Editing Benjamin Britten

{{Short description|English composer and pianist (1913–1976)}}
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<!-- Before adding an infobox, please read [[Talk:Benjamin Britten/Archive 1#Infobox]]. -->[[File:Benjamin Britten, London Records 1968 publicity photo for Wikipedia (restored).jpg|thumb|Britten in 1968, by [[Hans Wild]]]]
'''Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten''' {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|OM|CH}} (22 November 1913&nbsp;– 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera ''[[Peter Grimes]]'' (1945), the ''[[War Requiem]]'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''[[The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra]]'' (1945).

Britten was born in [[Lowestoft]], [[Suffolk]], the son of a dentist. He showed talent from an early age. He studied at the [[Royal College of Music]] in London and privately with the composer [[Frank Bridge]]. Britten first came to public attention with the ''[[a cappella]]'' choral work ''[[A Boy Was Born]]'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for [[English National Opera|Sadler's Wells]] and [[The Royal Opera|Covent Garden]], he wrote [[chamber opera]]s for small forces, suitable for performance in venues of modest size. Among the best known of these is ''[[The Turn of the Screw (opera)|The Turn of the Screw]]'' (1954). Recurring themes in his operas include the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society and the corruption of innocence.

Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. He took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, including the opera ''[[Noye's Fludde]]'', a ''[[Missa Brevis (Britten)|Missa Brevis]]'', and the song collection ''[[Friday Afternoons]]''. He often composed with particular performers in mind. His most frequent and important muse was his personal and professional partner, the tenor [[Peter Pears]]; others included [[Kathleen Ferrier]], [[Jennifer Vyvyan]], [[Janet Baker]], [[Dennis Brain]], [[Julian Bream]], [[Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau]], [[Osian Ellis]] and [[Mstislav Rostropovich]]. Britten was a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record. He also performed and recorded works by others, such as [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]]'s ''[[Brandenburg Concertos]]'', [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] symphonies, and song cycles by [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]] and [[Robert Schumann|Schumann]].

Together with Pears and the librettist and producer [[Eric Crozier]], Britten founded the annual [[Aldeburgh Festival]] in 1948, and he was responsible for the creation of [[Snape Maltings]] concert hall in 1967. In 1976, he was the first composer to be given a [[life peer]]age. He died shortly afterwards, aged 63.

==Early years==
[[File:Birthplace of Benjamin Britten.JPG|thumb|Britten's birthplace in Lowestoft, which was the Britten family home for more than twenty years]]
Britten was born in the fishing port of [[Lowestoft]] in [[Suffolk]], on the east coast of England on 22 November 1913,{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=1}} the feast day of [[Saint Cecilia]], the patron saint of music.{{Sfn|Kennedy|1983|p=2}} He was the youngest of four children of Robert Victor Britten (1877–1934) and his wife Edith Rhoda, ''née'' Hockey (1874–1937).{{Efn|Britten's siblings were (Edith) Barbara (1902–82), Robert Harry Marsh ("Bobby", 1907–87), and (Charlotte) Elizabeth ("Beth", 1909–89).{{Sfn|Evans|2009|p=513}}}} Robert Britten's youthful ambition to become a farmer had been thwarted by lack of capital, and he had instead trained as a dentist, a profession he practised successfully but without pleasure. While studying at [[Charing Cross Hospital]] in London he met Edith Hockey, the daughter of a [[civil service]] clerk in the British Government's [[Home Office]]. They were married in September 1901 at [[St John's, Smith Square]], London.{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=3}}

The consensus among biographers of Britten is that his father was a loving but somewhat stern and remote parent.<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|pp=4, 7}}; {{Harvnb|Kildea|2013|p=4}}; {{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=2}}; and {{Harvnb|Powell|2013|pp=10–11}}.</ref> Britten, according to his sister Beth, "got on well with him and shared his wry sense of humour, dedication to work and capacity for taking pains."{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=36}} Edith Britten was a talented amateur musician and secretary of the Lowestoft Musical Society.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kildea|2013|p=4}}; and {{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=3}}.</ref> In the English provinces of the early 20th century, distinctions of social class were taken very seriously. Britten described his family as "very ordinary middle class", but there were aspects of the Brittens that were not ordinary: Edith's father was illegitimate, and her mother was an alcoholic; Robert Britten was an agnostic and refused to attend church on Sundays.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=4–5}} Music was the principal means by which Edith Britten strove to maintain the family's social standing, inviting the pillars of the local community to musical soirées at the house.<ref name="p7">{{Harvnb|Powell|2013|p=7}}.</ref>

When Britten was three months old he contracted [[pneumonia]] and nearly died.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=3}} The illness left him with a damaged heart,{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=6}} and doctors warned his parents that he would probably never be able to lead a normal life.{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=25}} He recovered more fully than expected, and as a boy was a keen tennis player and cricketer.<ref>{{Harvnb|Blyth|1981|p=25}}; and {{Harvnb|Powell|2013|p=16}}.</ref> To his mother's great delight he was an outstandingly musical child, unlike his sisters, who inherited their father's indifference to music, while his brother, Robert, though musically talented, was interested only in [[ragtime]].{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=6–7}} Edith gave the young Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He made his first attempts at composition when he was five.{{Sfn|White|1954|p=2}} He started piano lessons when he was seven years old, and three years later began to play the [[viola]].{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=8, 13}} He was one of the last composers brought up on exclusively live music: his father refused to have a gramophone or, later, a radio in the house.<ref name=p7/>

==Education==

===Lowestoft===
When he was seven Britten was sent to a [[dame school]], run by the Misses Astle. The younger sister, Ethel, gave him piano lessons; in later life he said that he remained grateful for the excellence of her teaching.{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=5}} The following year he moved on to a [[Preparatory school (United Kingdom)|prep school]], [[Old Buckenham Hall|South Lodge]], Lowestoft, as a [[Day pupil|day boy]].{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=8–9}} The headmaster, Thomas Sewell, was an old-fashioned disciplinarian; the young Britten was outraged at the severe [[corporal punishment|corporal punishments]] frequently handed out, and later he said that his lifelong [[pacifism]] probably had its roots in his reaction to the regime at the school.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=10}} He himself rarely fell foul of Sewell, a mathematician, in which subject Britten was a star pupil. The school had no musical tradition, and Britten continued to study the piano with Ethel Astle. From the age of ten he took viola lessons from a friend of his mother, Audrey Alston, who had been a professional player before her marriage.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=13}} In his spare time he composed prolifically. When his ''[[Simple Symphony]]'', based on these juvenilia, was recorded in 1956, Britten wrote this pen-portrait of his young self for the sleeve note:
{{Blockquote|Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy.&nbsp;... He was quite an ordinary little boy&nbsp;... he loved cricket, only quite liked football (although he kicked a pretty "corner"); he adored mathematics, got on all right with history, was scared by Latin Unseen; he behaved fairly well, only ragged the recognised amount, so that his contacts with the cane or the slipper were happily rare (although one nocturnal expedition to stalk ghosts left its marks behind); he worked his way up the school slowly and steadily, until at the age of thirteen he reached that pinnacle of importance and grandeur, never to be quite equalled in later days: the head of the Sixth, head-prefect, and [[Victor Ludorum]]. But – there was one curious thing about this boy: he wrote music. His friends bore with it, his enemies kicked a bit but not for long (he was quite tough), the staff couldn't object if his work and games didn't suffer. He wrote lots of it, reams and reams of it.<ref>Britten, Benjamin. Notes to Decca LP LW 5162 (1956), reproduced in {{Harvnb|Britten|1991|p=9}}.</ref>|}}
[[File:Frank-bridge-1921.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Frank Bridge, Britten's teacher (photographed in 1921)]]
Audrey Alston encouraged Britten to go to symphony concerts in [[Norwich]]. At one of these, during the triennial [[Norfolk and Norwich Festival]] in October 1924, he heard [[Frank Bridge]]'s orchestral poem ''[[The Sea (Bridge)|The Sea]]'', conducted by the composer. It was the first substantial piece of modern music he had ever encountered, and he was, in his own phrase, "knocked sideways" by it.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=13–14}}<ref name="modern">Feigel, L., & A. Harris, eds., [https://books.google.com/books?id=y2e7SMzssGAC&pg=PA215&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false ''Modernism on Sea: Art and Culture at the British Seaside''], accessed 3 September 2013.</ref> Audrey Alston was a friend of Bridge; when he returned to Norwich for the next festival in 1927 she brought her not quite 14-year-old pupil to meet him. Bridge was impressed with the boy, and after they had gone through some of Britten's compositions together he invited him to come to London to take lessons from him.<ref name="M8">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=8}}.</ref> Robert Britten, supported by Thomas Sewell, doubted the wisdom of pursuing a composing career; a compromise was agreed by which Britten would, as planned, go on to his [[Public school (United Kingdom)|public school]] the following year but would make regular day-trips to London to study composition with Bridge and piano with his colleague [[Harold Samuel]].{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=16}}

Bridge impressed on Britten the importance of scrupulous attention to the technical craft of composing{{Efn|Britten later gave an example of the detailed skill instilled in him by Bridge: "I came up with a series of [[major seventh]]s on the violin. Bridge was against this, saying that the instrument didn't vibrate properly with this interval: it should be divided between two instruments."<ref>''Quoted'' in {{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|p=17}}.</ref>}} and the maxim that "you should find yourself and be true to what you found."<ref name="dnb">{{Harvnb|Mitchell|2011}}.</ref> The earliest substantial works Britten composed while studying with Bridge are the String Quartet in F, completed in April 1928, and the ''Quatre Chansons Françaises'', a song-cycle for high voice and orchestra. Authorities differ on the extent of Bridge's influence on his pupil's technique. [[Humphrey Carpenter]] and [[Michael Oliver (writer, broadcaster)|Michael Oliver]] judge that Britten's abilities as an orchestrator were essentially self-taught;<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|p=18}} and {{Harvnb|Oliver|1996|p=23}}.</ref> [[Donald Mitchell (writer)|Donald Mitchell]] considers that Bridge had an important influence on the cycle.<ref name=dnb/>

===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}}

== Career ==
===Early professional life===
In February 1935, at Bridge's instigation, Britten was invited to a job interview by the BBC's director of music [[Adrian Boult]] and his assistant [[Edward Clark (conductor)|Edward Clark]].{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=62–63}} Britten was not enthusiastic about the prospect of working full-time in the [[BBC]] music department and was relieved when what came out of the interview was an invitation to write the score for a documentary film, ''[[The King's Stamp]]'', directed by [[Alberto Cavalcanti]] for the [[GPO Film Unit]].{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=92}}

[[File:AudenVanVechten1939.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.55|W. H. Auden in 1939]]
Britten became a member of the film unit's small group of regular contributors, another of whom was [[W. H. Auden]]. Together they worked on the documentary films ''Coal Face'' and ''[[Night Mail]]'' in 1935.{{Sfn|Kennedy|1983|p=17}} They also collaborated on the song cycle ''[[Our Hunting Fathers]]'' (1936), radical both in politics and musical treatment, and subsequently other works including ''Cabaret Songs'', ''[[On This Island]]'', [[Paul Bunyan (operetta)|''Paul Bunyan'']] and ''[[Hymn to St Cecilia]]''.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=104, 105, 148, 166}} Auden was a considerable influence on Britten, encouraging him to widen his aesthetic, intellectual and political horizons, and also to come to terms with his homosexuality. Auden was, as [[David Matthews (composer)|David Matthews]] puts it, "cheerfully and guiltlessly promiscuous"; Britten, puritanical and conventional by nature, was sexually repressed.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=34}}

In the three years from 1935 to 1937 Britten wrote nearly 40 scores for the theatre, cinema and radio.<ref>White, Eric Walter. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/944267 "Britten in the Theatre: A Provisional Catalogue"], ''[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]'', New Series, No 107, December 1973, pp. 2–10 {{Subscription}}.</ref> Among the film music of the late 1930s Matthews singles out ''Night Mail'' and ''[[Love from a Stranger (1937 film)|Love from a Stranger]]'' (1937); from the theatre music he selects for mention ''[[The Ascent of F6]]'' (1936), ''[[On the Frontier]]'' (1938), and ''[[Johnson Over Jordan]]'' (1939); and of the music for radio, ''King Arthur'' (1937) and ''The Sword in the Stone'' (1939).{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=184}}

In 1937 there were two events of huge importance in Britten's life: his mother died, and he met the tenor [[Peter Pears]]. Although Britten was extraordinarily devoted to his mother and was devastated at her death, it also seems to have been something of a liberation for him.<ref>{{Harvnb|Powell|2013|p=127}}; and {{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=38}}.</ref> Only after that did he begin to engage in emotional relationships with people his own age or younger.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=38–39}} Later in the year he got to know Pears while they were both helping to clear out the country cottage of a mutual friend who had died in an air crash.{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=130}} Pears quickly became Britten's musical inspiration and close (though for the moment platonic) friend. Britten's first work for him was composed within weeks of their meeting, [[The Company of Heaven#History|a setting]] of [[Emily Brontë]]'s poem, "A thousand gleaming fires", for tenor and strings.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=112}}

