2008-07-16.
   2. ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43610, page 3047, 26 March 1965. Retrieved on 2008-07-16.
   3. ^ London Gazette: no. 46954, page 9295, 6 July 1976. Retrieved on 2008-07-16.
   4. ^ Hywel Williams, "The Puccini of Lowestoft". The Guardian, 5 December 2006.
   5. ^ Paul Kildea, "In his own words". The Guardian, 18 July 2003.