Britten Four Sea Interludes Score Pdf Download

Britten in the mid-1960s, by Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera (1945), the (1962) and the orchestral showpiece (1945).

Born in, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the in London and privately with the composer. Britten first came to public attention with the choral work 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 and, he wrote 'chamber operas' for small forces, suitable for performance in venues of modest size.

Among the best known of these is (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, a, and the song collection. He often composed with particular performers in mind.

His most frequent and important muse was his personal and professional partner, the; others included,,,,, and. 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 's, symphonies, and song cycles by and. Together with Pears and the librettist and producer, Britten founded the annual in 1948, and he was responsible for the creation of concert hall in 1967. In his last year, he was the first composer to be given a. Early influences, clockwise from top left:,,, In September 1928 Britten went as a to, in. At the time he felt unhappy there, even writing in his diary of contemplating suicide or running away: 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. He remained there for two years and in 1930, he won a composition scholarship at the (RCM) in London; his examiners were the composers and and the college's harmony and counterpoint teacher, S P Waddington.

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Britten was at the RCM from 1930 to 1933, studying composition with Ireland and piano with. He won the Prize for composition, the Prize for chamber music, and was twice winner of the Prize for composition. 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'.

Another Ireland pupil, the composer, said that Ireland could be 'an inspiring teacher to those on his own wavelength'; Britten was not, and learned little from him. 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'. Britten also used his time in London to attend concerts and become better acquainted with the music of, and, most particularly,. He intended postgraduate study in Vienna with, 's student, but was eventually dissuaded by his parents, on the advice of the RCM staff. The first of Britten's compositions to attract wide attention were composed while at the RCM: the (1932), and a set of choral variations, written in 1933 for the, who first performed it the following year. In this same period he wrote Friday Afternoons, a collection of 12 songs for the pupils of Clive House School,, where his brother was headmaster. Early professional life [ ] In February 1935, at Bridge's instigation, Britten was invited to a job interview by the 's director of music and his assistant.

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,, directed by for the. Auden in 1939 Britten became a member of the film unit's small group of regular contributors, another of whom was. Together they worked on the documentary films Coal Face and in 1935. They also collaborated on the song cycle (1936), radical both in politics and musical treatment, and subsequently other works including Cabaret Songs,, and. 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 puts it, 'cheerfully and guiltlessly promiscuous'; Britten, puritanical and conventional by nature, was sexually repressed. In the three years from 1935 to 1937 Britten wrote nearly 40 scores for the theatre, cinema and radio. Among the film music of the late 1930s Matthews singles out Night Mail and (1937); from the theatre music he selects for mention (1936), (1938) and (1939); and of the music for radio, King Arthur (1937) and The Sword in the Stone (1939). In 1937 there were two events of huge importance in Britten's life: his mother died, and he met the. 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. Only after that did he begin to engage in emotional relationships with people his own age or younger. 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.

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, of 's poem, 'A thousand gleaming fires', for tenor and strings. During 1937 Britten composed a Pacifist March to words by for the, of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member; the work was not a success and was soon withdrawn. The best known of his compositions from this period is probably for string orchestra, described by Matthews as the first of Britten's works to become a popular classic. It was a success in North America, with performances in Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, under conductors including and. 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 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.

Britten and Pears consummated their relationship and from then until Britten's death they were partners in both their professional and personal lives. 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. 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. Already a friend of the composer, Britten encountered his latest works and An Outdoor Overture, both of which influenced his own music. In 1940 Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first of many song cycles for Pears.

Britten's orchestral works from this period include the and. In 1941 Britten produced his first music drama, Paul Bunyan, an, to a by Auden.

While in the US, Britten had his first encounter with music, through transcriptions for piano duo made by the Canadian composer. The two met in the summer of 1939 and subsequently performed a number of McPhee's transcriptions for a recording. This musical encounter bore fruit in several Balinese-inspired works later in Britten's career. Moving to the US did not relieve Britten of the nuisance of hostile criticism: although, the doyen of New York music critics, and took to Britten's music, was, as the music scholar Suzanne Robinson puts it, consistently 'severe and spiteful'. Thomson described (1940) as 'little more than a series of bromidic and facile 'effects'.