During 1937 Britten composed a ''Pacifist March'' to words by [[Ronald Duncan]] for the [[Peace Pledge Union]], of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member; the work was not a success and was soon withdrawn.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=40}} The best known of his compositions from this period is probably ''[[Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge]]'' for string orchestra, described by Matthews as the first of Britten's works to become a popular classic.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=46}} It was a success in North America, with performances in Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, under conductors including [[John Barbirolli]] and [[Serge Koussevitzky]].<ref name="press">{{Harvnb|Robinson|1997}}.</ref>

===America 1939–42===
In April 1939 Britten and Pears sailed to North America, going first to Canada and then to New York. They had several reasons for leaving England, including the difficult position of pacifists in an increasingly bellicose Europe; the success that ''Frank Bridge'' had enjoyed in the US; the departure of Auden and his friend [[Christopher Isherwood]] to the US from England three months previously; hostile or belittling reviews of Britten's music in the English press; and under-rehearsed and inadequate performances.<ref name=dnb/><ref name="grove">{{Harvnb|Doctor|LeGrove|Banks|Wiebe|2013}}.</ref> Britten and Pears consummated their relationship and from then until Britten's death they were partners in both their professional and personal lives.{{Sfn|Headington|1993|pp=87–88}} When the Second World War began, Britten and Pears turned for advice to the British embassy in Washington and were told that they should remain in the US as artistic ambassadors.<ref name=press/> Pears was inclined to disregard the advice and go back to England; Britten also felt the urge to return, but accepted the embassy's counsel and persuaded Pears to do the same.{{Sfn|Headington|1993|pp=91–92}}

Already a friend of the composer [[Aaron Copland]], Britten encountered his latest works ''[[Billy the Kid (ballet)|Billy the Kid]]'' and ''An Outdoor Overture'', both of which influenced his own music.{{Sfn|Evans|1979|p=57}} In 1940 Britten composed ''Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo'', the first of many song cycles for Pears.{{Sfn|Headington|1993|pp=98–99}} Britten's orchestral works from this period include the [[Violin Concerto (Britten)|Violin Concerto]], ''[[Sinfonia da Requiem]]'', and ''[[An American Overture]]''. In 1941 Britten produced his first music drama, ''Paul Bunyan'', an [[operetta]], to a [[libretto]] by Auden.<ref name=grove/> While in the US, Britten had his first encounter with [[Balinese gamelan]] music, through transcriptions for piano duo made by the Canadian composer [[Colin McPhee]]. The two met in the summer of 1939 and subsequently performed a number of McPhee's transcriptions for a recording.{{Sfn|Kennedy|1983|p=31}} This musical encounter bore fruit in several Balinese-inspired works later in Britten's career.{{Sfn|Kennedy|1983|pp=213, 216, 256}}

Moving to the US did not relieve Britten of the nuisance of hostile criticism: although both [[Olin Downes]], the doyen of New York music critics, and [[Irving Kolodin]] took to Britten's music, [[Virgil Thomson]] was, as the music scholar Suzanne Robinson puts it, consistently "severe and spiteful". Thomson described ''[[Les Illuminations (Britten)|Les Illuminations]]'' (1940) as "little more than a series of bromidic and facile 'effects'&nbsp;... pretentious, banal and utterly disappointing", and was equally unflattering about Pears's voice. Robinson surmises that Thomson was motivated by "a mixture of spite, national pride, and professional jealousy."<ref name=press/> ''Paul Bunyan'' met with wholesale critical disapproval,<ref>Brogan, Hugh. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27556404 "W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, and Paul Bunyan"], ''Journal of American Studies'', Volume 32, No 2, August 1998, pp. 281–282 {{Subscription}}.</ref> and the ''Sinfonia da Requiem'' (already rejected by its Japanese sponsors because of its overtly Christian nature) received a mixed reception when Barbirolli and the [[New York Philharmonic]] premiered it in March 1941. The reputation of the work was much enhanced when Koussevitzky took it up shortly afterwards.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=150–151}}

===Return to England===
[[File:Peter-grimes-the-borough-1812.jpg|thumb|Page from "Peter Grimes" in 1812 edition of Crabbe's ''The Borough'']]
In 1942 Britten read the work of the poet [[George Crabbe]] for the first time.{{Sfn|White|1954|p=35}} ''[[The Borough (poem)|The Borough]]'', set on the Suffolk coast close to Britten's homeland, awakened in him such longings for England that he knew he must return. He also knew that he must write an opera based on Crabbe's poem about the fisherman Peter Grimes.<ref name=press/> Before Britten left the US, Koussevitzky, always generous in encouraging new talent, offered him a $1,000 commission to write the opera.<ref name=press/>{{Efn|Koussevitzky's generosity later extended to waiving his rights to mount the first production, allowing Britten and his [[English National Opera|Sadler's Wells]] associates the chance to do so. The opera's first performance under Koussevitzky's aegis was at the [[Tanglewood Music Festival]] in 1947, conducted by the young [[Leonard Bernstein]].{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=252}} Bernstein retained a love of the work, and he conducted the orchestral "Sea Interludes" from the opera at his final concert, given in Tanglewood in 1990, shortly before his death.<ref>[[John Rockwell|Rockwell, John]]. [https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/16/arts/the-last-days-of-leonard-bernstein.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm "The Last Days of Leonard Bernstein"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', 16 October 1990, accessed 10 June 2016.</ref>}} Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942. During the long transatlantic sea crossing Britten completed the choral works ''[[A Ceremony of Carols]]'' and ''Hymn to St Cecilia''. The latter was his last large-scale collaboration with Auden. Britten had grown away from him, and Auden became one of the composer's so-called "corpses" – former intimates from whom he completely cut off contact once they had outlived their usefulness to him or offended him in some way.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=79}}

Having arrived in Britain, Britten and Pears applied for recognition as [[conscientious objector]]s; Britten was initially allowed only non-combatant service in the military, but on appeal he gained unconditional exemption.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=66}} After the death of his mother in 1937 he had used money she bequeathed him to buy the Old Mill in [[Snape, Suffolk|Snape]], Suffolk which became his country home. He spent much of his time there in 1944 working on the opera ''[[Peter Grimes]]''. Pears joined [[English National Opera|Sadler's Wells Opera Company]], whose artistic director, the singer [[Joan Cross]], announced her intention to re-open the company's home base in London with Britten's opera, casting herself and Pears in the leading roles.{{Efn|[[Sadler's Wells Theatre]] in [[Islington]], London, was requisitioned by the government in 1942 as a refuge for people made homeless by air-raids; the Sadler's Wells opera company toured the British provinces, returning to its home base in June 1945.{{Sfn|Gilbert|2009|pp=78, 83, 98}}}} There were complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score, as well as some ill-suppressed [[Homophobia|homophobic]] remarks.{{Sfn|Gilbert|2009|p=98}} ''Peter Grimes'' opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics;<ref>See, for example, "Sadler's Wells Opera – ''Peter Grimes''", ''[[The Times]]'', 8 June 1945, p. 6, and [[William Glock|Glock, William]]. "Music", ''[[The Observer]]'', 10 June 1945, p. 2.</ref> its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for ''[[La bohème]]'' and ''[[Madama Butterfly|Madame Butterfly]]'', which were staged during the same season.{{Sfn|Banks|2000|pp=xvi–xviii}} The opera administrator [[George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood|Lord Harewood]] called it "the first genuinely successful British opera, [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] apart, since [[Henry Purcell|Purcell]]."{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=79}} Dismayed by the in-fighting among the company, Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945, going on to found what was to become the [[English Opera Group]].{{Sfn|Gilbert|2009|p=107}}

A month after the opening of ''Peter Grimes'', Britten and [[Yehudi Menuhin]] went to Germany to give recitals to concentration camp survivors.<ref name="Matthews 80">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=80}}.</ref> What they saw, at [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp|Belsen]] most of all, so shocked Britten that he refused to talk about it until towards the end of his life, when he told Pears that it had coloured everything he had written since.<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|p=228}} and {{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=80}}.</ref> [[Colin Matthews]] comments that the next two works Britten composed after his return, the song-cycle ''The Holy Sonnets of John Donne'' and the Second String Quartet, contrast strongly with earlier, lighter-hearted works such as ''Les Illuminations''.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=80–81}} Britten recovered his ''joie de vivre'' for ''[[The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra]]'' (1945), written for an educational film, ''Instruments of the Orchestra'', directed by [[Muir Mathieson]] and featuring the [[London Symphony Orchestra]] conducted by [[Malcolm Sargent]].<ref>[http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b69f17167 "Instruments of the Orchestra"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151122145032/http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b69f17167 |date=22 November 2015}}, British Film Institute, accessed 24 May 2013.</ref> It became, and remained, his most often played and popular work.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=81}}

Britten's next opera, ''[[The Rape of Lucretia]]'', was presented at the first post-war [[Glyndebourne Festival Opera|Glyndebourne Festival]] in 1946. It was then taken on tour to provincial cities under the banner of the "Glyndebourne English Opera Company", an uneasy alliance of Britten and his associates with [[John Christie (opera manager)|John Christie]], the autocratic proprietor of Glyndebourne.<ref>[[Philip Hope-Wallace|Hope-Wallace, Philip]]. "Opera at Glyndebourne", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 15 July 1946, p. 3; and {{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|pp=242–243}}.</ref> The tour lost money heavily, and Christie announced that he would underwrite no more tours.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=243}} Britten and his associates set up the English Opera Group; the librettist [[Eric Crozier]] and the designer [[John Piper (artist)|John Piper]] joined Britten as artistic directors. The group's express purpose was to produce and commission new English operas and other works, presenting them throughout the country.<ref>Wood, Anne. "English Opera Group", ''The Times'', 12 July 1947, p. 5.</ref> Britten wrote the comic opera ''[[Albert Herring]]'' for the group in 1947; while on tour in the new work Pears came up with the idea of mounting a festival in the small Suffolk seaside town of [[Aldeburgh]], where Britten had moved from Snape earlier in the year, and which became his principal place of residence for the rest of his life.<ref>{{Harvnb|Headington|1993|pp=149–150}}; and {{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=89}}.</ref>

===Aldeburgh; the 1950s===
The [[Aldeburgh Festival]] was launched in June 1948, with Britten, Pears, and Crozier directing.{{Sfn|Headington|1993|p=151}} ''Albert Herring'' played at the Jubilee Hall, and Britten's new cantata for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, [[Saint Nicolas (Britten)|''Saint Nicolas'']], was presented in the parish church.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=92–93}} The festival was an immediate success and became an annual event that has continued into the 21st century.<ref>Hall, George. "Festival Overtures: Britten in Bloom", ''[[Opera (British magazine)|Opera]]'' Volume 64.4, April 2013, pp. 436–438.</ref> New works by Britten featured in almost every festival until his death in 1976, including the premieres of his operas ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)|A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' at the Jubilee Hall in 1960 and ''[[Death in Venice (opera)|Death in Venice]]'' at [[Snape Maltings]] Concert Hall in 1973.<ref>Mason, Colin. "Benjamin Britten's ''Dream''", ''The Guardian'', 11 June 1960. p. 5; and [[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]]. "Britten's ''Death in Venice''", ''The Guardian'', 18 June 1973, p. 8.</ref>

[[File:Benjamin Britten memorial window ... - geograph.org.uk - 1131630.jpg|right|thumb|upright|[[John Piper (artist)|John Piper]]'s Benjamin Britten memorial window in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Aldeburgh]]
Unlike many leading English composers, Britten was not known as a teacher,{{Efn|[[Arthur Sullivan|Sullivan]], [[Hubert Parry|Parry]], [[Charles Villiers Stanford|Stanford]], [[Edward Elgar|Elgar]], [[Ralph Vaughan Williams|Vaughan Williams]], [[Gustav Holst|Holst]] and [[Michael Tippett|Tippett]] were among the leading British composers of their time who held posts at conservatoires or universities.<ref name="wright">Wright, David. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3557473 "The South Kensington Music Schools and the Development of the British Conservatoire in the Late Nineteenth Century"], ''Journal of the Royal Musical Association'', Oxford University Press, Volume 130 No. 2, pp. 236–282 (Sullivan, Parry and Stanford) {{Subscription}}; [[Diana McVeagh|McVeagh, Diana]]. [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/08709?q=elgar&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit "Elgar, Edward"], Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, (Elgar) {{Grove Music subscription}}; Graebe, Martin. [https://www.proquest.com/docview/884536926 "Gustav Holst, Songs of the West, and the English Folk Song Movement"], ''Folk Music Journal'', Volume 10.1, 2011, pp. 5–41 (Vaughan Williams and Holst) {{Subscription}}; and Clarke, David. [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/28005 "Tippett, Sir Michael]", ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, accessed 24 May 2013. {{Grove Music subscription}}</ref> Those who, like Britten, were not known for teaching included [[Frederick Delius|Delius]]<ref>[[Philip Arnold Heseltine|Heseltine, Philip]]. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/909510 "Some Notes on Delius and His Music"], ''[[The Musical Times]]'', March 1915, pp. 137–142 {{Subscription}}.</ref> and [[William Walton|Walton]].<ref>Kirkbride, Jo. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150325011443/http://sco.org.uk/content/two-pieces-henry-v?print=1 "William Walton (1902–1983), Two Pieces from Henry V (1944)"], [[Scottish Chamber Orchestra]], accessed 10 June 2016</ref>}} but in 1949 he accepted his only private pupil, [[Arthur Oldham]], who studied with him for three years. Oldham made himself useful, acting as musical assistant and arranging ''Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge'' for full orchestra for the [[Frederick Ashton]] ballet ''Le Rêve de Léonor'' (1949),<ref>"Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit – ''Le Rêve de Léonor''", ''The Times'', 27 April 1949, p. 3.</ref> but he later described the teacher–pupil relationship as "beneficial five per cent to [Britten] and ninety-five per cent to me!"{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=214}}

