The outstanding figure in British musical life from the 1940s until the end of his life, Benjamin Britten studied piano with Harold Samuel and Arthur Benjamin and composition with Frank Bridge and John Ireland, and at the age of 18 he produced his remarkably mature Sinfonietta, Op. 1. Although many perceptive English musicians quickly recognised Britten's mastery and originality, the general conditions of British musical life discouraged him, and in 1939 he and his lifelong companion, the tenor Peter Pears, followed their friend, the poet W.H. Auden, to the United States. Unhappy in America, Britten returned to wartime England, where he settled in the village of Aldeburgh, in his native Suffolk. His gripping, epoch-making Peter Grimes, first performed at Sadler's Wells in London in 1945, is probably the most widely performed full-length opera ever written in the English language. Three years later, he organised at Aldeburgh a summer festival that has become one of England's most interesting and important musical venues, and in which he often participated not only as composer but also as pianist and conductor; his excellence in all of these areas was remarkable, and in addition to recording most of his own works he made a number of distinguished recordings of the music of other composers, including Purcell, Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Elgar. He wrote several other masterly, enduring operas, of which Billy Budd (after Herman Melville, 1951), The Turn of the Screw (after Henry James, 1954), A Midsummer Night's Dream (after Shakespeare, 1960) and Death in Venice, his operatic "swansong" (1973, after Thomas Mann), are the best known after Grimes. He also created several dramatic "church parables", a ballet, many orchestral pieces (the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is a classic in its genre and one of several works that Britten wrote for children), choral works (the War Requiem, composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962, has enjoyed special popularity), songs, a considerable amount of chamber music, a few solo piano pieces, and incidental music for films, plays and the radio. Many of the texts he chose to set in his operas and other vocal compositions demonstrate his concern with the themes of corrupted innocence and the outsider's place in society. Contributing to the latter preoccupation was his triply "accursed" condition - as artist, pacifist and homosexual. At the Aldeburgh Festival and elsewhere, Britten worked closely with such outstanding performing musicians as Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Dennis Brain, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Janet Baker and Galina Vishnevskaya, in addition to Pears.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: An American Overture, Canadian Carnival, Lachrymae, Occasional Overture, Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, 4 Sea Interludes (from Peter Grimes), Simple Symphony, Sinfonia da Requiem, Sinfonietta, Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell)

Chamber: Phantasy in F minor for String Quintet, String Quartets, 3 Divertimenti for String Quartet, 2 Insect Pieces, Suite for Violin and Piano, Temporal Variations

Instrumental solo: 3 Cello Suites, 6 Metamorphoses after Ovid, Nocturnal for Guitar, Piano Pieces

Vocal/Choral: A Birthday Hansel, A Boy is Born, Cantata Academica, Cantata misericordium, Canticles, Ceremony of Carols, 4 Chansons françaises, Festival Te Deum, Folk Song Arrangements, Friday Afternoons, Hymn to St Cecilia, Hymn to St Peter, Les illuminations, Missa Brevis, Phaedra, Rejoice in the Lamb, St Nicholas, Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, 7 Sonnets of Michelangelo, A Spring Symphony, Te Deum, War Requiem

Stage works: Operas:Albert Herring, Billy Budd, Death in Venice, Gloriana, The Little Sweep, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Owen Wingrave, Paul Bunyan, Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, The Turn of the Screw Religious stage works: The Burning Fiery Furnace, Curlew River, Noye's Fludde, The Prodigal Son Ballets: Matinées musicales, Prince of the Pagodas, Soirées musicales (after Rossini)