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'. Paul Bunyan met with wholesale critical disapproval, 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 premiered it in March 1941. The reputation of the work was much enhanced when Koussevitzky took it up shortly afterwards. Return to England [ ]. Page from 'Peter Grimes' in 1812 edition of 's In 1942 Britten read the work of the poet for the first time., 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.

Before Britten left the US, Koussevitzky, always generous in encouraging new talent, offered him a $1,000 commission to write the opera. Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942.

During the long transatlantic sea crossing Britten completed the choral works 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. Having arrived in Britain, Britten and Pears applied for recognition as; Britten was initially allowed only non-combatant service in the military, but on appeal he gained unconditional exemption.

After the death of his mother in 1937 he had used money she bequeathed him to buy the Old Mill in, Suffolk which became his country home. He spent much of his time there in 1944 working on the opera. Pears joined, whose artistic director, the singer, 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. There were complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the 'cacophony' of Britten's score, as well as some ill-suppressed remarks. Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for and, which were staged during the same season.

The opera administrator called it 'the first genuinely successful British opera, apart, since.' 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. A month after the opening of Peter Grimes, Britten and went to Germany to give recitals to concentration camp survivors. What they saw, at 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. 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. Britten recovered his joie de vivre for (1945), written for an educational film, Instruments of the Orchestra, directed by and featuring the conducted.

It became, and remained, his most often played and popular work. Britten's next opera,, was presented at the first post-war 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, the autocratic proprietor of Glyndebourne. The tour lost money heavily, and Christie announced that he would underwrite no more tours. Britten and his associates set up the English Opera Group; the librettist and the designer 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. Britten wrote the comic opera 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, where Britten had moved from Snape earlier in the year, and which became his principal place of residence for the rest of his life. Aldeburgh; the 1950s [ ] The was launched in June 1948, with Britten, Pears and Crozier directing it. Albert Herring played at the Jubilee Hall, and Britten's new cantata for tenor, chorus and orchestra,, was presented in the parish church. The festival was an immediate success and became an annual event that has continued into the 21st century.

New works by Britten featured in almost every festival until his death in 1976, including the premieres of his operas at the Jubilee Hall in 1960 and at Concert Hall in 1973. 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 at Snape in 1970. Shostakovich, a friend since 1960, dedicated the symphony to Britten; he was himself the dedicatee of The Prodigal Son. Two other Russian musicians who were close to Britten and regularly performed at the festival were the pianist and the cellist. Britten composed his, and for Rostropovich, who premiered them at the Aldeburgh Festival. One of the best known of Britten's works, the, was premiered in 1962.

He had been asked four years earlier to write a work for the consecration of the new, a building designed. The old cathedral had been left in ruins by an in 1940 in which hundreds of people died. 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 with poems. Matthews writes, 'With the War Requiem Britten reached the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece.' Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be 'the greatest work of the twentieth century'. In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television.

Was based, like The Turn of the Screw, on a ghost story. By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer, 'Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older.' He did not complete the score of the new opera until August 1970. 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. Last years [ ] In September 1970 Britten asked, who had adapted the two Henry James stories for him, to turn another prose story into a libretto.

This was 's novella, a subject he had been considering for some time. 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.

His long-term colleague wrote: 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. After the completion of the opera Britten went into the 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. 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. 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 (1975), written for.

In June, the last year of his life, Britten accepted a – the first composer so honoured – becoming Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. 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.

He returned to Aldeburgh in August, and wrote Welcome Ode for children's choir and orchestra. In November, Britten realised that he could no longer compose. 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. When Rostropovich made his farewell visit a few days later, Britten gave him what he had written of Praise We Great Men. ”, 1977 Britten died of on 4 December 1976.

