Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten (born November 22, 1913, died December 4, 1976) was a British composer and pianist. He is generally considered to be the greatest British composer since World War II, and some say the greatest since Henry Purcell.
He was born in Lowestoft in Suffolk, lived in the USA from c.1939 to 1942 and died in Aldeburgh.
Some of his works were based on British folk songs, and they, like many of his operatic roles, were intended to be sung by his partner, the tenor Peter Pears. Britten founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 and became a life peer in 1976.
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. 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 instruments in 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. In the original film there was a spoken commentary, but this is often omitted in concert performances and recordings.
Works
- Music for the famous GPO documentary film Night Mail (1936) with words by W. H. Auden
- Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937)
- Ceremony of Carols (USA, 1942)
- Serenade (USA, 1943)
- Peter Grimes (USA, 1945), an opera based on a folk tale about a Suffolk fisherman
- The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946)
- The Rape of Lucretia (1946)
- Billy Budd (1951), after Herman Melville's novel)
- Gloriana (1953) for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
- Turn of the Screw (1954), an opera based on the story by Henry James
- Noye's Fludde (1958)
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960)
- War Requiem (1961) - a major bestseller, regarded as his masterpiece, although its great emotional intensity was too much for some critics.
- Curlew River (1964)
- The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966)