Benjamin Britten

It's been 25 years since the death of Benjamin Britten -- he died in December, 1976 -- and although no one's announced plans for any formal retrospective, particularly books or recordings, we felt this to be a good time to take a look at this remarkable composer and focus on several important aspects of his multi-layered and enduring legacy. The following article focuses on a particular and very significant recurring theme in Britten's music, followed by a selected discography; later in the year, we will offer more specific surveys of available recordings, with commentary and recommendations by Classicstoday.com's critics.

Benjamin Britten -- Variations on a Theme of Innocence Lost

"What is an English public schoolboy doing writing music of this kind?" Indeed, from where did 16-year-old Benjamin Britten acquire such creative ideas and technical facility as to prompt this remark from the distinguished scholarship committee at London's Royal College of Music? It was May, 1930, and Britten, who already had made up his mind to make his living as a composer -- "I know it can be done" -- took a long shot and submitted his name to the RCM in hopes of a scholarship to study music there. After the exam, he was immediately informed that he'd won. "A splendid piece of news!" wrote Britten's fatherly mentor, Frank Bridge, with whom he'd been taking occasional composition lessons for two years.

This splendid piece of news was the launching pad from which a "public schoolboy" from a provincial seaside town in East Anglia was to become the greatest composer of the 20th century. Up to that time, Britten's sheer enthusiasm for writing music produced reams of manuscript pages, full of grand ideas and overflowing with promise. Frank Bridge was to Britten as George Martin was to the Beatles -- Britten's creative course would have been infinitely and unimaginably different had his first teacher been from the ranks of the "old school" rather than the slightly eccentric but forward-thinking Bridge, who was immediately impressed with Britten at their first meeting, when Britten was only 14.

A casual browse through Britten's biography might lead the reader to assume that the young composer's road to success was fairly easy and unobstructed by failure, and to some degree this is true. Britten was fortunate that he knew from an early age exactly what he wanted to do. His parents supported his interest (his mother was a singer and pianist) and the young boy soon was surrounded by others who encouraged him and taught him. Most of his early difficulties arose not from any creative or technical deficiency, but from the criticism of shortsighted, disinterested, or jealous and far less talented teachers and fellow students.

As he discovered shortly after his arrival at the RCM, much of the teaching was inadequate and, as he later described, the attitude of most of the students was "amateurish and folksy." His own composition teacher, John Ireland, was very strict and demanded firm grounding in counterpoint, fugue, and harmony; but he often failed to show up for lessons, and sometimes was drunk or hung over. Although Britten later defended him and expressed gratitude for Ireland's bringing him through "a very difficult musical adolescence," Britten probably learned more from his continuing visits to Bridge and from the many London concerts he attended, where he heard music by Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Walton, and Stravinsky -- all of whom, with the exception of Mahler, were still alive.

Although Britten always seemed to know his destiny, and that somehow he would fulfill it, he never was free from the shadow of doubt and insecurity. He was, as Leonard Bernstein once said, "a man at odds with the world." He despised critics, he tended to use and discard associates, colleagues, and friends, he declined interviews, and avoided television appearances. It's not that he felt he was a bad composer or that he had nothing important to say, but he viewed most critics as musically illiterate, and feared the intrusive and potentially destructive effect of subjecting music to analysis, which he regarded as a kind of "prying." Britten's recurring bouts of depression and debilitating illness gradually wore away his exceptional compositional facility to the point that, in his final years, even writing notes on manuscript paper became difficult.

Through it all, however, Britten was blessed to have a nurturing, stimulating, and enviably supportive personal relationship that gave him stability that he desperately needed. This dearest, deepest, and most enduring inspiration was tenor Peter Pears, Britten's lifelong partner who he met in 1937 at age 23 -- Pears was 26. Perhaps owing to the complementary nature of their personalities, combined with their deep friendship and romantic relationship, they proved to be among music history's most potent collaborators. Britten wrote most of his song cycles and operas for Pears, performed countless piano/vocal concerts with him, consulted with him on character and plot details in works such as Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, and engaged Pears as co-librettist for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Britten's operas helped give Pears an immeasurable boost to his singing career, and Pears became the vocal embodiment of Britten's songs and tenor stage roles.