His funeral service was held at three days later, and he was buried in its churchyard, with a gravestone carved. The authorities at 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. A memorial service was held at the Abbey on 10 March 1977, at which the congregation was headed. Personal life and character [ ] Despite his large number of works on Christian themes, Britten has sometimes been thought of as agnostic. Pears said that when they met in 1937 he was not sure whether or not Britten would have described himself as a Christian. In the 1960s Britten called himself a dedicated Christian, though sympathetic to the radical views propounded by the in.

Politically, Britten was on the left. He told Pears that he always voted either or and could not imagine ever voting, but he was never a member of any party, except the Peace Pledge Union. Physically, Britten was never robust. He walked and swam regularly and kept himself as fit as he could, but Carpenter in his 1992 biography mentions 20 illnesses, a few of them minor but most fairly serious, suffered over the years by Britten before his final heart complaint developed. Emotionally, according to some commentators, Britten never completely grew up, retaining in his outlook something of a child's view of the world. 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.

Britten was, as he acknowledged, notorious for dumping friends and colleagues who either offended him or ceased to be of use – his 'corpses'. The conductor 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, which shocked the puritanical Britten. Among other corpses were his librettists 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.'

Dame Janet Baker said in 1981, 'I think he was quite entitled to take what he wanted from others. He did not want to hurt anyone, but the task in hand was more important than anything or anybody.' 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. 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.

The first such friendship was with Piers Dunkerley, 13 years old in 1934 when Britten was aged 20. Other boys Britten befriended were the young and, both of whom sang treble roles in his works in the 1950s. 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. He had a wonderful patience and affinity with young people.

He loved music, and loved youngsters caring about music.' 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. To the sexless and innocent', and Pears once wrote to Britten: 'remember there are lovely things in the world still – children, boys, sunshine, the sea, Mozart, you and me'. In public, the matter was little discussed during Britten's lifetime and much discussed after it. Carpenter's 1992 biography closely examined the evidence, as do later studies of Britten, most particularly 's (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. Carpenter and Bridcut conclude that he held any sexual impulses under firm control and kept the relationships affectionate – including bed-sharing, kissing and skinny dipping – but strictly platonic.

Britten's grave in St. Peter and St Paul's Church,, Suffolk Cause of death [ ] A more recent controversy was the statement in a 2013 biography of Britten by that the composer's heart failure was due to undetected, which Kildea speculates was a result of Pears's promiscuity while the two were living in New York. 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.

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. Kildea continued to maintain, 'When all the composer's symptoms are considered there can be only one cause'. In The Times, praised the rest of Kildea's book, and hoped that its reputation would not be 'tarnished by one sensational speculation. Some second-hand hearsay. Presenting unsubstantiated gossip as fact'. See also: Influences [ ] Britten's early musical life was dominated by the classical masters; his mother's ambition was for him to become the ' – after, and. 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. But I think in a sense I never forgave them for having led me astray in my own particular thinking and natural inclinations'. 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!' Through his association with Frank Bridge, Britten's musical horizons expanded. He discovered the music of and which, Matthews writes, 'gave him a model for an orchestral sound'.

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'. 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'; became the inspiration of many of Britten's later folk arrangements. Britten was also impressed by, and thought 'delicious' when he heard it in 1931. Also in that year he heard Stravinsky's, which he found 'bewildering and terrifying', yet at the same time 'incredibly marvellous and arresting'.

The same composer's, and were lauded in similar terms. However, he and Stravinsky later developed a mutual antipathy informed by jealousy and mistrust. Besides his growing attachments to the works of 20th century masters, Britten – along with his contemporary – was devoted to the English music of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in particular the work of Purcell. 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'. Among the closest of Britten's kindred composer spirits – even more so than Purcell – was, whose Britten heard in September 1930. At that time Mahler's music was little regarded and rarely played in English concert halls. Britten later wrote of how the scoring of this work impressed him: '. entirely clean and transparent.