Throughout the 1950s Britten continued to write operas. ''[[Billy Budd (opera)|Billy Budd]]'' (1951) was well received at its [[Royal Opera House|Covent Garden]] premiere and was regarded by reviewers as an advance on ''Peter Grimes''.<ref>Blom, Eric. "Britten's ''Billy Budd'', ''The Observer'', 2 December 1951, p. 6; Hope-Wallace, Philip. "Britten's ''Billy Budd''", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 3 December 1951, p. 5; and Porter, Andrew. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/730800 "Britten's ''Billy Budd''"], ''[[Music & Letters]]'', Volume 33, No. 2, April 1952, pp. 111–118 {{Subscription}}.</ref> ''[[Gloriana]]'' (1953), written to mark the [[coronation of Elizabeth II]], had a cool reception at the gala premiere in the presence of the Queen and the British [[The Establishment|Establishment]] ''en masse''. The downbeat story of [[Elizabeth I of England|Elizabeth I]] in her decline, and Britten's score – reportedly thought by members of the premiere's audience "too modern" for such a gala<ref name=hso/> – did not overcome what Matthews calls the "ingrained philistinism" of the ruling classes.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=107}}{{Efn|The critic [[Andrew Porter (music critic)|Andrew Porter]] wrote at the time: "The audience naturally contained many people distinguished in political and social spheres rather than noted for their appreciation of twentieth-century music, and ''Gloriana'' was not well received at its first hearing. The usual philistine charges brought against it, as against so much contemporary music ('no tunes – ugly, discordant sounds', and the rest), are beneath consideration. On the other hand, those who found ''Gloriana'' ill-suited to the occasion may be allowed to have some right on their side."<ref name="hso">Porter, Andrew. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/731059 "Britten's ''Gloriana''"], ''[[Music & Letters]]'', Vol. 34, No. 4 (October 1953), pp. 277–287 {{Subscription}}.</ref>}} Although ''Gloriana'' did well at the box office, there were no further productions in Britain for another 13 years.<ref>[[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]]. "''Gloriana'' at Sadler's Wells", ''The Guardian'', 22 October 1966, p. 6.</ref> It was later recognised as one of Britten's finer operas.<ref>[[Rupert Christiansen|Christiansen, Rupert]]. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/10111461/Gloriana-Brittens-problem-opera.html "Gloriana: Britten's problem opera"], ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' 18 June 2013; and Church, Michael. [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/reviews/classical-review-richard-joness-revelatory-roh-revival-of-brittens-underrated-gloriana-8668470.html "Richard Jones's revelatory ROH revival of Britten's underrated Gloriana"], ''[[The Independent]]'', 21 June 2013.</ref> ''[[The Turn of the Screw (opera)|The Turn of the Screw]]'' the following year was an unqualified success;<ref>Mason, Colin. "Britten's New Opera at Venice Festival: Welcome for ''The Turn of the Screw''", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 15 September 1954, p. 5.</ref> together with ''Peter Grimes'' it became, and at 2013 remained, one of the two most frequently performed of Britten's operas.<ref>[http://operabase.com/top.cgi?lang=en&show=operas&by=Britten "Operas, Britten"], Operabase, accessed 25 May 2013. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130223092029/http://www.operabase.com/top.cgi?lang=en&show=operas&by=Britten |date=23 February 2013}}.</ref>

In the 1950s the "fervently anti-homosexual" [[Home Secretary]], [[David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir|Sir David Maxwell Fyfe]],{{Sfn|Weeks|1989|pp=239–240}} urged the police to enforce the [[Victorian era|Victorian]] laws making homosexual acts illegal.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=334}}{{Efn|The principal law against homosexual acts was the [[Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885]], in which [[Labouchere Amendment|Section 11]] made any kind of sexual activity between men illegal for the first time. It was not repealed until the passage of the [[Sexual Offences Act 1967]]}} Britten and Pears came under scrutiny; Britten was visited by police officers in 1953 and was so perturbed that he discussed with his assistant [[Imogen Holst]] the possibility that Pears might have to enter a [[lavender marriage|sham marriage]] (with whom is unclear). In the end nothing was done.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=335}}

An increasingly important influence on Britten was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour there with Pears in 1956, when Britten once again encountered the music of the Balinese gamelan{{Sfn|Britten|2008|p=388}} and saw for the first time Japanese [[Noh]] plays, which he called "some of the most wonderful drama I have ever seen."{{Sfn|Britten|2008|p=441}} These eastern influences were seen and heard in the ballet ''[[The Prince of the Pagodas]]'' (1957) and later in two of the three semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": ''[[Curlew River]]'' (1964), ''[[The Burning Fiery Furnace]]'' (1966) and ''[[The Prodigal Son (Britten)|The Prodigal Son]]'' (1968).{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|pp=434–435, 478–480}}

He was invited to a competition to compose the future anthem of the [[Federation of Malaya]] (now [[Malaysia]]) in 1956. He attempted a composition after several couple of days which he described as "curious" and "unsuccessful". The committee returned the score with suggestions that he could make it "sound more [[Music of Malaysia|Malaysian]]", but to no avail.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Perdota |first1=Greg |title=Benjamin Britten: An Anthem for Malaysia |url=https://interlude.hk/benjamin-britten-anthem-malaysia |work=Interlude |date=27 October 2015}}</ref>

===1960s===
By the 1960s, the Aldeburgh Festival was outgrowing its customary venues, and plans to build a new concert hall in Aldeburgh were not progressing. When redundant Victorian [[Malthouse|maltings]] buildings in the village of Snape, six miles inland, became available for hire, Britten realised that the largest of them could be converted into a concert hall and opera house. The 830-seat Snape Maltings hall was opened by the Queen at the start of the twentieth Aldeburgh Festival on 2 June 1967; it was immediately hailed as one of the best concert halls in the country.<ref>[[William Mann (critic)|Mann, William]], "Queen opens concert hall", ''The Times'', 3 June 1967, p. 7; and [[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]], "Inaugural Concert at the Maltings, Snape", ''The Guardian'', 3 June 1967, p. 7.</ref> The hall was destroyed by fire in 1969, but Britten was determined that it would be rebuilt in time for the following year's festival, which it was. The Queen again attended the opening performance in 1970.<ref>Greenfield, Edward. "Queen at new Maltings concert", ''[[The Guardian]]'', 6 June 1970, p. 1.</ref>

[[File:RIAN archive 25562 Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten after a concert.jpg|thumb|upright|left|[[Mstislav Rostropovich]] and Britten, 1964]]
The Maltings gave the festival a venue that could comfortably house large orchestral works and operas. Britten conducted the first performance outside Russia of Shostakovich's [[Symphony No. 14 (Shostakovich)|Fourteenth Symphony]] at Snape in 1970.<ref>[[William Mann (critic)|Mann, William]]. "Shostakovich special", ''The Times'', 15 June 1970, p. 10.</ref> Shostakovich, a friend since 1960, dedicated the symphony to Britten;{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=124}} he was himself the dedicatee of ''The Prodigal Son''.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=482}} Two other Russian musicians who were close to Britten and regularly performed at the festival were the pianist [[Sviatoslav Richter]] and the cellist [[Mstislav Rostropovich]]. Britten composed his [[Cello suites (Britten)|cello suites]], ''[[Cello Symphony (Britten)|Cello Symphony]]'' and [[Cello Sonata (Britten)|Cello Sonata]] for Rostropovich, who premiered them at the Aldeburgh Festival.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=124–125, 127}}

One of the best known of Britten's works, the ''[[War Requiem]]'', was premiered in 1962. He had been asked four years earlier to write a work for the consecration of the new [[Coventry Cathedral]], a [[Modern architecture|modernist]] building designed by [[Basil Spence]]. The old cathedral had been left in ruins by an [[Coventry Blitz|air-raid on the city]] in 1940 in which hundreds of people died.{{Sfn|Ray|2000|p=155}} Britten decided that his work would commemorate the dead of both World Wars in a large-scale score for soloists, chorus, chamber ensemble and orchestra. His text interspersed the traditional [[Requiem|Requiem Mass]] with poems by [[Wilfred Owen]]. Matthews writes, "With the ''War Requiem'' Britten reached the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece."{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=127}} Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be "the greatest work of the twentieth century".{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=151}}

In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television. ''[[Owen Wingrave]]'' was based, like ''The Turn of the Screw'', on a ghost story by [[Henry James]].<ref name=grove/> By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer [[Nicholas Maw]], "Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older."<ref name=max/> He did not complete the score of the new opera until August 1970.<ref name=grove/> ''Owen Wingrave'' was first broadcast in Britain in May 1971, when it was also televised in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Yugoslavia.<ref>[[Peter Evans (musicologist)|Evans, Peter]]. "Britten's Television Opera", ''[[The Musical Times]]'', Volume 112, No. 1539, May 1971, pp. 425–428 {{JSTOR|955942}}{{Subscription}}.</ref>

===Last years===
[[File:Britten 1970s.jpg|thumb|upright|Britten {{circa| 1976}}]]
In September 1970 Britten asked [[Myfanwy Piper]], who had adapted the two Henry James stories for him, to turn another prose story into a libretto. This was [[Thomas Mann]]'s novella ''[[Death in Venice]]'', a subject he had been considering for some time.{{Sfn|Piper|1989|p=15}} At an early stage in composition Britten was told by his doctors that a heart operation was essential if he was to live for more than two years. He was determined to finish the opera and worked urgently to complete it before going into hospital for surgery.<ref name="graham">{{Harvnb|Graham|1989|p=55}}.</ref> His long-term colleague [[Colin Graham]] wrote:
{{Blockquote|Perhaps of all his works, this one went deepest into Britten's own soul: there are extraordinary cross-currents of affinity between himself, his own state of health and mind, Thomas Mann, Aschenbach (Mann's dying protagonist), and Peter Pears, who must have had to tear himself in three in order to reconstitute himself as the principal character.<ref name=graham/>|}}

After the completion of the opera Britten went into the [[The Heart Hospital|National Heart Hospital]] and was operated on in May 1973 to replace a failing heart valve. The replacement was successful, but he suffered a slight stroke, affecting his right hand. This brought his career as a performer to an end.<ref name=grove/> While in hospital Britten became friendly with a senior nursing sister, [[Rita Thomson]]; she moved to Aldeburgh in 1974 and looked after him until his death.{{Sfn|Oliver|1996|p=206}}

Britten's last works include the ''Suite on English Folk Tunes "A Time There Was"'' (1974); the Third String Quartet (1975), which drew on material from ''Death in Venice''; and the dramatic cantata ''[[Phaedra (cantata)|Phaedra]]'' (1975), written for [[Janet Baker]].{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=596}}

In June 1976, the last year of his life, Britten accepted a [[life peer]]age – the first composer so honoured – becoming Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk.<ref name="TheLondon">{{London Gazette|issue=46954|page=9295|date=6 July 1976}}</ref>{{Efn|Some writers have supposed that Britten was earlier offered and had declined a [[knighthood]],{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=458}} but his name is not included in the official list issued in 2012 by the [[Cabinet Office]] naming everyone (except those still living at the time of publication) who had declined an honour between 1950 and 1999.<ref>Rosenbaum, Martin. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16721511 "Government forced to release list of rejected honours"], BBC, 26 January 2012, accessed 24 May 2013; and [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61126/document2012-01-24-075439.pdf List of honours refused], Cabinet Office, January 2012</ref>}} After the 1976 Aldeburgh Festival, Britten and Pears travelled to Norway, where Britten began writing ''Praise We Great Men'', for voices and orchestra based on a poem by [[Edith Sitwell]].{{Sfn|Headington|1996|p=143}} He returned to Aldeburgh in August, and wrote ''Welcome Ode'' for children's choir and orchestra.<ref name="Kennedy114">{{Harvnb|Kennedy|1983|p=114}}.</ref> In November, Britten realised that he could no longer compose.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=154}} On his 63rd birthday, 22 November, at his request Rita Thomson organised a champagne party and invited his friends and his sisters Barbara and Beth, to say their goodbyes to the dying composer.<ref name="Matthews155">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=155}}.</ref> When Rostropovich made his farewell visit a few days later, Britten gave him what he had written of ''Praise We Great Men''.<ref name="Matthews155"/>