Every discussion of Britten's enormously productive career eventually considers the question of the composer's personal life, personality, and political, social, and moral views, and how these might relate to his music. In an interview after Britten's death in 1976 at age 63, Pears tried to deflect suggestions that Britten's sexuality and personal views were important to understanding his music. "He was a musical genius," said Pears, and flatly dismissed the idea that the composer's private life played any role in "the assessment of Ben's artistry and personality." Of course, that reading of Britten's biography -- and a careful listen to his music -- reveals otherwise. Britten the man and his music are inextricably entwined -- more so, perhaps than with any other composer, with the possible exception of his contemporary and friend Shostakovich.

Britten's motivation for almost every work, from the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings to the cello works to the War Requiem, arose from profound convictions and meaningful personal relationships. When he felt he could and should and must, in a creative sense, write something -- a cello sonata for Rostropovich, for instance; a Mass for a cathedral boys' choir -- it was done. There was no compulsion to simply write in a genre because "it was there." If there was something to say, he said it and moved on. Britten did not write church music because he had services to fill; nor did he write symphonies because it was a standard form that required attention, nor piano music just because he played the piano. Most of all, Britten was inspired by people, by fellow artists, by an idea

Perhaps most famously -- and successfully -- he was drawn to opera. Why? Because "I am a composer of opera throughout," he announced to fellow composer Michael Tippett, just prior to beginning his first major work in that genre, Peter Grimes. That Britten knew this so absolutely was a sign of the genuine-ness of his genius. He didn't "decide" to write an opera in the sense that one decides to write a letter or cook a meal or plant a garden. He didn't "think" he could write an opera -- he knew he could, just as he knew he could make a living as a composer in a world where that rarely happened. Not only did he create a whole new genre -- the English opera -- but he enabled it to flourish with his regular contribution of new works, such as Midsummer Night's Dream, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice. The fact that there has been no successor to his calling attests to the uniqueness and hugeness of his talent.

Britten's close relationship with poet W. H. Auden led to several important compositions -- in which the texts often had some deeply personal message for the composer. This often was expressed in terms that indicated Auden's impatience with Britten's anxious avoidance of emotional commitment. "Underneath the abject willow, Lover, sulk no more; Act from thought should quickly follow: What is thinking for? Your unique and moping station Proves you cold; Stand up and fold Your map of desolation. . ." So began one of Auden's several "calls to action" to bring Britten out of his perceived shell. In the Hymn to St. Cecilia, Auden not only dedicates the poem to Britten, but finishes it with two stanzas that both acknowledge the composer's struggle with his loss of innocence and urges him to celebrate it, ending with the lines: "O bless the freedom that you never chose, O wear your tribulation like a rose."

Britten's music to the Hymn convincingly embraces this idea of celebration -- and clearly indicates the strength of Auden's pull on the composer's emotional strings. Indeed, Auden's relentless attempts to liberate Britten from his inhibitions -- and the poet's discomforting psychological power over him -- led Britten to permanently distance himself from Auden in the years during and after World War II. This was both an acknowledgement of his past insecurity in the dominating presence of Auden, and an announcement of his determination to be liberated from its mysterious aura.

There is no mystery about Britten's near-obsession with childhood and the nature of innocence. The theme is evident everywhere in his works, and it takes many forms, from the familiar "innocence and its eventual corruption" to a simple longing for the carefree and cared-for delight of youthful pastimes. Childhood's delightful aspects are captured in some of the works for children's voices, such as the early song collection Friday Afternoons. Most notably, Britten's ultimate revel in the unblemished joy of boyhood, of "life before the fall," is A Ceremony of Carols, written at the same time as Auden's challenge in the Hymn to St. Cecilia.

