Britten joined South Lodge—a short walk from his home—in 1923 and, although
music was barely covered at the school, later recollections indicate that he ...
BENJAMIN BRITTEN On 22nd November 1913, a fourth child was born to Edith and Robert Britten, of Kirkley Cliff Road, Lowestoft. Edward Benjamin Britten’s musical talent soon became such that Edith was convinced that they had a prodigy in the family and Beth, one of Benjamin’s elder sisters, speaking in a 1980 documentary, recalled her mother saying that this had ‘never before happened in the middle classes’. The young Britten was soon able to play piano duets with his mother and accompany her singing. If he wanted to practise at the piano, Robert, his elder brother had to make way. Britten joined South Lodge—a short walk from his home—in 1923 and, although music was barely covered at the school, later recollections indicate that he enjoyed his time there. He wrote in 1955: “Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy. He was called Britten minor, his initials were E.B., his age was nine, and his locker was number seventeen. He was quite an ordinary little boy; he took his snake-belt to bed with him; 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……. 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.” Captain T. J. Elliott Sewell had become Headmaster of South Lodge in 1923 and his son Donald (Headmaster 1967-1991) recalled in his ‘History of OBH’ that Britten was granted the privilege of being able to practise the piano at any time. Britten became Head Boy and also Vice-captain of cricket—he was a keen sportsman and his competitive nature was recalled by those who, years later, played tennis with him at The Red House in Aldeburgh, his home from 1957 until his death in 1976. The young Britten did indeed write ‘reams and reams’ of music at the time. He was later to recall that there were ‘dozens of songs, twelve piano sonatas, four or five string quartets, two enormous symphonies and an enormous tone poem called ‘Chaos and Cosmos’. He admitted that he was ‘more interested in writing it down than what it sounded like’. In 1924, visiting the Norfolk and Norwich Festival he went to a performance of the orchestral suite ‘The Sea’ by Frank Bridge, conducted by the composer, and was ‘knocked sideways’. Composition lessons with Bridge followed. Britten left South Lodge for Gresham’s in 1928 and studied at the Royal College of Music from 1930. In 1935 he joined the GPO film unit, writing music for documentaries and first met WH Auden who also worked there. In 1937 the tenor Peter Pears, Britten’s life partner and musical collaborator, first became an acquaintance soon afterwards and many of Britten’s compositions from this time onwards are acknowledged as masterpieces. These include the ‘Ceremony of Carols’, written while Britten and Pears were crossing the Atlantic following their extended stay in the USA, and the ‘Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings’ which was memorably performed at OBH in the mid-1990s by Gordon Pullin, the then Director of Music, with the Lavenham Sinfonia. In 1945 the opera ‘Peter Grimes’ was first performed at Sadler’s Wells and it was this work that really made Britten’s name and at the same time put English opera back on the map. A succession of operatic masterpieces
was to follow, including both large-scale works such as ‘Billy Budd’ (written for the 1951 Festival of Britain) and smaller scale ‘chamber operas’ of which ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is a marvellous example. Britten had moved from Snape to the sea front in Aldeburgh in 1947 (remaining there for ten years) and in the following year the first Aldeburgh Festival took place. This was founded by Britten, Pears and the librettist / producer Eric Crozier and soon grew to embrace venues outside the town, such as Orford and Blythburgh churches. In the late sixties the Snape Maltings concert hall was opened and the festival was, by then, internationally famous with a huge variety of music being performed alongside readings of poetry, literature, drama and art exhibitions. The late 1950s and the 1960s saw many well-known works composed, in particular the War Requiem (1962). He also wrote many works either entirely for children with important roles for them and notable among these are the operas ‘Noye’s Fludde’ and ‘The Little Sweep’, ‘The Golden Vanity’, the ‘Friday Afternoons’ songs (written for a prep school in North Wales where his brother was headmaster) and ‘Psalm 150’, written for OBH’s centenary in 1962. The latter four works have all been performed at OBH over the years with ‘Friday Afternoons’ scheduled for the actual date of the composer’s centenary, which falls appropriately enough on a Friday. The early 1970s saw a decline in Britten’s health. His performing career (although nerves could make him physically sick before a performance, he was actually an outstanding pianist and conductor) was ended following a heart operation in 1973 which left him partially disabled. His final opera, ‘Death in Venice’ was first performed that year. He subsequently found it more difficult to write down his music but important works such as the dramatic cantata ‘Phaedra’ (written for Janet Baker, who has recently celebrated her eightieth birthday) and the third string quartet (premiered two weeks after his death) were to follow. Britten died at The Red House on December 4th 1976 and was buried in the churchyard at Aldeburgh. Peter Pears survived him for nearly ten years and one of the tenor’s final engagements was to open the new Music Department at OBH in early 1986. Britten himself had remained in contact with the school from time to time throughout his life and presented the solid silver trophy for the House Music Competition. How has posterity judged him? Leonard Bernstein described Britten as ‘a man at odds with the world’ and went on to say that ‘if you listen to his music, if you really hear it, you begin to be aware of something very dark’. Over the last three decades or so, performances of his music around the world have become more and more frequent and many of his works have become—and are likely to remain—firmly established in the repertory of concert halls and opera houses worldwide. An article of this length cannot begin to do justice to the work of this amazing English composer. Those wishing to know more could always start with a visit to The Red House, Aldeburgh, which is now open to the public, or obtain a copy of ‘A Time There Was’, the 1980 documentary by Tony Palmer. This year’s centenary has resulted in a chance to re-evaluate Britten’s music and a large number of performances of his music; we are indeed extremely proud of his association with OBH.