{{Quote box| quoted=true|width=40%|bgcolor=#D8D8D8|align=right|quote= I heard of his death&nbsp;... and took a long walk in total silence through gently falling snow across a frozen lake, which corresponded exactly to the inexpressible sense of numbness at such a loss. The world is colder and lonelier without the presence of our supreme creator of music. |salign = right|source= [[Peter Maxwell Davies]], 1977.<ref name="max">[[Peter Maxwell Davies|Davies, Peter Maxwell]], [[Nicholas Maw]] and others. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/942546 "Benjamin Britten: Tributes and Memories"], ''[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]'', New Series, No. 120, March 1977, pp. 2–6 {{Subscription}}.</ref>}}
Britten died of [[congestive heart failure]] on 4 December 1976. His funeral service was held at [[St Peter and St Paul's Church, Aldeburgh|Aldeburgh Parish Church]] three days later,<ref name="Matthews155"/> and he was buried in its churchyard, with a gravestone carved by [[Reynolds Stone]].<ref>Powers, Alan. [http://www.fpba.com/parenthesis/select-articles/p16_reynolds_stone_tribute.html "Reynolds Stone: A Centenary Tribute".] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181010183205/https://www.fpba.com/parenthesis/select-articles/p16_reynolds_stone_tribute.html |date=10 October 2018}}, Fine Press Book Association, accessed 27 May 2013.</ref> The authorities at [[Westminster Abbey]] had offered burial there, but Britten had made it clear that he wished his grave to be side by side with that, in due course, of Pears.{{Sfn|Headington|1993|p=277}} A memorial service was held at the Abbey on 10 March 1977, at which the congregation was headed by [[Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother]].<ref>"Memorial service: Lord Britten, OM, CH", ''The Times'', 11 March 1977, p. 20.</ref>

==Personal life and character==
Despite his large number of works on Christian themes, Britten has sometimes been thought of as an agnostic.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ford|2011|p=77}}; and {{Harvnb|Begbie|Guthrie|2011|pp=192–193}}.</ref> Pears said that when they met in 1937 he was not sure whether or not Britten would have described himself as a Christian.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=113}} In the 1960s Britten called himself a dedicated Christian, though sympathetic to the radical views propounded by the [[John Robinson (bishop of Woolwich)|Bishop of Woolwich]] in ''[[Honest to God]]''.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=114}} Politically, Britten was on the left. He told Pears that he always voted either [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] or [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] and could not imagine ever voting [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]], but he was never a member of any party, except the Peace Pledge Union.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=486}}

Physically, Britten was never robust. He walked and swam regularly and kept himself as fit as he could, but in his 1992 biography, Carpenter mentions 20 illnesses, a few of them minor but most fairly serious, suffered over the years by Britten before his final heart complaint developed.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=654}} Emotionally, according to some commentators, Britten never completely grew up, retaining in his outlook something of a child's view of the world.<ref name=grove/><ref>{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|pp=3–4}}; and Keates, Jonathan. [http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:DSTC&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=11234EEF7B59EC88&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "It was boyishness Britten loved as much as boys"], ''[[The Sunday Telegraph]]'', 11 June 2006, accessed 10 June 2016</ref> He was not always confident that he was the genius others declared him to be, and though he was hypercritical of his own works, he was acutely, even aggressively sensitive to criticism from anybody else.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=302}}

Britten was, as he himself acknowledged, notorious for dumping friends and colleagues who either offended him or ceased to be of use to him – his "corpses".<ref name=k202/> The conductor [[Charles Mackerras|Sir Charles Mackerras]] believed that the term was invented by Lord Harewood. Both Mackerras and Harewood joined the list of corpses, the former for joking that the number of boys in ''Noye's Fludde'' must have been a delight to the composer, and the latter for an extramarital affair and subsequent divorce from [[Marion Stein|Lady Harewood]], which shocked the puritanical Britten.<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|pp=384–385}} (Mackerras) and 444–445 (Harewood).</ref> Among other corpses were his librettists [[Montagu Slater]] and [[Eric Crozier]]. The latter said in 1949, "He has sometimes told me, jokingly, that one day I would join the ranks of his 'corpses' and I have always recognized that any ordinary person must soon outlive his usefulness to such a great creative artist as Ben."<ref name="k202">{{Harvnb|Kildea|2013|p=202}}.</ref> Dame Janet Baker said in 1981, "I think he was quite entitled to take what he wanted from others&nbsp;... He did not want to hurt anyone, but the task in hand was more important than anything or anybody."{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=139}} Matthews feels that this aspect of Britten has been exaggerated, and he observes that the composer sustained many deep friendships to the end of his life.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=96}}

===Controversies===

====Boys====

Throughout his adult life, Britten had a particular rapport with children and enjoyed close friendships with several boys, particularly those in their early teens.{{Efn|The filmmaker [[John Bridcut]] sees significance in evidence that Britten mentally regarded himself as perpetually 13 years old. Bridcut views this as manifest both in the Letts diaries Britten bought and used well into his adult life, in which he wrote several statistics relevant to himself when that age,{{Sfn|Bridcut|2006|pp=1–2}} and in his remark to [[Imogen Holst]], "I'm still thirteen."{{Sfn|Bridcut|2006|p=8}}}} The first such friendship was with Piers Dunkerley, who was 13 years old in 1934, when Britten was aged 20.{{Sfn|Bridcut|2006|p=3}} Other boys Britten befriended were the young [[David Hemmings]] and [[Michael Crawford]], both of whom sang treble roles in his works in the 1950s.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bridcut|2006|loc=plate 13}}; and {{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|pp=356–358, 385}}.</ref> Hemmings later said, "In all of the time that I spent with him he never abused that trust", and Crawford wrote "I cannot say enough about the kindness of that great man&nbsp;... he had a wonderful patience and affinity with young people. He loved music, and loved youngsters caring about music."<ref name=dnb/>{{Efn|In the early 1940s, while living in North America, Britten shared a room with 13 year old Bobby Rothman when staying with the Rothman family: "many an evening we used to spend&nbsp;... a lot of time just really talking he in the bed next to me&nbsp;... His fondness for me was something that was beyond my normal social connections, and I was a little overwhelmed that someone should be so fond of me&nbsp;... I can still remember us talking late at night one time, and finding when it was really time to call it quits and go to sleep&nbsp;... he said, 'Bobby, would you mind terribly if, before we fell asleep, I came over and gave you a hug and a kiss?' It was just one of those touching moments&nbsp;... And I've got to say I really did not know what to do except say, 'no, no I don't mind', and he gently got up and gave me a gentle hug and kiss and said goodnight."{{Sfn|Britten|2004|p=90}}}}

It was long suspected by several of Britten's close associates that there was something exceptional about his attraction to teenage boys: Auden referred to Britten's "attraction to thin-as-a-board juveniles&nbsp;... to the sexless and innocent",{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=164}} and Pears once wrote to Britten: "remember there are lovely things in the world still&nbsp;– children, boys, sunshine, the sea, Mozart, you and me."{{Sfn|Bridcut|2006|p=6}} In public, the matter was little discussed during Britten's lifetime and much discussed after it.{{Efn|The journalist [[Martin Kettle]] wrote in 2012 that although there is no evidence of wrongful conduct, it is important that allegations of [[paedophilia]] should be openly discussed, both to avoid covering up criminal behaviour and to avoid oversimplifying the complexity of Britten's sexuality and creativity.<ref>[[Martin Kettle|Kettle, Martin]]. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/21/britten-boys-obsession-cannot-ignore "Why we must talk about Britten's boys"], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 21 November 2012, accessed 11 June 2016.</ref>}} [[Humphrey Carpenter|Carpenter]]'s 1992 biography closely examined the evidence, as do later studies of Britten, most particularly [[John Bridcut]]'s ''[[Britten's Children]]'' (2006), which concentrates on Britten's friendships and relationships with various children and adolescents. Some commentators have continued to question Britten's conduct, sometimes very sharply.<ref>Toronyi-Lalic, Igor. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/9857511/Benjamin-Britten-by-Paul-Kildea-review.html "Paul Kildea's erudite biography underplays Benjamin Britten's dark side"], ''The Daily Telegraph'', 11 February 2013, accessed 11 June 2016; and Morrison, Richard. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150402162114/http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/richardmorrison/article2045275.ece "Crossing the line between affection and abuse"], ''The Times'', 9 May 2006, accessed 11 June 2016 {{Subscription}}.</ref> Carpenter and Bridcut conclude that he held any sexual impulses under firm control and kept the relationships affectionate – including bed-sharing, kissing and nude bathing – but strictly platonic.<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|pp=356–358}}; [[Lucasta Miller|Miller, Lucasta]]. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/01/highereducation.biography "Ben and his boys: Britten's obsession with adolescents is sensitively handled"], ''The Guardian'', 1 July 2006; and [[Jonathan Keates|Keates, Jonathan]]. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3653043/Boyishness-as-much-as-boys.html "Boyishness as much as boys"], ''[[The Sunday Telegraph]]'', 11 June 2006 {{Subscription}}.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=DiGaetani |first=John Louis |title=Stages of Struggle: Modern Playwrights and Their Psychological Inspirations |date=2008 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-8259-7 |page=105 |quote=... he continued to be sexually attracted to adolescent boys, though the relationships were platonic according to his biographers.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Johnson |first=Stephen |date=1 October 2006 |title=Review: ''Britten's Children'' by John Bridcut |journal=[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]] |volume=60 |page=51 |doi=10.1017/S0040298206210325 |jstor=3878655 |quote=... numerous embraces and chaste kisses, and even chaster bed-sharing, but beyond that, nothing. |number=238}}</ref>

[[File:Benjamin Britten grave by Arno Drucker.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Britten's grave at [[St Peter and St Paul's Church, Aldeburgh]], Suffolk]]

====Cause of death====

A more recent controversy was the statement in a 2013 biography of Britten by [[Paul Kildea]] that the composer's heart failure was due to undetected [[syphilis]], which Kildea speculates was a result of Pears's promiscuity while the two were living in New York.{{Sfn|Kildea|2013|pp=532–535}} In response, Britten's consultant cardiologist said that, like all the hospital's similar cases, Britten was routinely screened for syphilis before the operation, with negative results.<ref>Petch, Michael, ''[[Opera (British magazine)|Opera]]'', April 2013, p. 414.</ref> He described as "complete rubbish" Kildea's allegation that the surgeon who operated on Britten in 1973 would or even could have covered up a syphilitic condition.<ref>Higgins, Charlotte. [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jan/22/benjamin-britten-syphilis-condition-unlikely-cardiologist "Benjamin Britten syphilis 'extremely unlikely', says cardiologist"],''The Guardian'', 22 January 2013</ref> Kildea continued to maintain, "When all the composer's symptoms are considered there can be only one cause."<ref>[[Paul Kildea|Kildea, Paul]]. [http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:GRDC&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=1442322C9A6F8460&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "The evidence does show Britten died from syphilis"], ''The Guardian'', 30 January 2013</ref> In ''The Times'', [[Richard Morrison (music critic)|Richard Morrison]] praised the rest of Kildea's book, and hoped that its reputation would not be "tarnished by one sensational speculation&nbsp;... some second-hand hearsay&nbsp;... presenting unsubstantiated gossip as fact."<ref>[[Richard Morrison (music critic)|Morrison, Richard]]. [http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:LTIB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=1443FB8B58F7CCC8&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "The temptation to settle old scores – A centenary biography of Britten should not be judged by just one sensational speculation – the rest is fascinating and convincing"], ''The Times'', 4 February 2013</ref>

==Music==
{{See also|List of compositions by Benjamin Britten}}

===Influences===
Britten's early musical life was dominated by the classical masters; his mother's ambition was for him to become the "[[Three Bs|Fourth B]]" – after [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]], [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] and [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]].{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=4}} Britten was later to assert that his initial development as a composer was stifled by reverence for these masters: "Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen I knew every note of Beethoven and Brahms. I remember receiving the full score of ''Fidelio'' for my fourteenth birthday&nbsp;... But I think in a sense I never forgave them for having led me astray in my own particular thinking and natural inclinations."{{Sfn|Schafer|1963|p=119}} He developed a particular animosity towards Brahms, whose piano music he had once held in great esteem; in 1952 he confided that he played through all Brahms's music from time to time, "to see if I am right about him; I usually find that I underestimated last time how bad it was!"<ref name= grove/>

Through his association with Frank Bridge, Britten's musical horizons expanded.<ref name= M8/> He discovered the music of [[Claude Debussy|Debussy]] and [[Maurice Ravel|Ravel]] which, Matthews writes, "gave him a model for an orchestral sound".{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=9}} Bridge also led Britten to the music of Schoenberg and Berg; the latter's death in 1935 affected Britten deeply. A letter at that time reveals his thoughts on the contemporary music scene: "The real musicians are so few & far between, aren't they? Apart from the Bergs, Stravinskys, Schoenbergs & Bridges one is a bit stumped for names, isn't one?" – adding, as an afterthought: "Shostakovitch – perhaps – possibly".<ref name= grove/> By this time Britten had developed a lasting hostility towards the [[English Pastoral School]] represented by Vaughan Williams and Ireland, whose work he compared unfavourably with the "brilliant folk-song arrangements of Percy Grainger"; [[Percy Grainger|Grainger]] became the inspiration of many of Britten's later folk arrangements.<ref>{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=144}}; {{Harvnb|Whittall|1982|pp=273–274}}.</ref> Britten was also impressed by [[Frederick Delius|Delius]], and thought ''[[Brigg Fair#Delius orchestral setting|Brigg Fair]]'' "delicious" when he heard it in 1931.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=39}} Also in that year he heard Stravinsky's ''[[The Rite of Spring]]'', which he found "bewildering and terrifying", yet at the same time "incredibly marvellous and arresting". The same composer's ''[[Symphony of Psalms]]'', and ''[[Petrushka]]'' were lauded in similar terms.<ref name= grove/> He and Stravinsky later developed a mutual antipathy informed by jealousy and mistrust.{{Sfn|Kildea|2013|p=78}}