Britten and Pears were returning to England from America in the early spring of 1943, aborting what they thought might be a permanent move from Britain's "provincialism and lack of vitality" to a land they perceived as holding "infinite promise." But, on a visit to California, the critical turning point in Britten's life came. "I suddenly realized where I belonged and what I lacked," Britten recalled years later. The trigger for this reaction was a 1941magazine article by E.M. Forster on the East Anglian poet George Crabbe. It described the exact part of England in which Britten had grown up and recently lived. More importantly, it referred to one of Crabbe's works, "The Borough," which contained the tale of Peter Grimes. In a later interview Pears remembered that after reading the article, "Ben . . . couldn't stay in America any more."

The spark that prompted the return home also lit the creative flame that three years later became the most sensational opera of the 20th century -- and assured the fulfillment of Britten's determination to make a living as a composer. After finding a copy of Crabbe's poem "Peter Grimes" in a Los Angeles bookstore, Britten realized that he "must write an opera." He and Pears immediately began to work out a possible scenario. Such a fortuitous discovery was not unique in Britten's career. The wonderful texts for A Ceremony of Carols were found in a book that happened to catch Britten's attention at a bookshop in Halifax, while their ship was docked there. The idea for Ceremony's unique and ingenious harp accompaniment most likely arose because on the same voyage Britten just happened to have two harp manuals along -- he had planned to write a concerto for the instrument.

This same year -- and again, the theme of innocence corrupted -- spawned the incomparable Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, a masterpiece as close to perfection as a work of art can get, in form, structure, text setting, instrumentation, orchestration, melodic beauty, and harmonic invention. Its choice of texts -- selected from various poets, including Tennyson, Blake, and Keats -- covers a range of nocturnal subjects, beginning at early evening and progressing to night. The underlying theme, of course, is corruption of the beautiful and innocent, sin's destructiveness, and death. There is no work in the repertoire quite like this, and it remains a singular tribute to Peter Pears and Dennis Brain, the inimitable horn player for whom it was written, and to Britten's sheer musicality and inventiveness.

Following this rather intimate and poignant expression came one of Britten's brightest, most optimistic works -- again, derived from a unique source and using radically different performing forces. The cantata Rejoice in the Lamb was commissioned for a festival to take place at a church in Northampton. The work for soloists and choir features a virtuoso organ part, and draws its text from the writings of 18th-century poet Christopher Smart. Smart was brilliant and strange and spent years in asylums, which is where he wrote "Jubilate Agno," the source of Britten's inspiration. The text concerns the worship and glorification of God by all living things, especially the animals and flowers, who honor God just by doing what they are made to do.

Peter Grimes, which received its premiere in June, 1945, was a head-on confrontation with the darker -- and more fascinating -- aspects of the corruption of innocence and its tragic consequences. The overt dramatic possibilities are enriched by the psychological subtext and the way it colors each character's motives. The story of Grimes, a fisherman, societal misfit, and suspected abuser and murderer of boy apprentices, handed Britten a perfect opportunity to explore in music many of his own political, social, and psychological conflicts: the individual against society; class behavior; and the complex relationship between good and evil. The overwhelming success of the opera set Britten on a course to break new dramatic and musical ground with each subsequent work.

Indeed, the 1940s saw Britten's most concentrated production of important and innovative works, but he was one of the few composers in history to have produced music of consistent high quality from his earliest period to his last days. "Hymn to the Virgin," written at age 16, and "A Boy Was Born," a work of astonishing complexity, maturity, and power, which Britten composed at age 19, remain two of Britten's -- and the century's -- most highly regarded choral works. Performers are still coming to terms with the cello works, string quartet, and vocal pieces he wrote during his last decade, all of which are accessible yet reflect Britten's intense quest for greater expression with simpler means.

From Britten's comments about his working methods, reinforced by close friends' observations, we have no doubt that he knew he was an exceptional musician and believed in the rightness of his creative ideas and the means by which he worked them out. He relied on many others for texts and librettos, for narrowing down grand or unformed ideas to practical, manageable ones -- but ultimately, he wrote down the notes that he already heard in his head and rarely changed anything at someone else's suggestion.

