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Benjamin Britten

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Benjamin Britten was an English composer, conductor and pianist and a central figure in British music of the twentieth century. He was born in 1913 in the fishing town of Lowestoft in Suffolk, on the feast day of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with Frank Bridge. He first attracted attention in 1934 with the a cappella work A Boy Was Born. With the premiere of the opera Peter Grimes in 1945 he became internationally famous.

Music and breakthrough

In the thirty years that followed he wrote a further fourteen operas, in addition to orchestral, choral, solo vocal and chamber music and film music. Well-known works are the War Requiem of 1962 and The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, an orchestral piece that introduces the instruments one by one. He liked writing for children and amateurs, for example the opera Noye's Fludde, the Missa Brevis and the song collection Friday Afternoons, and he often composed with particular performers in mind. His most important muse was his life and working partner, the tenor Peter Pears. Together with Pears and Eric Crozier he founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, and in 1967 he had the concert hall Snape Maltings built. In 1976 he became the first composer to be given a peerage for life, a life peerage, shortly before his death at the age of sixty-three.

Influence

Britten brought opera and choral singing in England back to a high level and showed that serious music can also be written for children and amateurs. As a result his work can still be heard today in the concert hall and in education.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Notice how each instrument group and each instrument in turn plays the theme, and how the fugue at the end brings everything together again.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Categories: Artists