Biography
Benjamin Britten is one of the most outstanding British composers to have emerged this century.
He had a unique voice in the world of composition and has left us with a catalogue of works many of which are already considered masterpieces, and which find themselves firmly placed in the standard classical repertoire.
Britten was something of a child prodigy: by the time he had left preparatory school he had already composed more than forty works.
He met up with Frank Bridge, a composer who had a great influence on the young Britten and who advised him to study at the Royal College of Music with John Ireland.
Britten didn’t enjoy his time at the college very much and, rather peculiarly, only ever had one of his own works performed whilst he was there.
The year after he left college he joined the GPO Film Unit and was responsible for providing the soundtracks for a number of films over the five-year period that he was there.
He made some useful contacts whilst in that job, one of whom was the poet W. H. Auden, with whom he struck up a close relationship both professionally and personally.
Britten consistently produced fine works throughout his life and one of the early high points in his career was to perform his own Piano Concerto at the Proms in 1937.
However, he got itchy feet and he and his friend Peter Pears, the tenor, decided to leave the country and set off for Canada, later settling in Long Island in the United States.
They returned in 1942 and Britten continued to write, quickly making a name for himself writing opera.
The first real triumph was Peter Grimes, which is now regarded as a classic, and this was followed by The Rape of Lucretia (for eight singers and twelve instrumentalists) and Albert Herring, another full-scale masterpiece.
Britten moved house from Snape to the nearby Aldeburgh, and with Peter Pears set up his own festival, which from 1948 has become a highly respected and much loved annual event.
Britten found the Maltings in Snape to be a wonderful venue for music, and after it was burnt down in 1969 he immediately had it rebuilt.
It remains one of the finest halls for live performance and recording in the world.
Prolific by nature, Britten has left us with a startling array of works in many forms – operas, orchestral music, songs, instrumental works and concertos.
He also struck up a friendship with the celebrated cellist Rostropovich and this inspired the wonderful Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (1965/67/71), as well as the lesser known Symphony for Cello and Orchestra (1963).
Britten died in 1976 following a series of heart problems.
He left his mark on the history of music as one of the finest of all twentieth-century composers, with a particular artistry and gift for writing music that can be appreciated by everyone.
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge
1937, Orchestral
One of Benjamin Britten’s most brilliant pieces and the first to win him worldwide attention was his popular set of variations on a theme by Frank Bridge. The composer was only twenty-three when he was asked to write a new work for the Boyd Neel String Orchestra, to be performed at the Salzburg Festival of 1937. Neel himself remembers that, ten days after asking Britten,
‘[he appeared] . . . with the complete score sketched out. In another four weeks it was fully scored for strings as it stands today, but for the addition of one bar.’
The theme Britten chose for these variations was from the second of the Three Idylls for string orchestra by Frank Bridge (1879–1944), who was a distinguished composer of his time as well as conductor of the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras and the Covent Garden Opera.
The first performance at the Salzburg Festival was a success – so much so that within two years the work had been heard over fifty times in Europe and America. It consists of an introduction, theme, ten variations, and a finale.
The introduction and theme is a brief display of the theme upon which the whole work is based, and one soon becomes familiar with its five-note opening. The variations assume various forms, ranging from a march to a romance, from a waltz to a funeral march, yet at all times the main theme can be heard somewhere in the music, be it as a solo from the violins or as a background to another melody. In the slow (Lento) conclusion it is played by all the violins on the G string.
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings: ‘Hymn’
1943, Orchestral
Perhaps Britten’s masterpiece, this serenade is based on seven poems about evening and darkness, including Keats’s sonnet ‘Sleep’.
Albert Herring
1947, Opera
Albert Herring is a social comedy about a young man who is elected May King because no virgins can be found in the village to be May Queen.