"Usually I have the music complete in my mind before putting pencil to paper," Britten explained in an interview during the 1960s. He went on to describe the process in which he would work out questions of form and texture, the sound of the instruments and voices, all in his head, away from the piano. And even when he began the task of writing actual notes on manuscript, he would work at a desk. After the first sketch he would try things out at the piano. At this stage, he made few revisions. To partially explain this method, a comment Britten once wrote to a young composer is revealing: ". . . remember that there won't always be 10 fingers playing the music; violins, oboes, and voices work differently from pianos." He goes on to encourage the young boy to try to imagine the "melody, the rhythm, the accompaniment, the color" of the whole all at once. Britten believed that this was the only way to conceptualize what you really wanted to write. Sitting at the keyboard allowed the piano -- and the fingers -- too much control.

Britten's facility at conceptualizing and actually putting down the notes on paper was a source of amazement to all those who observed it. Of course, he attributed his technique to his early days with Frank Bridge, who taught him probably the two most important things about work as a creative artist: "One was that you should find yourself and be true to what you found. The other was his scrupulous attention to good technique, the business of saying clearly what was in one's mind."

Britten's well-learned discipline paid off over and over throughout his career. He sometimes worked under appalling conditions. During the composition of Peter Grimes in 1944, RAF fighter planes constantly roared overhead; surrounded by emotional turmoil and his hosts' duo piano practicing while staying in southern California, Britten was driven to writing his first string quartet in a tool shed with a loud fan running to drown out the noise; he composed two of his most enduring pieces, Hymn to St. Cecilia and A Ceremony of Carols, in the "small, miserable, and airless" cabin of a freighter crossing the dangerous Atlantic waters during World War II. As he became more in demand, Britten had to work with many distractions -- schedules, planning performances for his annual Aldeburgh Festival, deadlines for premieres. His house often was inhabited by long-staying guests, and, he often had to work through illness.

"He was a good man," Pears said, reflecting on Britten's death. "How could he not be having written all that beautiful music?" Sure enough, but he also was the most deeply gifted composer of his time, who left the most accessible, diverse, and original body of compositions of the past 200 years. He knew the relationship between language and music, and worked fluently, not only -- and most famously -- in his native English, but also in French and even Russian. He knew the language of instruments like few other composers in history, and innately sensed how to combine their varied voices. And he knew the human voice and its uniquely expressive and intimate relationship to music.

Nothing in Britten's writing was arbitrary; his compositions are purposeful, but arise from some deeper, personal urging. "I write for the people," he insisted, but at the same time, he believed passionately in maintaining the highest level of professionalism. Pointedly, Britten was the single composer this century who was able and had the consummate creative genius to grab and totally embrace the present. He was a true artist -- and a master of his craft. And, due to the unprecedented documentation of his life and work -- diaries, letters, and above all, numerous exemplary recordings with Pears and others for whom his music was written, conducted by Britten himself -- we can get closer to Britten and his music than is possible with any other composer in history.

One of the most remarkable revelations comes in a comparison of the two recordings of the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings. The first was made in 1944, with a 33-year-old Pears and horn player Dennis Brain, for whom the work was composed. The second was recorded nearly 20 years later, the youthful, self-conscious, lyrically lovely Pears of the earlier recording now seasoned, assured, and ever more lovely. Britten's conducting is completely one with Pears' voice and interpretive manner. These are priceless documents not only of an amazingly fruitful collaboration, but of the intentions of a composer in the performance of his music.

In his 1964 speech accepting the Aspen Award -- for his "contribution to the advancement of the humanities" -- Britten emphasized his concern that his music should be for "the living." And he saw nothing wrong with "occasional music," that is, music written for particular performers and events. His carefully chosen words aptly described a guiding principle of his working process and provided a key to the enduring character of his music: "This is what we should aim at -- pleasing people today as seriously as we can, and letting the future look after itself."

