Benjamin Britten - Biography
Lord Benjamin Britten was born on November 22ND 1913 in Lowestuft Suffolk and died on December 4th 1976 in Aldeburgh. Britten came from an upper middle class background, his father was an orthodontist his mother an amateur musician and singer. Britten was precocious musically and by his early adolescence was writing melodies down some of which were to be integrated later into his Simple Symphony. When he was in his mid teens he was accepted by the distinguished composer Frank Bridge as a student of composition. At the age of sixteen he entered the Royal College of Music where he studied under the well known composer John Ireland. By his early twenties he became a prolific composer of chamber music for string orchestra including the well known works for such as the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge
Britten was to meet his life partner Sir Peter Pears in the late 1930’s. In 1939 Britten and Pears moved to the United States, Britten horrified by the noise and bustle of Manhattan quickly moved to Brooklyn Heights in a brownstone owned by strip teaser Gypsy Rose Lee, among their neighbors was the soon to be famous writer Carson Mc Cullers and eventually Truman Capote.Britten and Pears formed an alliance with another British expatiate the great poet Wystan Auden. Britten was to write a Violin Concerto in 1939 and was to collaborate with Auden on an American themed opera Paul Bunyan which had a limited success. Along with the orchestral pieces Young Apollo and Canadian Overture his first great orchestral piece Sinfonia di Requiem composed in 1940 and had a successful premiere with the New York Philharmonic under Sir John Barbirolli. Unfortunately the work was commissioned by the Japanese government and obviously was not performed during the war. In the interim Pears and Britten developed a friendship with a well to do physician who let them use his house in Long Island, they also toured the West and stayed briefly in California.
With America entry into the war Pears and Britten returned to England, he declared himself a conscientious objector and didn’t have to serve in the military. His first great success upon returning to England was the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings written for Pears and the soon to be famous horn player Dennis Brain. The next few years witnessed a number of choral works for small church choir (including the well known Ceremony of Carols) and also songs written for Pears that they would perform during their joint recitals. In 1945 he premiered his great opera Peter Grimes at the Sadler’s Wells Opera in London. The premiere was a triumph and Britten was widely hailed as the greatest English opera composer since Purcell. Pears created the role of the Aldeburgh fisherman who was the rough outsider suspected by the townsfolk of abusing his boy apprentices and is driven to madness and suicide when one of them accidentally dies.
The Rape of Lucretia based on the Shakespeare poem was composed for the Glyndebourne Festival and starred Pears and a new friend the great contralto Kathleen Ferrier. That year also the composition of his very popular Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra; which outlines the instrumental groups of the orchestra. The following year he composed a domestic comedy Albert Herring that had only a qualified success. The forties were to conclude with the short children’s opera Let’s Make an Opera and the massive choral Spring Symphony written for his mentor Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony but premiered in Amsterdam by Pears and Ferrier and conducted by Edward van Beinum.
In the interim Pears and Britten had moved permanently to Aldeburgh and founded a musical festival there. Britten as intimated before disliked big cities and felt comfortable in the small Sussex town. His next opera was a masterpiece on the level of Grimes, BillyBudd based on the novella by Henry James with a libretto by famed writer E.M. Forster. The plot revolves around handsome easy going young seamen who is hated irrationally by his superior officer and provoked to strike and kill him.
Britten had a scandal in 1953 when he composed an opera for the coronation celebration of Elizabeth the Second, Gloriana a candid look at her predecessor Elizabeth the First and performed in the new Queen’s presence at Covent Garden Opera. The royal family didn’t seem to be too offended, but London society was; and Britten was personally attacked. The deeply sensitive Britten took a long time to recover from the incident and the work was withdrawn for many years.
Britten returned to chamber opera with the Turn of the Screw based on the celebrated ghost story by Henry James. Britten and Pears had an extended visit to the Far East where he developed a fascination for Balinese music that was to result in the composition of the ballet Prince of Pagodas. The late 1950’s saw more song cycles by Britten mainly written for Pears including the Mahler influenced Notturno with a setting of poems by Rimbaud. In contrast he wrote a short and charming children’s opera Noye’s Fludde a medieval retelling of Noah’s Ark. During this period Pears and Britten performed many song recitals worldwide where besides Britten’s songs they performed and recorded brilliant interpretations of music by Purcell, Schubert and Schumann.
In 1960 Britten wrote his opera on Midsummer’s Night dream again an opera with chamber resources which captures the spirit of Shakespeare’s time without being anachronistic. 1962 was to see Britten’s greatest international triumph he was commissioned to write a requiem for the rededication of the Coventry Cathedral that was destroyed by a German air attack. His work War Requiem chose a text based on the poems of Wilford Owen who was killed in action during the Fist World War. The premiere was an act of reconciliation ,was to have three soloists a German Dietrich Fischer-Deiskau, the English Pears and the Russian Soprano Galina Vishneskaya (who was not allowed by the Russian Government to participate in the premiere due to the presence of Fisher-Dieskau a West German, but was allowed to record the work). He at the time developed a friendship with Vishneskaya’s husband the great cellist Rostropovich and composed a significant body of work for him.
Britten wrote three more chamber operas in the mid 1960’s which again shows the influence of Asian music in its sparseness and austerity, Curlew River, The Prodigal Son and The Burning Fiery Furnace. Britten was to receive a severe blow when the barn like Aldeburgh concert hall burned down in 1966. Due to the personal intersession of the Royal Family it was quickly rebuilt. Britten received a commission from the BBC to write an opera for television and he chose another Henry James story Owen Wingrave the work was premiered on the BBC in 1971.
Britten about this time was having serious health problems, heart disease, he wrote during this period a large amount of church music including his settings of Canticles and more songs including the superb Phaedra for the great mezzo Janet Baker. Britten’s final opera was based on Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice was premiered in 1974... The work which is very dark and with more than a hint of homo eroticism proved to be controversial initially but has received a wide number of performances in later years. Britten last few years saw him wheel chair bound and to the great sorrow and astonishment of the artistic world died at only 63 on December 4th 1976. He was elevated to the peerage as Lord Britten of Aldeburgh shortly before his death by Queen Elizabeth. Sir Peter Pears was to die nine years later.
Britten was one of the most prolifically gifted musicians not just as a composer but as a pianist and conductor. His operas to his great annoyance where viewed by revisionist critics as having a gay subtext with the outsider crushed by society. Except for Death in Venice which does have an explicitly gay theme, critics are basing a gay sub text as a red thread through his life’s work based on the fact that Britten was a gay man. The theme which appears in some of his operas is the idealization of youth and innocence crushed by a brutal world. So his operas stir for the moment stir polemic controversy amongst critics. His magnificent choral works stir no such controversy and are performed in Anglican and other church services all over the world. It is our luck that Britten had a great recording producer John Culshaw at Decca/London who was to become a close friend and made many definitive recordings under Britten’s leadership. Also be on the lookout for Britten’s outstanding recordings of Mozart and Schubert.