Besides his growing attachments to the works of 20th century masters, Britten – along with his contemporary [[Michael Tippett]] – was devoted to the English music of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in particular the work of [[Henry Purcell|Purcell]].{{Sfn|Whittall|1982|p=104}} In defining his mission as a composer of opera, Britten wrote: "One of my chief aims is to try to restore to the musical setting of the English Language a brilliance, freedom and vitality that have been curiously rare since the death of Purcell."{{Sfn|Brett|1983|p=125}} Among the closest of Britten's kindred composer spirits – even more so than Purcell – was [[Gustav Mahler|Mahler]], whose [[Symphony No. 4 (Mahler)|Fourth Symphony]] Britten heard in September 1930. At that time Mahler's music was little regarded and rarely played in English concert halls.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=20–23}} Britten later wrote of how the scoring of this work impressed him: "...&nbsp;entirely clean and transparent&nbsp;... the material was remarkable, and the melodic shapes highly original, with such rhythmic and harmonic tension from beginning to end."<ref name=mahler/> He soon discovered other Mahler works, in particular ''[[Das Lied von der Erde]]''; he wrote to a friend about the concluding "Abschied" of ''Das Lied'': "It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful."<ref>Letter to Henry Boys, 29 June 1937, quoted in {{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=22}}.</ref>{{Efn|In 1938, Britten attended what was only the second British performance of [[Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)|Mahler's Eighth Symphony]], the "Symphony of a Thousand", with [[Henry Wood|Sir Henry Wood]] and the [[BBC Symphony Orchestra]]. Britten declared himself "tremendously impressed" by the music, though he thought the performance "execrable".<ref>[[Michael Kennedy (music critic)|Kennedy, Michael]]. [http://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/01/mahlers-mass-following/ "Mahler's mass following"], ''[[The Spectator]]'', 13 January 2010, accessed 11 June 2016</ref>}} Apart from Mahler's general influence on Britten's compositional style, the incorporation by Britten of popular tunes (as, for example, in ''[[Death in Venice (opera)|Death in Venice]]'') is a direct inheritance from the older composer.{{Sfn|Whittall|1982|p=203}}

===Operas===
The Britten-Pears Foundation considers the composer's operas "perhaps the most substantial and important part of his compositional legacy."<ref>[http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=466 "Operas"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130813034510/http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=466 |date=13 August 2013}}, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 26 June 2013</ref> Britten's operas are firmly established in the international repertoire: according to [[Operabase]], they are performed worldwide more than those of any other composer born in the 20th century,<ref name="obtop">[http://operabase.com/top.cgi?lang=en#composer List of top composers], Operabase, accessed 28 April 2011.</ref> and only [[Giacomo Puccini|Puccini]] and [[Richard Strauss]] come ahead of him if the list is extended to all operas composed after 1900.<ref name="bpf1103pr">[https://web.archive.org/web/20111026211726/http://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Britten-Pears-Foundation-announces-Centenary-grants/12218 Britten-Pears Foundation announces Centenary grants(March 2011) ] Boosey & Hawkes, accessed 11 June 2016.</ref>

The early operetta ''[[Paul Bunyan (operetta)|Paul Bunyan]]'' stands apart from Britten's later operatic works. [[Philip Brett]] calls it "a patronizing attempt to evoke the spirit of a nation not his own by W. H. Auden in which Britten was a somewhat dazzled accomplice."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brett |first=Philip |title=Britten's Century: Celebrating 100 Years of Britten |date=2013 |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-4411-4958-9 |editor-last=Bostridge |editor-first=Mark |page=17 |chapter=The Britten Century}}</ref> The American public liked it, but the critics did not,{{Efn|The critics' outrage at the presumption of Auden and Britten in writing an American work mirrored the hostile response of London critics six years earlier when [[Jerome Kern]] and [[Oscar Hammerstein II|Oscar Hammerstein]] presented ''[[Three Sisters (musical)|Three Sisters]]'', a musical set in England.{{Sfn|Banfield|2006|p=224}}}} and it fell into neglect until interest revived near the end of the composer's life.<ref name=grove/>

[[File:Peter Pears publicity photo 1971 crop jpeg.jpg|thumb|Peter Pears as the General in ''Owen Wingrave'', 1971]]
Britten's subsequent operas range from large-scale works written for full-strength opera companies, to chamber operas for performance by small touring opera ensembles or in churches and schools. In the large-scale category are ''[[Peter Grimes]]'' (1945), ''[[Billy Budd (opera)|Billy Budd]]'' (1951), ''[[Gloriana]]'' (1953), ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)|A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' (1960) and ''[[Death in Venice (opera)|Death in Venice]]'' (1973). Of the remaining operas, ''[[The Rape of Lucretia]]'' (1946), ''[[Albert Herring]]'' (1947), ''[[The Little Sweep]]'' (1949) and ''[[The Turn of the Screw (opera)|The Turn of the Screw]]'' (1954) were written for small opera companies. ''[[Noye's Fludde]]'' (1958), ''[[Curlew River]]'' (1964), ''[[The Burning Fiery Furnace]]'' (1966) and ''[[The Prodigal Son (Britten)|The Prodigal Son]]'' (1968) were for church performance, and had their premieres at [[St Bartholomew's Church, Orford]]. The secular ''The Golden Vanity'' was intended to be performed in schools. ''Owen Wingrave'', written for television, was first presented live by the [[The Royal Opera|Royal Opera]] at Covent Garden in 1973, two years after its broadcast premiere.<ref name=grove/>

Music critics have frequently commented on the recurring theme in Britten's operas from ''Peter Grimes'' onward of the isolated individual at odds with a hostile society.<ref>ODNB; [[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]]. "Inspired genius oblivious to musical fashion", ''The Guardian'', 6 December 1976, p. 7; {{Harvnb|Seymour|2007|pp=19, 77, 116, 216}}.</ref> The extent to which this reflected Britten's perception of himself, pacifist and homosexual, in the England of the 1930s, 40s and 50s is debated.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kildea|2013|pp=2–3}}; {{Harvnb|Seymour|2007|pp=19–20}}; and {{Harvnb|Powell|2013|p=233}}.</ref> Another recurrent theme is the corruption of innocence, most sharply seen in ''The Turn of the Screw''.<ref>[http://www.brittenpears.org/resources/the-turn-of-the-screw ''The Turn of the Screw''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220091814/http://www.brittenpears.org/resources/the-turn-of-the-screw |date=20 December 2016}}, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 11 June 2016</ref>

Over the 28 years between ''Peter Grimes'' and ''Death in Venice'' Britten's musical style changed, as he introduced elements of [[atonalism]] – though remaining essentially a tonal composer – and of eastern music, particularly gamelan sounds but also eastern harmonies.<ref name=grove/> In ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' the orchestral scoring varies to fit the nature of each set of characters: "the bright, percussive sounds of harps, keyboards and percussion for the fairy world, warm strings and wind for the pairs of lovers, and lower woodwind and brass for the mechanicals."<ref>[http://www.brittenpears.org/resources/a-midsummer-nights-dream "A Midsummer Night's Dream": Programme note] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160701164835/http://www.brittenpears.org/resources/a-midsummer-nights-dream |date=1 July 2016}} Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 11 June 2018</ref> In ''Death in Venice'' Britten turns Tadzio and his family into silent dancers, "accompanied by the colourful, glittering sounds of tuned percussion to emphasize their remoteness."<ref>[http://www.brittenpears.org/resources/death-in-venice "Death in Venice": Programme note] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220091818/http://www.brittenpears.org/resources/death-in-venice |date=20 December 2016}}, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 11 June 2016</ref>

As early as 1948 the music analyst [[Hans Keller]], summarising Britten's impact on 20th-century opera to that date, compared his contribution to that of [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] in the 18th century: "Mozart may in some respects be regarded as a founder (a 'second founder') of opera. The same can already be said today, as far as the modern British – perhaps not only British – field goes, of Britten."<ref>[[Hans Keller|Keller, Hans]]. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/730149 "Britten and Mozart"], ''[[Music & Letters]]'', January 1948, pp. 17–30 {{Subscription}}.</ref> In addition to his own original operas, Britten, together with Imogen Holst, extensively revised Purcell's ''[[Dido and Aeneas]]'' (1951) and ''[[The Fairy-Queen]]'' (1967). [[Britten's Purcell Realizations]] brought Purcell, who was then neglected, to a wider public, but have themselves been neglected since the dominance of the trend to authentic performance practice.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=102}} His 1948 revision of ''[[The Beggar's Opera]]'' amounts to a wholesale recomposition, retaining the original melodies but giving them new, highly sophisticated orchestral accompaniments.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=91}}

===Song cycles===
Throughout his career Britten was drawn to the song cycle form. In 1928, when he was 14, he composed an orchestral cycle, ''Quatre chansons françaises'', setting words by [[Victor Hugo]] and [[Paul Verlaine]]. Brett comments that though the work is much influenced by Wagner on the one hand and French mannerisms on the other, "the diatonic nursery-like tune for the sad boy with the consumptive mother in 'L'enfance' is entirely characteristic."<ref name=grove/> After he came under Auden's influence Britten composed ''Our Hunting Fathers'' (1936), ostensibly a protest against fox-hunting but which also alludes allegorically to the contemporary political state of Europe. The work has never been popular; in 1948 the critic Colin Mason lamented its neglect and called it one of Britten's greatest works. In Mason's view the cycle is "as exciting as ''Les Illuminations'', and offers many interesting and enjoyable foretastes of the best moments of his later works."<ref name="mason1">Mason, Colin. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/936395 "Benjamin Britten"], ''[[The Musical Times]]'', Vol. 89, No. 1261 (March 1948), pp. 73–75 {{Subscription}}.</ref>

[[File:Britten-poets.jpg|thumb|left|Poets whose words Britten set included (clockwise from top l) [[William Blake|Blake]], [[Arthur Rimbaud|Rimbaud]], [[Wilfred Owen|Owen]] and [[Paul Verlaine|Verlaine]]]]
The first of Britten's song cycles to gain widespread popularity was ''[[Les Illuminations (Britten)|Les Illuminations]]'' (1940), for high voice (originally soprano, later more often sung by tenors){{Efn|Matthews comments that the work is "so much more sensuous when sung by the soprano voice for which the songs were conceived."<ref name="M56">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=56}}.</ref>}} with string orchestra accompaniment, setting words by [[Arthur Rimbaud]]. Britten's music reflects the eroticism in Rimbaud's poems; Copland commented of the section "Antique" that he did not know how Britten dared to write the melody.<ref name=grove/> "Antique" was dedicated to "K.H.W.S.", or [[John Woolford (muse)|Wulff Scherchen]], Britten's first romantic interest. Matthews judges the piece the crowning masterpiece of Britten's early years.<ref name= M56/> By the time of Britten's next cycle, ''[[Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo]]'' (1942) for tenor and piano, Pears had become his partner and muse; in Matthews's phrase, Britten wrote the cycle as "his declaration of love for Peter".<ref name= M56/> It too finds the sensuality of the verses it sets, though in its structure it resembles a conventional 19th-century song cycle. Mason draws a distinction between this and Britten's earlier cycles, because here each song is self-contained, and has no thematic connection with any of the others.<ref name=mason1/>

The ''[[Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings]]'' (1943) sets verses by a variety of poets, all on the theme of night-time. Though Britten described the cycle as "not important stuff, but quite pleasant, I think", it was immediately greeted as a masterpiece, and together with ''Peter Grimes'' it established him as one of the leading composers of his day.<ref name=dnb/> Mason calls it "a beautifully unified work on utterly dissimilar poems, held together by the most superficial but most effective, and therefore most suitable symphonic method. Some of the music is pure [[word painting|word-painting]], some of it mood-painting, of the subtlest kind."<ref name="mason2">Mason, Colin. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/933105 "Benjamin Britten (continued)"], ''[[The Musical Times]]'', Vol. 89, No. 1262 (April 1948), pp. 107–110 {{Subscription}}.</ref> Two years later, after witnessing the horrors of Belsen, Britten composed ''[[The Holy Sonnets of John Donne]]'', a work whose bleakness was not matched until his final tenor and piano cycle a quarter of a century later. Britten's technique in this cycle ranges from atonality in the first song to firm tonality later, with a resolute B major chord at the climax of "Death, be not proud".<ref name="Matthews 80"/>

''[[Nocturne (Britten)|Nocturne]]'' (1958) is the last of the orchestral cycles. As in the ''Serenade'', Britten set words by a range of poets, who here include [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge|Coleridge]], [[John Keats|Keats]], [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]], [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]] and [[Wilfred Owen]].<ref name=grove/> The whole cycle is darker in tone than the ''Serenade'', with pre-echoes of the ''War Requiem''.<ref name="m120">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|pp=120–121}}.</ref> All the songs have subtly different orchestrations, with a prominent [[obbligato]] part for a different instrument in each.<ref name=m120/>
Among Britten's later song cycles with piano accompaniment is the ''[[Songs and Proverbs of William Blake]]'', composed for the baritone [[Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau]]. This presents all its poems in a continuous stream of music; Brett writes that it "interleaves a ritornello-like setting of the seven proverbs with seven songs that paint an increasingly sombre picture of human existence."<ref name=grove/> A Pushkin cycle, ''[[The Poet's Echo]]'' (1965), was written for [[Galina Vishnevskaya]], and shows a more robust and extrovert side of the composer.<ref name=grove/> Though written ostensibly in the tradition of European song cycles, it draws atmospherically on the polyphony of south-east Asian music.<ref name=dnb/> ''[[Who Are These Children?]]'' (1969), setting 12 verses by [[William Soutar]], is among the grimmest of Britten's cycles. After he could no longer play the piano, Britten composed a cycle of [[Robert Burns]] settings, ''[[A Birthday Hansel]]'' (1976), for voice and harp.<ref name=grove/>

