Composer
Benjamin Britten
- 13 Recordings
- 09 Ensembles
- 11 Venues
- 04 Decades
Biography
Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in November 1913, the son of a dental surgeon and an amateur singer. He showed unusual compositional precocity, and from 1928 was taught privately by Frank Bridge — a formative relationship he later credited with his entire technical foundation. He entered the Royal College of Music in 1930, studied with John Ireland and Arthur Benjamin, and graduated to a rapid London career as a composer of film and radio music alongside concert works.
He met the tenor Peter Pears in 1937, and the partnership — personal and professional — lasted the rest of his life. Britten and Pears emigrated to the United States in 1939, returning to England in 1942. The London premiere of *Peter Grimes* at Sadler’s Wells in 1945 was a watershed for British opera, and the works that followed — *The Rape of Lucretia*, *Albert Herring*, *Billy Budd*, *The Turn of the Screw*, *Death in Venice* — established him as the central British operatic composer of the century. He founded the Aldeburgh Festival with Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948.
Britten was made a Companion of Honour in 1953, awarded the Order of Merit in 1965, and created a life peer in 1976 — the first composer to be ennobled. He died in Aldeburgh in December 1976. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his stage and concert work.
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