Benjamin Britten must be accepted as the most outstanding English
composer working in the mid-20th century, winning a significant
international reputation, while remaining thoroughly English in
inspiration, a feat his immediate predecessors had been unable
fully to achieve.
Britten won a triumph in 1945 with his opera Peter Grimes, first staged when the Sadler's Wells in London re-opened after the 1939-1945 war. The aspirations of the central character, the fisherman Peter Grimes, a man at odds with the community in which he lives, are frustrated by a combination of social pressure and sheer chance, leading to the suicide of the protagonist. The drama is set against the background of the sea, in various moods, summarised in the Four Sea Interludes that form an evocative part of concert repertoire. Britten's subsequent operas, including the Church Parables that draw inspiration from Japan and the remarkable operatic version of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Britten's last opera, constitute a very significant element in dramatic and operatic repertoire.
The best known of all Britten's orchestral music must be the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, more generally known under its popular title The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, a work that is both a tribute to the great 17th century English composer Henry Purcell and a useful teaching instrument. Lachrymae, subtitled Reflections on a Theme of Dowland, a tribute to a still earlier predecessor, the lutenist John Dowland, arranged by the composer shortly before his death from its original viola and piano version is immensely moving, while the early Matinées Musicales, based on the music of Rossini, is at once attractive. Britten's Simple Symphony, for string orchestra, based on tunes written by the composer in childhood, is a useful element in string orchestra repertoire.
Vocal & Choral Music
Britten was strongly influenced in his music and in his life by the tenor Peter Pears. For him he wrote a quantity of songs, including the splendid Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, and the evocative Nocturne, incomparable settings of the words of various English poets, with a number of other settings of poets from Michelangelo to Thomas Hardy, for tenor and piano. His folk-song arrangements have pleased a wide audience. Major choral works include the War Requiem, a work that combines the text of the Latin Requiem with the war poems of Wilfred Owen, an expression of Britten's own pacifism.
Chamber Music
Britten's chamber music includes a Cello Sonata and three Cello Suites for his friend the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, a fine Suite for the Welsh harpist Osian Ellis and a Nocturnal after John Dowland for the guitarist Julian Bream. Of his three numbered string quartets, Quartet No. 2 was written to mark the 250th anniversary of the death of Purcell, the quartet's inspiration.