===Other vocal works===
Nicholas Maw said of Britten's vocal music: "His feeling for poetry (not only English) and the inflexions of language make him, I think, the greatest musical realizer of English."<ref name=max/> One of the best-known works in which Britten set poetry was the ''War Requiem'' (1962). It intersperses the Latin [[requiem mass]], sung by [[soprano]] and chorus, with settings of works by the First World War poet [[Wilfred Owen]], sung by [[tenor]] and [[baritone]]. At the end the two elements are combined, as the last line of Owen's "Strange meeting" mingles with the ''[[In paradisum]]'' of the mass. Matthews describes the conclusion of the work as "a great wave of benediction [which] recalls the end of the ''Sinfonia da Requiem'', and its similar ebbing away into the sea that symbolises both reconciliation and death."{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=125–127}} The same year, he composed ''[[A Hymn of St Columba]]'' for choir and organ, setting a poem by [[Columba|the 6th-century saint]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Spicer |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Spicer |title=A Hymn of St Columba |url=http://www.boosey.com/downloads/brittenchoralenglish.pdf |access-date=13 November 2019 |website=Britten Choral Guide |publisher=[[Boosey & Hawkes]] |pages=8–9}}</ref> Other works for voices and orchestra include the ''[[Missa Brevis (Britten)|Missa Brevis]]'' and the ''[[Cantata academica]]'' (both 1959) on religious themes, ''[[Children's Crusade (Britten)|Children's Crusade]]'' to a text by [[Bertolt Brecht]] about a group of children in [[History of Poland (1939–1945)|wartime Poland]], to be performed by children (1969), and the late cantata ''[[Phaedra (cantata)|Phaedra]]'' (1975), a story of fated love and death modelled on [[George Frideric Handel|Handel]]'s Italian cantatas.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=146, 185–188}}

Smaller-scale works for accompanied voice include the five ''[[Canticles (Britten)|Canticles]]'', composed between 1947 and 1974. They are written for a variety of voices (tenor in all five; counter-tenor or alto in II and IV and baritone in IV) and accompaniments (piano in I to IV, horn in III and harp in V).<ref>[http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=493 "Canticle I"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923194714/http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=493 |date=23 September 2015}}, [http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=494 "Canticle II"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923194716/http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=494 |date=23 September 2015}}, [http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=495 "Canticle III"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923194717/http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=495 |date=23 September 2015}}, [http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=496 "Canticle IV"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923194719/http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=496 |date=23 September 2015}}, and [http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=497 "Canticle V"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923194720/http://www.brittenpears.org/page.php?pageid=497 |date=23 September 2015}}, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 30 June 2013</ref> The first, ''[[Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his]]'', is a setting of [[Francis Quarles]]'s 17th-century poem "A Divine Rapture",<ref name="matthews98">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|pp=98–99}}.</ref> and according to Britten was modelled on Purcell's ''Divine Hymns''.{{Sfn|Schafer|1963|p=121}} Matthews describes it as one of the composer's most serene works, which "ends in a mood of untroubled happiness that would soon become rare in Britten's music."<ref name=matthews98/> The [[Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac|second Canticle]] was written in 1952, between ''Billy Budd'' and ''Gloriana'', on the theme of [[Abraham]]'s obedience to Divine Authority in the proffered sacrifice of his son [[Isaac]].{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=111}}{{Efn|The piece was much admired by Tippett as "one of the wonderful things in Britten's music", an opinion with which Britten apparently concurred.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=305}}}} [[Canticle III: Still falls the rain|"Canticle III"]] from 1954 is a setting of Edith Sitwell's wartime poem "Still Falls the Rain", composed just after ''The Turn of the Screw'' with which it is structurally and stylistically associated. The twelve-note cycle in the first five bars of the piano part of the Canticle introduced a feature that became thereafter a regular part of Britten's compositional technique.{{Sfn|Whittall|1982|pp=162–164}} ''[[Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi]]'', premiered in 1971, is based on T. S. Eliot's poem "[[Journey of the Magi]]". It is musically close to ''The Burning Fiery Furnace'' of 1966; Matthews refers to it as a "companion piece" to the earlier work.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=140}} The final Canticle was another Eliot setting, his juvenile poem "Death of Saint Narcissus". Although Britten had little idea of what the poem was about,{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=565}} the musicologist [[Arnold Whittall]] finds the text "almost frighteningly apt&nbsp;... for a composer conscious of his own sickness."{{Sfn|Whittall|1982|p=272}} Matthews sees Narcissus as "another figure from [Britten's] magic world of dreams and ideal beauty."{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|p=153}}

===Orchestral works===
{{external media|float=right|width=230px|audio1=You may hear Benjamine Britten's "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra", Op. 34 with Britten conducting the [[London Symphony Orchestra]] in 1967<br/>[https://archive.org/details/lp_young-persons-guide-to-the-orchestra-op-34_benjamin-britten-the-london-symphony-orche/disc1/01.01.+The+Young+Person's+Guide+To+The+Orchestra+(Op.+34).mp3 '''Here on Archive.org''']}}

The Britten scholar [[Donald Mitchell (writer)|Donald Mitchell]] has written, "It is easy, because of the scope, stature, and sheer volume of the operas, and the wealth of vocal music of all kinds, to pay insufficient attention to the many works Britten wrote in other, specifically non-vocal genres."<ref name=dnb/> Maw said of Britten, "He is one of the 20th century's great orchestral composers&nbsp;... His orchestration has an individuality, incisiveness and integration with the musical material only achieved by the greatest composers."<ref name=max/> Among Britten's best-known orchestral works are the ''[[Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge]]'' (1937), the ''[[Sinfonia da Requiem]]'' (1940), the ''Four Sea Interludes'' (1945) and ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). The Variations, an affectionate tribute to Britten's teacher, range from comic parodies of Italian operatic clichés and Viennese waltzes to a strutting march, reflecting the rise of militarism in Europe, and a Mahlerian funeral march; the piece ends with an exuberant [[fugue|fugal]] finale.<ref>Richards, Denby (1977). Notes to Chandos CD 8376</ref> The Sinfonia moves from an opening ''Lacrymosa'' filled with fear and lamentation to a fierce [[Dies irae]] and then to a final ''Requiem aeternam'', described by the critic Herbert Glass as "the most uneasy 'eternal rest' possible".<ref>Glass, Herbert. [http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/sinfonia-da-requiem-benjamin-britten "Sinfonia da Requiem"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017175446/http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/sinfonia-da-requiem-benjamin-britten |date=17 October 2013}}, Los Angeles Philharmonic, accessed 26 June 2013</ref> Mason considers the Sinfonia a failure: "less entertaining than usual, because its object is not principally to entertain but to express symphonically. It fails because it is neither picturesquely nor formally symphonic."<ref name=mason1/> The ''Sea Interludes'', adapted by Britten from the full score of ''Peter Grimes'', make a concert suite depicting the sea and the Borough in which the opera is set; the character of the music is strongly contrasted between "Dawn", "Sunday Morning", "Moonlight" and "Storm". The commentator Howard Posner observes that there is not a bar in the interludes, no matter how beautiful, that is free of foreboding.<ref>Posner, Howard. [http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/four-sea-interludes-benjamin-britten "Four Sea Interludes"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130330004237/http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/four-sea-interludes-benjamin-britten |date=30 March 2013}}, Los Angeles Philharmonic, accessed 26 June 2013</ref> ''The Young Person's Guide'', based on a theme by Purcell, showcases the orchestra's individual sections and groups, and gained widespread popularity from the outset.<ref name=headington82/><ref name=Matthews85/> [[Christopher Headington]] calls the work "exuberant and uncomplicated music, scored with clarity and vigour [that] fits well into Britten's ''oeuvre''."<ref name="headington82">{{Harvnb|Headington|1996|p=82}}.</ref> David Matthews calls it "a brilliant educational exercise."<ref name="Matthews85">{{Harvnb|Matthews|2003|p=85}}.</ref>{{Efn|The piece is formally sub-titled "Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell"; Britten greatly disliked the BBC's practice of referring to the work by the grander sub-title in preference to his preferred title.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=231}}}}

Unlike his English predecessors such as [[Edward Elgar|Elgar]] and Vaughan Williams, and composers from mainland Europe whom he admired, including Mahler and Shostakovich, Britten was not a classical symphonist. His youthful ''jeux d'esprit'' the ''Simple Symphony'' (1934) is in conventional symphonic structure, observing [[sonata form]] and the traditional four-movement pattern, but of his mature works his ''Spring Symphony'' (1949) is more a song cycle than a true symphony,<ref name=grove/> and the concertante [[Cello Symphony (Britten)|Cello Symphony]] (1963) is an attempt to balance the traditional concerto and symphony. During its four movements the Cello Symphony moves from a deeply pessimistic opening to a finale of radiant happiness rare for Britten by this point.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=128, 183}} The composer considered it "the finest thing I've written."{{Sfn|Powell|2013|p=382}}

The [[Piano Concerto (Britten)|Piano Concerto]] (1938) was at first criticised for being too light-hearted and virtuoso. In 1945 Britten revised it, replacing a skittish third movement with a more sombre [[passacaglia]] that, in Matthews's view, gives the work more depth, and makes the apparent triumph of the finale more ambivalent.{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=46–48}} The [[Violin Concerto (Britten)|Violin Concerto]] (1939), finished in the first weeks of the World War, has virtuoso elements, but they are balanced by lyrical and elegiac passages, "undoubtedly reflecting Britten's growing concern with the escalation of world hostilities."<ref name="vc">[http://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Benjamin-Britten-Violin-Concerto/6425 "Britten, Benjamin: Violin Concerto"], Boosey & Hawkes, accessed 30 June 2013</ref> Neither concerto is among Britten's most popular works, but in the 21st century the Violin Concerto, which is technically difficult, has been performed more frequently than before, both in the concert hall and on record,<ref name=vc/> and has enthusiastic performers and advocates, notably violinist [[Janine Jansen]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Niles |first=Laurie |date=30 March 2010 |title=Janine Jansen on the Britten Violin Concerto |url=https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20103/11103 |access-date=17 September 2020 |website=violinist.com}}</ref>

Britten's incidental music for theatre, film and radio, much of it unpublished, was the subject of an essay by [[William Mann (critic)|William Mann]], published in 1952 in the first detailed critical assessment of Britten's music to that date.{{Sfn|Mann|1952|pp=295–311}} Of these pieces the music for a radio play, ''The Rescue'', by [[Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville|Edward Sackville-West]], is praised by the musicologist [[Lewis Foreman]] as "of such stature and individual character as to be worth a regular place alongside [Britten's] other dramatic scores."<ref name="Foreman">Foreman, Lewis. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/945907 Benjamin Britten and 'The Rescue'], ''[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]'', September 1988, pp. 28–33 {{Subscription}}.</ref> Mann finds in this score pre-echoes of the second act of ''Billy Budd'',{{Sfn|Mann|1952|p=303}} while Foreman observes that Britten "appears to have made passing allusions to ''The Rescue'' in his final opera, ''Death in Venice''.<ref name= Foreman/>

===Chamber and instrumental works===
Britten's close friendship with Rostropovich inspired the [[Cello Sonata (Britten)|Cello Sonata]] (1961) and three suites for solo cello (1964–71).{{Sfn|Matthews|2003|pp=188–189}} String quartets featured throughout Britten's composing career, from a student work in 1928 to his Third String Quartet (1975). The [[String Quartet No. 2 (Britten)|Second Quartet]], from 1945, was written in homage to Purcell; Mason considered it Britten's most important instrumental work to that date.<ref name= mason2/> Referring to this work, Keller writes of the ease with which Britten, relatively early in his compositional career, solves "the modern sonata problem – the achievement of symmetry and unity within an extended ternary circle based on more than one subject." Keller likens the innovatory skill of the Quartet to that of [[William Walton|Walton]]'s [[Viola Concerto (Walton)|Viola Concerto]].<ref>[[Hans Keller|Keller, Hans]]. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/943226 "Benjamin Britten's Second Quartet"], ''[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]'', March 1947, pp. 6–9 {{Subscription}}.</ref> The third Quartet was Britten's last major work; the critic Colin Anderson said of it in 2007, "one of Britten's greatest achievements, one with interesting allusions to [[Béla Bartók|Bartók]] and Shostakovich, and written with an economy that opens out a depth of emotion that can be quite chilling.<ref>Anderson, Colin, "Britten – 'Phantasy Quartet'; String Quartet No. 3; Bliss – Oboe Quintet", ''[[Fanfare (magazine)|Fanfare]]'', March 2007, pp. 87–88.</ref> The ''Gemini Variations'' (1965), for flute, violin and piano duet, were based on a theme of [[Zoltán Kodály]] and written as a virtuoso piece for the 13-year-old Jeney twins, musical prodigies whom Britten had met in Budapest in the previous year.{{Sfn|Carpenter|1992|p=448}} For [[Osian Ellis]], Britten wrote the Suite for Harp (1969), which [[Joan Chissell]] in ''The Times'' described as "a little masterpiece of concentrated fancy".<ref>[[Joan Chissell|Chissell, Joan]]. "Little Masterpieces", ''The Times'', 26 June 1976, p. 11</ref> ''[[Nocturnal after John Dowland]]'' (1963) for solo guitar was written for [[Julian Bream]] and has been praised by [[Benjamin Dwyer]] for its "semantic complexity, prolonged musical argument, and philosophical depth".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dwyer |first=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Dwyer |title=Britten and the Guitar |date=2016 |publisher=Carysfort Press |isbn=978-1-9093-2593-7 |location=Dublin |page=159}}</ref>