Britten never quite let go of his childhood, and one of its manifestations was a children's sidewalk game, which he often played while on one of his frequent walks. "If I can avoid stepping on any of the lines," he would explain, "that will mean that I am a composer." While we all know that he got his wish, it most likely wasn't due to the agility of his feet. Like the animals in Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, praising and serving God just doing what they were made for, Britten simply did what he was put here to do -- and in the process performed the highest service to music and to the people of his and future generations.

With Benjamin Britten's recordings, we are fortunate to have a substantial body of work conducted by Britten himself. Often, the performances include the artists for whom the works were composed -- and, in most cases remain unrivalled. Even the sound on most of these conscientiously and carefully produced recordings is quite good, even excellent in some cases. The following selected discography lists 15 essential recordings, favoring Britten's own version wherever possible, and including several of the finest more recent releases. -- DCV

Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings, Op. 31; Les Illuminations for tenor and strings, Op. 18; Nocturne for tenor, seven obbligato instruments, and strings, Op. 60
Peter Pears, tenor; Barry Tuckwell, horn; Benjamin Britten, London Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra
Decca 417 153-2 (1959; 1963)

A Ceremony of Carols; Missa Brevis in D; A Hymn to the Virgin; A Hymn of St. Columba; Deus in Adjutorium Meum; Jubilate in E-flat
Choir of Westminster Cathedral, David Hill
Hyperion CDA 66220 (1986)

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra; Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge; Simple Symphony
Benjamin Britten, English Chamber Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra
Decca 417 509-2 (1963; 1967; 1968)

Peter Grimes
Peter Pears, Claire Watson, James Pease, David Kelly, Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Benjamin Britten
Decca 414 577-2 (1958)

Curlew River
Peter Pears, John Shirley-Quirk, English Opera Group, Benjamin Britten
Decca 421 858-2 (1965)

Four Sea Interludes (also includes Beethoven: Symphony No. 7)
Leonard Bernstein, Boston Symphony Orchestra
Deutsche Grammophon 431 768-2 (1990)

Spring Symphony; Hymn to St. Cecilia; Five Flower Songs
Monteverdi Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra, John Eliot Gardiner
Deutsche Grammophon 453 433-2 (1995)

Billy Budd; The Holy Sonnets of John Donne; Songs and Proverbs of William Blake
Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Glossop, John Shirley-Quirk; Ambrosian Opera Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
Decca 417 428-2 (1967)

A Boy Was Born; Christ's Nativity; A Shepherd's Carol; Hymn to the Virgin
Holst Singers, Stephen Layton
Hyperion CDA 66825 (1995)

Choral Dances from Gloriana; (with Handel: Ode for St. Cecilia's Day)
Peter Pears (tenor), Osian Ellis (harp); Ambrosian Singers, English Chamber Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
BBC 8009-2 (1967)

Rejoice in the Lamb; A Wedding Anthem; Festival Te Deum; A Boy was born
Corydon Singers, Matthew Best
Hyperion CDA 66126 (1984)

Our Hunting Fathers Op. 8; Who Are These Children? Op. 84; Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain Op. 55; Lachrymae Op. 48
Peter Pears (tenor); Dennis Brain (horn); Margaret Major (viola); Benjamin Britten (piano); London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
BBC 8014-2 (1956; 1963; 1971)

Sacred and Profane; Chorale after an Old French Carol; Choral Dances from Gloriana; A Hymn to the Virgin; A.M.D.G.; Five Flower Songs
Polyphony, Stephen Layton
Hyperion CDA 67140 (1999; 2000)

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood, John Shirley-Quirk, Helen Watts, Peter Pears; Choirs of Downside and Emanuel Schools, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
Decca 425 663-2 (1966)

War Requiem
Galina Vishnevskaya, Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; Bach Choir, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Benjamin Britten
Decca 414 383-2 (1963)

Recommended books:

Benjamin Britten: A Biography
Humphrey Carpenter (Scribner's, 1992)

Benjamin Britten
Michael Oliver (Phaidon, 1996)

The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten
Mervyn Cooke, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1999)