BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913 - 1976)

An English 20th Century composer

Benjamin Britten is considered by many people to be one of the greatest 20th Century composers. He was born in Lowestoft in Suffolk on St. Cecilia’s day, 22nd November. St. Cecila is the patron saint of music.

Britten’s first composition lessons, at the age of 12, were with the English composer Frank Bridge. Later, he became a student at the Royal College of Music.

Soon after leaving college, Britten was offered a contract with a major music publisher, and was also asked to compose background music for a series of documentary films.

In 1939 he went to live in America. As the 2nd World War progressed, he began to feel that his rightful place was in his own country; so in 1942 he returned to England, eventually settling in Aldeburgh, a small fishing town on the Suffolk coast.

In 1948, Britten founded the Aldeburgh Festival at which concerts are held each year featuring performances of his compositions. In his music, Britten always avoided following fashionable trends of style.

Whereas many 20th Century composers were exploring new and often strange sounds and techniques when writing their music, Britten continued to make use of the basic and familiar materials of music used by other great composers before him.

He may often mould these ingredients and mix them together in unexpected ways, but the result is always imaginative, totally convincing and deeply sincere.

Britten had a particular love and understanding of the human voice and a marvellous sensitivity in setting words to music. His finest works include his ‘Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge’; ‘A Ceremony of Carols’ for boys voices and harp;

the opera ‘Peter Grimes’; ‘Spring Symphony’; ‘Noyes Fludde’, a children’s opera, and the work which many consider to be his masterpiece: the ‘War Requiem’.

In his ‘War Requiem’, Britten sets sections of the Latin words of the Mass for the Dead interwoven with settings of poems by Wilfred Owen, a young English poet who died in battle, just one week before the end of the First World War.

In 1946, Britten was asked to write music for a film which was to demonstrate the instruments of the orchestra. As he greatly admired the English composer Henry Purcell, he wrote a set of variations on a tune from the

play: ‘Abdelazer’. He called his piece ‘Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell’ – but he gave it a second title by which it is now more usually known: ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’.