Travelling exhibition at 25%_Travelling 2 05/07/2013 14:25 Page 1
Celebrating the centenary of Benjamin Britten in 2013
Benjamin Britten 1913 - 1976
The man Painted by his aunt, Sarah Hockey, around 1915.
The composer Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft in 1913. His mother, a keen amateur singer, was delighted that her youngest was born on the feast day of St Cecilia, patron saint of music. She joked that he would – after Bach, Beethoven and Brahms – become the ‘Fourth B’. Britten did indeed become a global musical figure. In just 63 busy years he wrote some of the most appealing classical music of the twentieth century, was hailed as one of the all-time great opera composers and – with his partner, the singer Peter Pears – performed around the world. Britten at Snape, 1967. Photo: Brian Seed
Britten was a progressive cultural figure too, ahead of his time on issues including pacifism, homosexuality and the community role of artists.
In his South Lodge uniform, around 1925.
With Frank Bridge, 1930.
1913
Born in Lowestoft on 22 November at 21 Kirkley Cliff Road, overlooking the North Sea.
1919
Earliest known ‘composition’: a song called ‘Do you no that my Daddy has gone to London today’.
1921
First piano lessons with Miss Ethel Astle, who uses the latest Seppings Method to teach music theory.
1923
Starts attending South Lodge Prep School in Lowestoft while continuing private music lessons.
1928
Begins composition lessons with Frank Bridge, his most influential teacher and mentor.
1930
Leaves Gresham’s School and wins a scholarship to the Royal College of Music.
1935
Gets a job with the GPO Film Unit where he works with WH Auden and others on films like Night Mail.
1937
His mother dies, three years after his father, and he buys the Old Mill, Snape.
1939
Goes to the US with Peter Pears, the singer who becomes his partner, and stays there when war breaks out in Europe.
1942
Britten and Pears return to the UK and both register as Conscientious Objectors.
With WH Auden in New York, 1941.
In Japan, 1956.
In his studio at The Red House, around 1958. Photo: Kurt Hutton.
With Pears celebrating his peerage at The Red House, 1976. Photo: Nigel Luckhurst.
The Britten centenary is being celebrated around the world. For further information on what’s happening, and about the man and his music, visit:
www.britten100.org
Britten’s lifelong pacifism is most clearly expressed in his 1962 masterpiece, War Requiem. He set the text of the Requiem Mass and the poetry of Wilfred Owen, which he wrote at the planning stage, into an old school exercise book. Photo: Nigel Luckhurst.
1945
First opera success: he reads the poetry of George Crabbe in the US and composes the opera Peter Grimes, inspired by one of his works, on his return to England
1946
Co-founds the English Opera Group to present his own and other operas with greater freedom.
1947
Buys Crag House, Aldeburgh. The idea for a ‘modest festival’ in the town is raised during an English Opera Group tour.
1948
First Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts.
1956
Visits Bali and Japan during a Far East tour and draws inspiration from both in later works.
1957
Moves to The Red House, Aldeburgh, and creates an ideal living and working environment there.
1967
Snape Maltings Concert Hall opens - a pioneering conversion of an industrial site to cultural use.
1973
Undergoes a heart operation that leaves him partly paralysed.
1976
Receives a peerage and takes the title Baron Britten of Aldeburgh; dies at home 4 December.
The view from Britten’s childhood home, 1922.
The Seppings Method teaching aid used in Britten’s lessons with Miss Astle. Photo: Nigel Luckhurst.
Programme book from the first Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, 1948.
Britten’s Conscientious Objector certificate, 1943.
Kenneth Green’s costume design for the first production of Peter Grimes, Sadler’s Wells, London 1945
With Pears in Brooklyn, 1940. It was during their wartime years in the US that Britten and Pears developed the relationship that would last the rest of their lives. In 1974, when the ailing Britten was unable to join his partner in New York for the singer’s Metropolitan Opera debut, the pair exchanged a series of remarkable letters, beginning with Britten’s letter (left) expressing the depth of their personal and artistic bond. Pears replied, ‘love is blind - and what your dear eyes do not see is that it is you who have given me everything... I am here as your mouthpiece and I live in your music’.
Snape Maltings Concert Hall was opened by the Queen on 2 June 1967. Sadly the Hall was destroyed by a fire that broke out on the opening night of the 1969 Aldeburgh Festival. It was swiftly rebuilt and was reopened in time for the 1970 Festival. Photo: Brian Seed.
Britten’s friend and long-term collaborator, John Piper, designed the stainedglass window that commemorates the composer in Aldeburgh Parish Church. Appropriately, the design evokes Britten’s three ‘Church Parables’: Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son. Photo: Nigel Luckhurst.
On Aldeburgh beach, 1964. Photo: Brian Seed.
Britten–Pears Foundation The Red House Golf Lane Aldeburgh Suffolk IP15 5PZ 01728 451700 enquiries@brittenpears.org www.brittenpears.org
Photo: Philip Vile