===Legacy===
[[File:Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, Suffolk (2).jpg|thumb|[[Snape Maltings]] concert hall, a main venue of the [[Aldeburgh Festival]], founded by Britten, Pears and Crozier]]
Britten's fellow composers had divided views about him. To Tippett he was "simply the most musical person I have ever met", with an "incredible" technical mastery;{{Sfn|Tippett|1994|p=117}} some contemporaries, however, were less effusive. In Tippett's view, Walton and others were convinced that Britten and Pears were leaders of a homosexual conspiracy in music,{{Efn|[[Steuart Wilson]], a retired singer who held a succession of posts as a musical administrator, launched an outspoken campaign in 1955 against "homosexuality in British music" and was quoted as saying: "The influence of perverts in the world of music has grown beyond all measure. If it is not curbed soon, Covent Garden and other precious musical heritages could suffer irreparable harm."<ref>''[[The Sunday People|The People]]'', 24 July 1955, cited in {{Harvnb|Britten|2004|p=7}}.</ref>}} a belief Tippett dismisses as ridiculous, inspired by jealousy of Britten's postwar successes.{{Sfn|Tippett|1994|p=214}} [[Leonard Bernstein]] considered Britten "a man at odds with the world", and said of his music: "[I]f you hear it, not just listen to it superficially, you become aware of something very dark."<ref>Bernstein, in the TV documentary ''A Time There Was'', quoted by {{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|p=590}}.</ref> The tenor [[Robert Tear]], who was closely associated with Britten in the latter part of the composer's career, made a similar point: "There was a great, huge abyss in his soul&nbsp;... He got into the valley of the shadow of death and couldn't get out."<ref name=Carpenter590/>

In the decade after Britten's death, his standing as a composer in Britain was to some extent overshadowed by that of the still-living Tippett.{{Sfn|Steinberg|1998|p=643}} The film-maker [[Tony Palmer (director)|Tony Palmer]] thought that Tippett's temporary ascendancy might have been a question of the two composers' contrasting personalities: Tippett had more warmth and had made fewer enemies. In any event this was a short-lived phenomenon; Tippett adherents such as the composer [[Robert Saxton]] soon rediscovered their enthusiasm for Britten, whose audience steadily increased during the final years of the 20th century.<ref name=Carpenter590/> Britten has had few imitators; [[Philip Brett|Brett]] describes him as "inimitable, possessed of&nbsp;... a voice and sound too dangerous to imitate."<ref name= grove/> Nevertheless, after his death Britten was lauded by the younger generation of English composers to whom, in the words of [[Oliver Knussen]], he became "a phenomenal father-figure".<ref name="Carpenter590">{{Harvnb|Carpenter|1992|pp=590–591}}.</ref> Brett believes that he affected every subsequent British composer to some extent: "He is a key figure in the growth of British musical culture in the second half of the 20th century, and his effect on everything from opera to the revitalization of music education is hard to overestimate."<ref name= grove/>

Whittall believes that one reason for Britten's enduring popularity is the "progressive conservatism" of his music. He generally avoided the avant-garde, and did not challenge the conventions in the way that contemporaries such as Tippett did.{{Sfn|Whittall|1982|pp=299–301}} Perhaps, says Brett, "the tide that swept away serialism, atonality and most forms of musical modernism and brought in neo-Romanticism, minimalism and other modes of expression involved with tonality carried with it renewed interest in composers who had been out of step with the times."<ref name= grove/> Britten defined his mission as a composer in very simple terms: composers should aim at "pleasing people today as seriously as we can".{{Sfn|Oliver|1996|p=213}}

==Pianist and conductor==
Britten, though a reluctant conductor and a nervous pianist, was greatly sought after in both capacities.{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|pp=18–19, 92}} The piano accompanist [[Gerald Moore]] wrote in his memoirs about playing at all the main music festivals except for Aldeburgh, because "as the presiding genius there is the greatest accompanist in the world, my services are not needed."{{Sfn|Moore|1974|p=252}}{{Efn|In 2006 ''[[Gramophone (magazine)|Gramophone]]'' magazine invited eminent present-day accompanists to name their "professional's professional": the joint winners were Britten and Moore.<ref>''Gramophone'', Volume 83, 2006, pp. 38–39</ref>}} Britten's recital partnership with Pears was his best-known collaboration, but he also accompanied [[Kathleen Ferrier]], Rostropovich, [[Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau]], [[James Bowman (countertenor)|James Bowman]] and [[John Shirley-Quirk]], among others.<ref name=decca/> Though usually too nervous to play piano solos, Britten often performed piano duets with [[Clifford Curzon]] or Richter, and chamber music with the [[Amadeus Quartet]].<ref name=decca/> The composers whose works, other than his own, he most often played were Mozart and [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]]; the latter, in [[Murray Perahia]]'s view, was Britten's greatest idol.{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=171}} As a boy and young man, Britten had intensely admired Brahms, but his admiration waned to nothing, and Brahms seldom featured in his repertory.{{Efn|Britten once said, "It's not bad Brahms I mind, it's good Brahms I can't stand."{{Sfn|Blyth|1981|p=88}}}}

Singers and players admired Britten's conducting, and [[David Webster (opera manager)|David Webster]] rated it highly enough to offer him the musical directorship of the [[The Royal Opera|Covent Garden Opera]] in 1952.{{Efn|So writes John Bridcut,{{Sfn|Bridcut|2012|p=173}} but Webster's biographer, [[Montague Haltrecht]], recounts that no formal offer of the post was made to Britten. According to Haltrecht, Lord Harewood and other Covent Garden board members wanted Britten for the post, but Webster believed that it was above all as a composer that Britten could bring glory to Covent Garden.{{Sfn|Haltrecht|1975|pp=185–186}}}} Britten declined; he was not confident of his ability as a conductor and was reluctant to spend too much time performing rather than composing.{{Sfn|Bridcut|2012|pp=173–176}} As a conductor, Britten's repertory included [[Henry Purcell|Purcell]], [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]], [[Joseph Haydn|Haydn]], Mozart and Schubert, and occasional less characteristic choices including [[Robert Schumann|Schumann]]'s ''[[Scenes from Goethe's Faust]]''; Elgar's ''[[The Dream of Gerontius]]'' and ''[[Introduction and Allegro (Elgar)|Introduction and Allegro]]''; [[Gustav Holst|Holst]]'s ''[[Egdon Heath (Holst)|Egdon Heath]]'' and short pieces by Percy Grainger.<ref name=decca/>{{Sfn|Bridcut|2012|pp=175–176}}

== Recordings ==
Britten, like Elgar and Walton before him, was signed up by a major British recording company,{{Efn|Elgar was an exclusive [[His Master's Voice (British record label)|His Master's Voice]] artist;<ref>Philip, Robert, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3137978 "The recordings of Edward Elgar (1857–1934): Authenticity and Performance Practice"], ''[[Early Music (journal)|Early Music]]'', November 1984, pp. 481–489 {{Subscription}}.</ref> Walton, after a brief spell with Decca, made most of his recordings for [[Columbia Graphophone Company|Columbia]].<ref>[[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]], "The Music of William Walton", ''[[Gramophone (magazine)|Gramophone]]'', October 1994, p. 92</ref>}} and performed a considerable proportion of his output on disc. For the [[Decca Records|Decca Record Company]] he made some [[monaural]] records in the 1940s and 1950s, followed, with the enthusiastic support of the Decca producer [[John Culshaw]], by numerous [[stereophonic]] versions of his works.<ref name="decca">Stuart, Philip. [http://images.cch.kcl.ac.uk/charm/liv/pubs/DeccaComplete.pdf ''Decca Classical 1929–2009''], accessed 24 May 2013.</ref> Culshaw wrote, "The happiest hours I have spent in any studio were with Ben, for the basic reason that it did not seem that we were trying to make records or video tapes; we were just trying to make music."<ref>[[John Culshaw|Culshaw, John]], "Ben – A Tribute to Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)", ''Gramophone'', February 1977, p. 21</ref>{{Efn|[[Imogen Holst]] remembered Britten's recording sessions differently: "He used to find recording sessions more exhausting than anything else, and dreaded the days when he had to stop writing a new opera in order to record the one before last."<ref>[[Imogen Holst|Holst, Imogen]]. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/959791 "Working for Benjamin Britten"], ''[[The Musical Times]]'', March 1977, pp. 202–204 and 206 {{Subscription}}.</ref>}}

In May 1943 Britten made his debut in the Decca studios, accompanying [[Sophie Wyss]] in five of his arrangements of French folk songs. The following January he and Pears recorded together, in Britten's arrangements of British folk songs, and the following day, in duet with Curzon he recorded his ''Introduction and Rondo alla burlesca'' and ''Mazurka elegiaca''. In May 1944 he conducted the [[Boyd Neel]] string orchestra, [[Dennis Brain]] and Pears in the first recording of the ''Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings'', which has frequently been reissued, most recently on CD.<ref name=decca/>

Britten's first operatic recording was ''The Turn of the Screw'', made in January 1955 with the original English Opera Group forces. In 1957 he conducted ''The Prince of the Pagodas'' in an early stereo recording, supervised by Culshaw.<ref name=decca/> Decca's first major commercial success with Britten came the following year, with ''Peter Grimes'', which has, at 2013, never been out of the catalogues since its first release.<ref name=decca/> From 1958 Britten conducted Decca recordings of many of his operas and vocal and orchestral works, including the ''Nocturne'' (1959), the ''Spring Symphony'' (1960) and the ''War Requiem'' (1963).<ref name=decca/> The last sold in unexpectedly large numbers for a classical set, and thereafter Decca unstintingly made resources available to Culshaw and his successors for Britten recordings.{{Sfn|Culshaw|1981|p=339}} Sets followed of ''Albert Herring'' (1964), the ''Sinfonia da Requiem'' (1964), ''Curlew River'' (1965), ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (1966), ''The Burning Fiery Furnace'' (1967), ''Billy Budd'' (1967) and many of the other major works.<ref name=decca/> In 2013, to mark the anniversary of Britten's birth, Decca released a set of 65 CDs and one DVD, ''Benjamin Britten – Complete Works''.{{Efn|The set comprises all the composer's works with opus numbers and all works commercially recorded by 2013 (many fragments and juvenilia have not been published or recorded). The set includes Britten's folksong arrangements, but excludes his Purcell realisations.<ref name=complete/>}} Most of the recordings were from Decca's back catalogue, but in the interests of comprehensiveness a substantial number of tracks were licensed from 20 other companies including [[EMI Classics|EMI]], [[Virgin Classics]], [[Naxos Records|Naxos]], [[Warner Music Group|Warner]] and [[NMC Recordings|NMC]].<ref name="complete">[http://www.britten100.org/whats-going-on/news/decca-announces-first-britten-complete-works "Decca announces first Britten complete works"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130619014419/http://www.britten100.org/whats-going-on/news/decca-announces-first-britten-complete-works |date=19 June 2013}}, Britten100, Britten-Pears Foundation, 16 May 2013</ref>

As a pianist and conductor in other composers' music, Britten made many recordings for Decca. Among his studio collaborations with Pears are sets of Schubert's ''[[Winterreise]]'' and ''[[Die schöne Müllerin]]'', Schumann's ''[[Dichterliebe]]'', and songs by Haydn, Mozart, [[Frank Bridge|Bridge]], [[John Ireland (composer)|Ireland]], Holst, [[Michael Tippett|Tippett]] and [[Richard Rodney Bennett]].<ref name=decca/> Other soloists whom Britten accompanied on record were Ferrier, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya. As a conductor he recorded a wide range of composers, from Purcell to Grainger. Among his best-known Decca recordings are Purcell's ''The Fairy-Queen'', Bach's ''[[Brandenburg Concertos]]'', [[Süßer Trost, mein Jesus kömmt, BWV 151|Cantata 151]], [[Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben, BWV 102|Cantata 102]] and ''[[St John Passion]]'', Elgar's ''The Dream of Gerontius'' and Mozart's last two symphonies.<ref name=decca/>

==Honours, awards and commemorations==
[[File:Benjamin Britten 137 Cromwell Road blue plaque.jpg|thumb|Blue plaque at 137 [[Cromwell Road]] in London]]

