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 Master composer, conductor, concert pianist, and accompanist; pacifist, homosexual, and pedophile: all of these labels have been used to describe Benjamin Britten, one of the most ironically conservative figures in modern art music. At once embraced and neglected by the "classical" musicians of the late twentieth century, his life and work stand to be reexamined. His artistic presence has calmly and quietly helped to determine the shape of art music as it is, and as it will be.
Edward Benjamin Britten was born to "a very ordinary middle-class family" in Lowescroft, England, on November 22, 1913. His father was a dentist, and his mother was an amateur pianist who often sang him to sleep. Britten began piano lessons with her at age five and began composing soon after. By the time he was seven, Britten had advanced enough at the piano to warrant professional tutelage. By age 10 he was writing songs, had begun lessons on a second instrument, the viola, and had even penned a short oratorio (it was 16 pages long and was called Samuel). Three years later he began composition studies with Frank Bridge, who was to be the most important early influence on Britten's development. Britten's first significant composition under Bridge's tutelage was the Quatre Chansons françaises (four French songs), completed at age 14.
Britten attended prep school at Gresham's, a 'liberal' school that was very serious about music, but by 1930, Britten's parents had promised him that he could apply to the Royal College of Music before completion at Gresham's. Britten received a scholarship to attend the Royal College, where he studied composition with John Ireland and piano with Arthur Benjamin. He enjoyed London, and attended performances of music by Schoenberg and Stravinsky. He also came to admire Alban Berg, Gustav Mahler, and Dmitri Shostakovich, all composers that were far from the height of fashion in English music circles. He graduated RCM in 1933, by then having written a string quartet, several songs, a Sinfonietta Op. 1 for chamber orchestra (dedicated to Frank Bridge), and Phantasy Quartet, Op. 2, for oboe and strings. The latter was the first of Britten's compositions to be performed outside of England, at the ISCM Festival in Florence, Italy. The performance took place in 1934, and Britten traveled to Florence to attend. While in Florence he received notice that his father was dying, and Britten rushed home, only to find that his father had already been dead by the time he had received the notice. It was the first real tragedy of Britten's life, and it marked the end of his innocence -- an innocence that he would spend his whole life trying to recapture.
In the autumn of 1934, Britten was pursuing work writing incidental music for films, and he found a job at the GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit in 1935. It was here that he met W. H. Auden, a poet of considerable stature who was to become a very important friend and mentor to Britten. Auden and his collaborator, Christopher Isherwood, were very open about their sexuality, and they encouraged Britten to come to terms with himself in this way. Auden and Isherwood were also a tremendous influence on Britten's political and social conscience. Britten had been a pacifist since his studies with Frank Bridge (Bridge was a World War I veteran), but the intellectual atmosphere that these two men created helped Britten to find a voice for his pacifism. He wrote several political works during this time, including a piece for wind band called War and Death (later called Russian Funeral), and the "symphonic cycle" Our Hunting Fathers Op. 8, which was the first artistic collaboration between Auden and Britten.
Although well received by the audience, Our Hunting Fathers was condemned by critics as being incomprehensible and unnecessarily complicated. Britten had already developed contempt for critics by that time; he had seen the effects of adverse criticism on Bridge, and he was now beginning to experience some of the same. British critics seemed to be unwilling to tolerate or understand the European influences present in both Bridge's and Britten's music. Ironically, later in his career, Britten was often criticized for being too conservative. Thus Britten was able to come full circle: criticized by traditionalists for being too modern, and later by modernists for being too traditional. It is no wonder that Britten wanted nothing to do with critics and was haunted by them for much of his life.
In 1937, three months after the death of his mother, Benjamin Britten met the love of his life: the tenor Peter Pears. The passing of his mother was the final end to Britten's childhood, so to speak (he was 23), and in light of this end, he abruptly conceded to his newly accepted orientation. The relationship with Pears began two months after their first meeting, and they remained together until Britten's death.
With World War II looming in Europe, and Auden and Isherwood now beckoning from the distant shore, Britten and Pears moved to the United States in 1939. During their stay, Britten composed several new works and was present at the United States premiere of some of his previous ones. Among the new works composed were Paul Bunyan Op. 17 (an operetta written in collaboration with Auden); the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo Op. 22, Britten's first song cycle written especially for Pears; and his String Quartet No. 1 Op. 25 (a different piece from the quartet he wrote as a student). The relationship with Pears soon provided a very tight focus for the development of Britten's work as a composer. Creating works for Pears to perform became Britten's chief objective, and ventures into composition for other solo instruments and otherwise non-vocal music were reserved for the interim between the projects designed for Pears (indeed, Pears's whole career was built on his collaborations with Britten, and on those works written specifically for him by Britten). These "diversions" took the forms of symphonic works, string quartets, choral works, cantatas, and eventually included solo and/or ensemble pieces written specifically for many of the most important instrumentalists of the day, such as Mstislav Rostropovich, the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (Rostropovich's wife), guitarist Julian Bream, and harpist Osian Ellis.
The wide diversity of projects to which Britten dedicated his time allowed him to continue to refine his style, until he was eventually equipped to write absolutely anything he wished. Other than this refinement of its basic tenets, Britten's compositional language remained largely unchanged from its inception (according to the composer himself, around Op. 8), until its culmination (Op. 66), after which he abruptly shifted gears and set about redefining himself as a composer.
Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, immediately filing for registration as conscientious observers to avoid involvement in the war. Not long thereafter came the English premiere of the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, which proved a huge popular success. This began an amazing series of successful compositions, the most important among them being Peter Grimes Op. 33, Britten's first full-fledged opera, completed in 1945. This work forever changed the history of English art music, becoming the first internationally renowned masterpiece of opera to come out of the Isles since Henry Purcell in the seventeenth century. In the aftermath of Grimes, Britten received countless commissions and was able to pick and choose the ones he desired. In the same year that he completed Grimes, he also finished a substantial orchestral work, A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra Op. 34 (a didactic work written as variations on a theme by Purcell), another song cycle for Pears (The Holy Sonnets of John Donne Op. 35), and his String Quartet No. 2 Op. 36. Britten had by now developed a Herculean work ethic that made it impossible for him to go any substantial length of time without composing. It is believed that this overburdening contributed largely to the health problems that eventually led to his death.
In 1947 Britten and Pears set up house in Aldeburgh and a year later established the first Aldeburgh Festival, which was to become an annual event (it still exists today). It was at this festival that many of Britten's later and most famous works received their world premiere. These include Lachrymae Op. 48 for viola and piano in 1950; the opera A Midsummer Night's Dream Op. 64 in 1960; the Sonata in C Op. 61 for cello and piano the following year; the Nocturnal after John Dowland Op. 70 for solo guitar in 1964; and the Suite Op. 83 for harp (for Osian Ellis) in 1969.
In addition to composing for Pears, Britten also toured extensively with him as his accompanist. They toured and performed to great success both works by Britten and by other composers, such as the famous song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin, by Franz Schubert. Britten also conducted his own works on numerous occasions, in concert and in recording. He had a pragmatic style, short on dramatic flair but long on competency, that was appreciated by the instrumentalists who worked with him.
The composition of Britten's broadest and most comprehensive work occurred as a result of the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral, which had been almost completely obliterated by bombing in WWII. The piece was Britten's War Requiem Op. 66, and it turned him into a living legend, premiering at the new Cathedral in 1962. The text made use of both the Latin Mass and poetry by Wilfred Owen, a British poet who wrote in the trenches and was killed during WWI. Britten himself co-conducted at the premiere; the scope of the work was such that it required two conductors! The piece was a resounding success, and the later recording sold over 200,000 copies in the first five months. After this work, Britten dedicated himself to finding a new voice for himself in his work, refusing to resort to the familiar "bag of tricks" that he always used, and which he had now completely exhausted.
It would seem that, amidst all this success, Britten should have been satisfied, and that he would have been regarded unequivocally as a genuine master of the twentieth century. But this was not the case. Britten felt compelled to speak out against composers who wrote music that had no connection to its audience, claiming that "there are audiences out there that are not discriminating about [modern music]. They think that everything new is good; that if it is shocking it is important." There was a strong contingency of young modernist composers who thought of Britten as irrelevantly conservative, and there were many outspoken critics who mirrored this sentiment. Britten was still very sensitive to criticism, and he withdrew from it. As a result of all this perceived perniciousness, he withdrew more and more from public view as he grew older. At the center of his life was Aldeburgh and Peter Pears, and the increasingly devoted composer saw only friends, performers, and listeners who were willing to come to him at his home.
Homosexuality was legalized in England in 1967, providing Britten and Pears with a degree of freedom of lifestyle that they had never been able to enjoy. But by then Britten was becoming feeble. He had already written many works addressing, albeit rather clandestinely, the subject of his sexuality (Peter Grimes and Billy Budd Op. 50 being the most regarded among them), but he felt the need to write one more. Death in Venice Op. 88 is based on a novella by Thomas Mann and deals with an elderly writer who is obsessed with a 12-year-old boy in Venice during the cholera epidemic. Britten was prepared to "come out" on even this sensitive subject: he had been, since his twenties, inclined to find attraction in the innocence and beauty of young boys. Consensus determines that he never acted on it, but perhaps because of the deep level of self-examination to which he was willing to subject himself for his work, he was never able to ignore or deny this inclination. During his work on the opera Britten was diagnosed with a defective heart valve. Britten refused surgery until after completing the opera. The surgery was only partially successful, leaving Britten's right arm partially paralyzed, and effectively ending his piano and conducting careers. Britten was too sick to attend the premiere of Death in Venice in June of 1973.
Britten was unable to compose for a while after his surgery, but eventually forced himself to complete seven more works. He hired the young composer Colin Matthews to aid him in score preparation. Among these final works are Sacred and Profane Op. 91 for five-part chorus; Phaedra Op. 93, a dramatic cantata for mezzo-soprano and small orchestra; his String Quartet No. 3 Op. 94; and the Welcome Ode Op. 95 for youth choir and orchestra, Britten's last completed work. He died in Pears's arms on December 4, 1976, at age 63.
It had been nearly 300 years since Great Britain had produced a composer of Benjamin Britten's importance. He received the Order of Merit in 1965 (the highest honor the throne can bestow) and became a Life Peer in 1976 -- all this to a man who had been a pacifist during the rise of the Third Reich (it is assumed that Britten had been offered a knighthood and refused, because of that honor's martial association) and undeniably homosexual during a time when that practice was considered immoral and was illegal. The notion that Britten's music is irrelevant because of its assumed disassociation with the music of Schoenberg and his disciples (the "true" sound of the 20th century) is increasingly questioned, and musicians and audiences alike are beginning to acknowledge Britten's deserved place among the modern masters. Time will tell.
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