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Benjamin Britten

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers;
Poetry & Opera

   Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh, OM CH ( 22
   November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was a British composer, conductor, and
   pianist.

Life

   Britten was born in Lowestoft in Suffolk, the son of a dentist and a
   talented amateur musician. His birthday, 22 November, is the feast-day
   of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, and he showed musical
   gifts very early in life. He began composing prolifically as a child,
   and was educated at Gresham's School. In 1927, he began private lessons
   with Frank Bridge. He also studied, less happily, at the Royal College
   of Music under John Ireland and 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. His first compositions to attract wide attention
   were the Sinfonietta (Op.1) 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 with whom he collaborated on the song-cycle Our Hunting
   Fathers, radical both in politics and musical treatment, and other
   works. Of more lasting importance was his meeting in 1936 with the
   tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and
   inspiration as well as his life partner.

   In early 1939, the two of them followed Auden to America. There Britten
   composed Paul Bunyan, his first opera (to a libretto by Auden), as well
   as the first of many song cycles for Pears; the period was otherwise
   remarkable for a number of orchestral works, including Variations on a
   Theme of Frank Bridge (written in 1937 for string orchestra), the
   Violin Concerto, and Sinfonia da Requiem (for full orchestra).

   Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, Britten completing the
   choral works Hymn to Saint 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, and its premiere at Sadler's
   Wells in 1945 was his greatest success so far. However, Britten was
   encountering 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.

   Grimes marked the start of 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, with that of the 'outsider'
   particularly prevalent. Most feature such a character, excluded or
   misunderstood by society; often this is the protagonist, such as Peter
   Grimes and Owen Wingrave in their eponymous operas. An increasingly
   important influence was the music of the East, an interest fostered by
   a tour with Pears in 1957, when Britten was much 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 Coventry
   Cathedral.

   Britten developed close friendships with Dmitri Shostakovich and
   Mstislav Rostropovich in the 1960s, composing his Cello Suites for the
   latter and conducting the first Western performance of the former's
   Fourteenth Symphony; Shostakovich dedicated the 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.

   In the last decade or so of his life, Britten suffered from increasing
   ill-health and 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. 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, Peter Pears.
   The grave of Imogen Holst, a close friend of Britten, can be found
   directly behind.

Music

   One of Britten's best known works is The Young Person's Guide to the
   Orchestra ( 1946), which was composed to accompany Instruments of the
   Orchestra, an educational film produced by the British government,
   narrated and conducted by Malcolm Sargent. It has the subtitle
   Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, and takes a melody from
   Henry Purcell's Abdelazar as its central theme. Britten gives
   individual variations to each of the sections of the orchestra,
   starting with the woodwind, then the string instruments, the brass
   instruments and finally the percussion. Britten then brings the whole
   orchestra together again in a fugue before restating the theme to close
   the work. The original film's spoken commentary is often omitted in
   concert performances and recordings.

   Britten was an exceptionally accomplished pianist, and frequently
   performed in chamber music or accompanying lieder. However, apart from
   the Piano Concerto (1938) and the Diversions for piano and orchestra
   (written for Paul Wittgenstein in 1940), he wrote very little music for
   the instrument, and in a 1963 interview for the BBC said that he
   thought of it as "a background instrument".

   His work as a conductor included not only his own music but also that
   of many other composers, notably Mozart, Elgar, and Percy Grainger.

   One of Britten's solo works that has an indisputably central place in
   the repertoire of its instrument is his Nocturnal after John Dowland
   for guitar (1963). This work is typically spare in his late style, and
   shows the depth of his life-long admiration for Elizabethan lute songs.
   The theme of the work, John Dowland's Come, Heavy Sleep, emerges in
   complete form at the close of eight variations, each variation based on
   some feature, frequently transient or ornamental, of the song or its
   lute accompaniment.

Awards

     * Grammy Awards 1963 - Classical Album Of The Year (for War Requiem)
     * Grammy Awards 1963 - Best Classical Performance - Choral (Other
       Than Opera) (for War Requiem)
     * Grammy Awards 1963 - Best Classical Composition By A Contemporary
       Composer (for War Requiem)
     * Sonning Award 1967 (Denmark)
     * BRIT Awards 1977 - Best Orchestral Album (of the past 25 years)
       (for War Requiem)

Reputation

   The Scallop by Maggi Hambling is a sculpture dedicated to Benjamin
   Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh. The edge of the shell is pierced
   with the words "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" from
   Peter Grimes.
   The Scallop by Maggi Hambling is a sculpture dedicated to Benjamin
   Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh. The edge of the shell is pierced
   with the words "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" from
   Peter Grimes.

   Britten's status as one of the greatest English composers of the 20th
   century is now secure among professional critics. In the 1930s he made
   a conscious effort to set himself apart from the English musical
   mainstream, which he regarded as complacent, insular and amateurish.
   Many critics of the time, in return, distrusted his facility,
   cosmopolitanism and admiration for composers, such as Mahler, Berg, and
   Stravinsky, not considered appropriate models for a young English
   musician.

   Even today, criticism of his music is apt to become entangled with
   consideration of his personality, politics (especially his pacifism in
   World War II) and his sexuality. The publication of Humphrey
   Carpenter's biography in 1992, with its revelations of Britten's often
   fraught social, professional and sexual relationships, has ensured that
   he will remain a controversial figure. In 2003, a selection of
   Britten's writings, edited by Paul Kildea, revealed other ways that he
   addressed such issues as his pacifism. A further study along the lines
   begun by Carpenter is John Bridcut's Britten's Children, 2006, which
   describes Britten’s infatuation with a series of pre-adolescent boys
   throughout his life.

   For many musicians, however, Britten's technique, broad musical and
   human sympathies and ability to treat the most traditional of musical
   forms with freshness and originality place him at the head of composers
   of his generation. A notable tribute is a piece by the Estonian
   composer Arvo Pärt titled Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.
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