Editing Benjamin Britten (section)

===Public school and Royal College of Music===
[[File:Mahler-Ireland-Stravinsky-Shostakovich.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Early influences, clockwise from top left: [[Gustav Mahler|Mahler]], [[John Ireland (composer)|Ireland]], [[Dmitri Shostakovich|Shostakovich]], [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]]]]
In September 1928 Britten went as a [[Boarding school|boarder]] to [[Gresham's School, Holt|Gresham's School]], in [[Holt, Norfolk]]. At the time he felt unhappy there, even writing in his diary of contemplating suicide or running away:{{Sfn|Bridcut|2006|p=16}} he hated being separated from his family, most particularly from his mother; he despised the music master; and he was shocked at the prevalence of bullying, though he was not the target of it.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=11}}{{Efn|When it came to leaving Gresham's, Britten found it a wrench, confessing: "I am terribly sorry to leave such boys as these. [...] I didn't think I should be so sorry to leave."<ref name="bridcut17">{{Harvnb|Bridcut|2006|p=17}}.</ref> In his later years, Britten helped secure a place at the school for [[David Hemmings]],<ref name=bridcut17/>}} He remained there for two years and in 1930 he won a composition scholarship at the [[Royal College of Music]] (RCM) in London; his examiners were the composers [[John Ireland (composer)|John Ireland]] and [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]] and the college's harmony and counterpoint teacher, S. P. Waddington.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=14}}

Britten was at the RCM from 1930 to 1933, studying composition with Ireland and piano with [[Arthur Benjamin]]. He won the [[Arthur Sullivan|Sullivan]] Prize for composition, the [[Cobbett Competition]] for chamber music, and was twice winner of the [[Ernest Farrar]] Prize for composition.{{Sfn|Craggs|2002|p=4}} Despite these honours, he was not greatly impressed by the establishment: he found his fellow-students "amateurish and folksy" and the staff "inclined to suspect technical brilliance of being superficial and insincere."{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=35}}{{Efn|This academic mistrust of Britten's technical skills persisted. In 1994 the critic Derrick Puffett wrote that in the 1960s Britten was still regarded with suspicion on account of his technical expertise; Puffett quoted remarks by the Professor of Music at Oxford in the 1960s, [[Jack Westrup|Sir Jack Westrup]], to the effect that Britten was to be distrusted for his "superficial effects", whereas Tippett was considered "awkward and technically unskilled but somehow authentic."<ref>Puffett, Derrick. "Benjamin Britten: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter", ''[[Albion (journal)|Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies]]'', Volume 26, No 2, Summer 1994, pp. 395–396 {{JSTOR|4052369}} {{Subscription}}.</ref>}} Another Ireland pupil, the composer [[Humphrey Searle]], said that Ireland could be "an inspiring teacher to those on his own wavelength"; Britten was not, and learned little from him.<ref>Cole, Hugo. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/942508 "Review – Britten"], ''[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]'', New Series, No 78, Autumn 1966, pp. 31–32 {{Subscription}}.</ref> He continued to study privately with Bridge, although he later praised Ireland for "nurs[ing] me very gently through a very, very difficult musical adolescence."<ref name="c40">{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|p=40}}.</ref>

Britten also used his time in London to attend concerts and become better acquainted with the music of [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]], [[Dmitri Shostakovich|Shostakovich]] and, most particularly, [[Gustav Mahler|Mahler]].{{Efn|Britten later wrote about his youthful discovery of Mahler that he had been told that the composer was "long-winded and formless&nbsp;... a romantic self-indulgent, who was so infatuated with his ideas that he could never stop. Either he couldn't score at all, or he could only score like Wagner, using enormous orchestras with so much going on that you couldn't hear anything clearly. Above all, he was not original. In other words, nothing for a young student!" Britten judged, on the contrary, "His influence on contemporary writing&nbsp;... could only be beneficial. His style is free from excessive personal mannerisms, and his scores are models of how the modern virtuoso orchestra should be used, nothing being left to chance and every note sounding."<ref name="mahler">{{Harvnb|Britten|1977}}.</ref>}} He intended postgraduate study in Vienna with [[Alban Berg]], [[Arnold Schoenberg]]'s student, but was eventually dissuaded by his parents, on the advice of the RCM staff.<ref name="White1516">{{Harvnb|White|1954|pp=15–16}}.</ref>

The first of Britten's compositions to attract wide attention were composed while at the RCM: the [[Sinfonietta (Britten)|Sinfonietta]], Op. 1 (1932), the oboe quartet ''[[Phantasy Quartet|Phantasy]]'', Op. 2, dedicated to [[Léon Goossens]] who played the first performance in a [[BBC]] broadcast on 6 August 1933, and a set of choral variations ''[[A Boy was Born]]'', written in 1933 for the [[BBC Singers]], who first performed it the following year.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=48, 53}} In this same period he wrote ''Friday Afternoons'', a collection of 12 songs for the pupils of Clive House School, [[Prestatyn]], where his brother was headmaster.{{Sfn|Oliver|1996|p=217}}