State honours awarded to Britten included appointment as a [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]] (United Kingdom) in 1953;<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=39863 |date=1 June 1953 |page=2976 |supp=y}}</ref> Commander of the [[Order of the Polar Star|Royal Order of the Polar Star]] (Sweden) in 1962; the [[Order of Merit]] (United Kingdom) in 1965;<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=43610|date=26 March 1965|page=3047|supp=y|nolink=y}}</ref> and a [[life peer]]age (United Kingdom) in July 1976, he took the title ''Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk''.<ref name="TheLondon"/> He received honorary degrees and fellowships from 19 conservatories and universities in Europe and America. His awards included the [[Hanseatic Goethe Prize]] (1961); the Aspen Award, Colorado (1964); the [[Royal Philharmonic Society]]'s Gold Medal (1964); the [[Wihuri Sibelius Prize]] (1965); the Mahler Medal (Bruckner and Mahler Society of America, 1967); the [[Léonie Sonning Music Prize]] (Denmark, 1968); the [[Ernst von Siemens Music Prize]] (1974); and the Ravel Prize (1974).<ref>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U152634 "Britten, Baron"], ''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 24 May 2013 {{Subscription}}.</ref> Prizes for individual works included [[UNESCO]]'s [[International Rostrum of Composers]] 1961 for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''; and [[Grammy Award]]s in 1963 and 1977 for the ''War Requiem''.<ref>[http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/hall-of-fame "Grammy Hall of Fame"] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150626200735/https://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/hall-of-fame |date=26 June 2015}}, ''Grammy.org'', accessed 24 May 2013.</ref>

[[The Red House, Aldeburgh]], where Britten and Pears lived and worked together from 1957 until Britten's death in 1976, is now the home of the Britten-Pears Foundation, established to promote their musical legacy.<ref>[http://www.brittenpears.org/visit-the-red-house "Visit The Red House"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170111095534/http://www.brittenpears.org/visit-the-red-house |date=11 January 2017}}, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 10 June 2016</ref> In Britten's centenary year his studio at the Red House was restored to the way it was in the 1950s and opened to the public. The converted hayloft was designed and built by [[H. T. Cadbury-Brown|H T Cadbury Brown]] in 1958 and was described by Britten as a "magnificent work".<ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10120134/Benjamin-Britten-studio-restored.html "Benjamin Britten studio restored"], ''The Daily Telegraph'', 14 June 2013, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> In June 2013 Dame Janet Baker officially opened the Britten-Pears archive in a new building in the grounds of the Red House.<ref>[http://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/britten-pears-archive-opens-in-aldeburgh "Britten-Pears Archive opens in Aldeburgh"], ''Gramophone'', 14 June 2013</ref> [[The Benjamin Britten Music Academy]] in Lowestoft, founded in the composer's honour, was completed in 1979; it is an 11–18 co-educational day school, with ties to the Britten-Pears Foundation.<ref>[http://www.benjaminbritten.school/default.aspx "Home page"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160819155106/http://www.benjaminbritten.school/default.aspx |date=19 August 2016}}, Benjamin Britten School, accessed 29 July 2016</ref>

[[File:The Scallop, Maggi Hambling, Aldeburgh.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Scallop (2003)|Scallop]]'' by [[Maggi Hambling]] is a sculpture dedicated to Benjamin Britten on the beach at [[Aldeburgh]]. The edge of the shell is pierced with the words "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" from ''Peter Grimes''.]]
A memorial stone to Britten was unveiled in the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey in 1978.<ref>[http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/benjamin-britten "Benjamin Britten"], Westminster Abbey, accessed 24 May 2013</ref> There are memorial plaques to him at three of his London homes: 173 Cromwell Road,<ref>[http://openplaques.org/plaques/211 Benjamin Britten OM, 1913–1976] Open Plaques, accessed 10 June 2016</ref> 45a [[St John's Wood]] High Street,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Westminster Green Plaques |url=https://www.westminster.gov.uk/sites/default/files/green_plaque_full_list.pdf |website=Westminster City Council}}</ref> and 8 Halliford Street in [[Islington]].<ref>[http://www.islington.gov.uk/islington/history-heritage/heritage_borough/bor_plaques/Pages/a_z_plaques.aspx "Islington Borough plaques"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141022153504/http://www.islington.gov.uk/islington/history-heritage/heritage_borough/bor_plaques/Pages/a_z_plaques.aspx |date=22 October 2014}}, Islington Borough Council, accessed 24 May 2013</ref> In April 2013 Britten was honoured by the [[Royal Mail]] in the UK, as one of ten people selected as subjects for the "Great Britons" [[Great Britain commemorative stamps 2010–2019|commemorative postage stamp]] issue.<ref>[http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-celebrates-%E2%80%98great-britons%E2%80%99-launch-latest-special-stamp-collection "Great Britons"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160402113345/http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-celebrates-%E2%80%98great-britons%E2%80%99-launch-latest-special-stamp-collection |date=2 April 2016}}, Royal Mail, accessed 11 June 2013.</ref>

Other creative artists have celebrated Britten. In 1970 Walton composed ''[[Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten]]'', based on a theme from Britten's Piano Concerto.<ref>[[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]]. Notes to EMI CD CDM 7 64723 2 (1986)</ref> Works commemorating Britten include ''[[Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten]]'' an orchestral piece written in 1977 by [[Arvo Pärt]], and [[Sally Beamish]]'s ''Variations on a Theme of Benjamin Britten'', based on the second Sea Interlude from ''Peter Grimes''; she composed the work to mark Britten's centenary.<ref>[http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:GLHB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=145200B8C9319F58&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "Arts News"], ''[[The Herald (Glasgow)|The Herald]]'', 15 March 2013, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> [[Alan Bennett]] depicts Britten in a 2009 play ''[[The Habit of Art]]'', set while Britten is composing ''Death in Venice'' and centred on a fictional meeting between Britten and Auden. Britten was played in the premiere production by [[Alex Jennings]].<ref>Taylor, Paul. [http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:TND1&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=132548768AD77788&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "Bennett the maestro returns with a multi-layered masterpiece"], ''[[The Independent]]'' 18 November 2009, accessed 11 June 2016</ref>

Tony Palmer made three documentary films about Britten: ''Benjamin Britten & his Festival'' (1967);<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20160820000607/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b69fa2631 "Benjamin Britten & his Festival"] (1967). The British Film Institute, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> ''A Time There Was'' (1979);<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0968252/ Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was... (1979)] IMDb, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> and ''Nocturne'' (2013).<ref>[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britten-Nocturne-NTSC-Tony-Palmer/dp/B00CEX16X6 Britten Nocturne (DVD)] Amazon, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> In 2019, Britten's ''War Requiem'' was selected by the U.S. [[Library of Congress]] for preservation in the [[National Recording Registry]] for being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Andrews |first=Travis M. |date=20 March 2019 |title=Jay-Z, a speech by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and 'Schoolhouse Rock!' among recordings deemed classics by Library of Congress |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jay-z-a-speech-by-sen-robert-f-kennedy-and-schoolhouse-rock-among-recordings-deemed-classics-by-library-of-congress/2019/03/19/f7eb08ea-4a58-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html? |access-date=25 March 2019 |work=The Washington Post}}</ref>

In April 2022 a project to commemorate Britten in Lowestoft was launched by the broadcaster and children's author [[Zeb Soanes]]. A maquette of the intended full-sized statue of Britten as a boy was unveiled by the sculptor [[Ian Rank-Broadley]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Boggis |first=Mark |date=30 April 2022 |title=Unique new statue of Britten as a Boy 'can inspire generations' |url=https://www.lowestoftjournal.co.uk/lifestyle/heritage/new-statue-benjamin-britten-kirkley-lowestoft-8930980 |website=Lowestoft Journal}}</ref> {{As of|2024|01}}, £89,000 of £110,000 target had been raised.<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 January 2024 |title=Britten as a Boy Statue |url=https://www.brittenasaboy.com |website=Britten as a Boy Statue}}</ref>

===Centenary===
In September 2012, to mark the composer's forthcoming centenary, the Britten-Pears Foundation launched "Britten 100", a collaboration of leading organisations in the performing arts, publishing, broadcasting, film, academia and heritage.<ref>[http://www.britten100.org/whats-going-on/news/britten-100-media-launch "It's begun – Biggest ever celebration of a British composer underway"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121130104507/http://www.britten100.org/whats-going-on/news/britten-100-media-launch |date=30 November 2012}}, Britten100, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 24 May 2013.</ref> Among the events were the release of a feature film ''Benjamin Britten – Peace and Conflict'',<ref>French, Philip. [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/26/benjamin-britten-peace-conflict-review "Benjamin Britten: Peace and Conflict – review"], ''The Observer'', 26 May 2013</ref> and a centenary exhibition at the [[British Library]].<ref>[http://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2013/may/the-british-library-explores-benjamin-brittens-literary-poetic-and-musical-influences-with-a-new-exh "Poetry in Sound: The Music of Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210412074554/https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2013/may/the-british-library-explores-benjamin-brittens-literary-poetic-and-musical-influences-with-a-new-exh |date=12 April 2021}}, The British Library, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> The [[Royal Mint]] issued a [[Fifty pence (British coin)|50-pence]] piece, to mark the centenary – the first time a composer has featured on a British coin.<ref>[http://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/royal-mint-unveils-commemorative-britten-coin "Royal Mint unveils commemorative Britten coin"] ''Gramophone'', 1 September 2013</ref>

Centenary performances of the ''War Requiem'' were given at eighteen locations in Britain. Opera productions included ''Owen Wingrave'' at Aldeburgh, ''Billy Budd'' at Glyndebourne, ''Death in Venice'' by [[English National Opera]], ''Gloriana'' by [[The Royal Opera]], and ''Peter Grimes'', ''Death in Venice'' and ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' by [[Opera North]].<ref name="events">[http://www.britten100.org/whats-going-on/events/worldwide?title=&type=&perf=&radius=20&near=&place=&date_from=&date_to=&n=50 "Britten events worldwide"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141225062247/http://www.britten100.org/whats-going-on/events/worldwide?title=&type=&perf=&radius=20&near=&place=&date_from=&date_to=&n=50 |date=25 December 2014}}, Britten100, Britten-Pears Foundation, accessed 15 June 2013</ref> ''Peter Grimes'' was performed on the beach at Aldeburgh, opening the 2013 Aldeburgh Festival in June 2013, with [[Steuart Bedford]] conducting and singers from the Chorus of [[Opera North]] and the Chorus of the [[Guildhall School of Music and Drama]],<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-22938641 "In pictures: Britten's Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh beach"], BBC, 18 June, accessed 11 June 2016</ref> described by ''[[The Guardian]]'' as "a remarkable, and surely unrepeatable achievement."<ref>Clement, Andrew. [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jun/18/peter-grimes-on-the-beach-aldeburgh-festival-review "Grimes on the Beach"], ''The Guardian'', 19 June 2013, accessed 11 June 2016</ref>

Internationally, the anniversary was marked by performances of the ''War Requiem'', ''Peter Grimes'' and other works in four continents. In the US the centennial events were described as "coast to coast", with a Britten festival at [[Carnegie Hall]], and performances at the [[New York Philharmonic]], the [[Metropolitan Opera]] and [[Los Angeles Opera]].<ref>[[Anthony Tommasini|Tommasini, Anthony]]. [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/arts/music/britten-at-100-an-originals-legacy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 "Britten at 100: An Original's Legacy"], ''The New York Times'', 7 June 2013, accessed 11 June 2016</ref>

==Notes==
{{Notelist|30em}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Sources==
{{Refbegin|30em}}
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{{Refend}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
* [http://www.brittenpears.org Britten-Pears Foundation]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20180709212424/http://www.britten100.org/ Britten 100] (Britten-Pears Foundation's website for the Britten centenary)
* [http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk Aldeburgh Music] (The organisation founded by Benjamin Britten in 1948, originally as Aldeburgh Festival: the living legacy of Britten's vision for a festival and creative campus)
* {{BBC composer page|britten|Britten}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100123020524/http://www.brittenproject.org/ Britten Thematic Catalogue], Britten Project
* [http://www.boosey.com/britten Boosey & Hawkes] (Britten's publishers up to 1963): biographies, work lists and descriptions, recordings, performance schedules
* [http://www.fabermusic.com/Composers-Details.aspx?composerid=83 Faber Music] (Publisher set up by Britten for his works after 1963): biography, work lists, recordings, performance schedules
* MusicWeb International. [http://www.musicweb-international.com/britten/index.htm#intro Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)], by Rob Barnett
* National Portrait Gallery. [http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp00560 Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (1913–1976)], 109 portraits.

{{Benjamin Britten}}
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[[Category:English pacifists]]
[[Category:English socialists]]
[[Category:Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners]]
[[Category:Foreign members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts]]
[[Category:Grammy Award winners]]
[[Category:International Rostrum of Composers prize-winners]]
[[Category:LGBTQ classical composers]]
[[Category:LGBTQ life peers]]
[[Category:Life peers created by Elizabeth II]]
[[Category:Members of the Order of Merit]]
[[Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour]]
[[Category:Members of the Royal Academy of Belgium]]
[[Category:Musicians who were peers]]
[[Category:People educated at Gresham's School]]
[[Category:People from Lowestoft]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize]]
[[Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists]]
[[Category:Sacred music composers]]