Peter Pears

Sir Peter Pears was born in Farnham, Surrey, in June 1910 and educated at Lancing College and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read music for one year before leaving to train at the Royal College of Music. He worked through the late 1930s as a tenor in the BBC Singers and the Glyndebourne chorus, and met Benjamin Britten in 1937 — the beginning of a personal and professional partnership that lasted until Britten’s death in 1976.

His central work was inseparable from Britten’s. Britten composed nearly every leading tenor role of his stage and concert output with Pears in mind: Peter Grimes (1945), the Male Chorus in *The Rape of Lucretia* (1946), Albert Herring (1947), Captain Vere in *Billy Budd* (1951), Essex in *Gloriana* (1953), Quint in *The Turn of the Screw* (1954), the title role in *The Burning Fiery Furnace* (1966), and Aschenbach in *Death in Venice* (1973). Beyond Britten he was a regular Aldeburgh Festival lieder recitalist, particularly in Schubert (the *Schöne Müllerin* and *Winterreise* he recorded with Britten became reference recordings) and in the Schumann, Wolf and Strauss song repertoire. He also worked in the Bach Passions and the Handel oratorios.

Pears was knighted in 1978. He died in Aldeburgh in April 1986. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his Britten and recital work, particularly the Aldeburgh Festival appearances.