The material was remarkable, and the melodic shapes highly original, with such rhythmic and harmonic tension from beginning to end'. He soon discovered other Mahler works, in particular; he wrote to a friend about the concluding 'Abschied' of Das Lied: 'It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful'. Apart from Mahler's general influence on Britten's compositional style, the incorporation by Britten of popular tunes (as, for example, in ) is a direct inheritance from the older composer. Operas [ ] The Britten-Pears Foundation considers the composer's operas 'perhaps the most substantial and important part of his compositional legacy.'

Britten's operas are firmly established in the international repertoire: according to, they are performed worldwide more than those of any other composer born in the 20th century, and only and come ahead of him if the list is extended to all operas composed after 1900. The early operetta stands apart from Britten's later operatic works.

Philip Brett, in 's article on Britten, calls it 'a patronizing attempt by W H Auden to evoke the spirit of a nation not his own in which Britten was a somewhat dazzled accomplice'. The American public liked it, but the critics did not, and it fell into neglect until interest revived near the end of the composer's life. Concert hall, a main venue of the, 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; 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, a belief Tippett dismisses as ridiculous, inspired by jealousy at Britten's postwar successes. 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'.

The tenor, 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. He got into the valley of the shadow of death and couldn't get out'. 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. The film-maker 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 soon rediscovered their enthusiasm for Britten, whose audience steadily increased during the final years of the 20th century. Britten has had few imitators; Brett describes him as 'inimitable, possessed of. A voice and sound too dangerous to imitate'.

Nevertheless, after his death Britten was lauded by the younger generation of English composers to whom, in the words of, he became 'a phenomenal father-figure'. 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.' 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. 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'.

Britten defined his mission as a composer in very simple terms: composers should aim at 'pleasing people today as seriously as we can'. Pianist and conductor [ ] Britten, though a reluctant conductor and a nervous pianist, was greatly sought after in both capacities. The piano accompanist 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'.

Britten's recital partnership with Pears was his best-known collaboration, but he also accompanied, Rostropovich,, and, among others. Though usually too nervous to play piano solos, Britten often performed piano duets with or Richter, and chamber music with the. The composers whose works, other than his own, he most often played were Mozart and; the latter, in 's view, was Britten's greatest idol. As a boy and young man, Britten had intensely admired Brahms, but his admiration waned to nothing, and Brahms seldom featured in his repertory. Singers and players admired Britten's conducting, and rated it highly enough to offer him the musical directorship of the in 1952. Britten declined; he was not confident of his ability as a conductor and was reluctant to spend too much time performing rather than composing.

As a conductor, Britten's repertory included Purcell, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, and occasional less characteristic choices including 's; Elgar's and; 's and short pieces by Percy Grainger. Recordings [ ] Britten, like Elgar and Walton before him, was signed up by a major British recording company, and performed a considerable proportion of his output on disc. For the he made some records in the 1940s and 1950s, followed, with the enthusiastic support of the Decca producer, by numerous versions of his works. Download Tmpgenc 4.0 Xpress Portable. 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.'

In May 1943 Britten made his debut in the Decca studios, accompanying 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 string orchestra, and Pears in the first recording of the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, which has frequently been reissued, most recently on CD. 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. 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.

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). 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.

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. In 2013, to mark the anniversary of Britten's birth, Decca released a set of 65 CDs and one DVD, 'Benjamin Britten – Complete Works'.

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,,, and. 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 and, Schumann's, and songs by Haydn, Mozart, Bridge, Ireland, Holst, and. 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,, and, Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and Mozart's last two symphonies. Honours, awards and commemorations [ ].

137 blue plaque State honours awarded to Britten included (Britain) in 1953; Commander of the (Sweden) in 1962; the (Britain) in 1965; and a (Britain) in July 1976. He received honorary degrees and fellowships from 19 conservatories and universities in Europe and America. His awards included the (1961); the Aspen Award, Colorado (1964); the 's Gold Medal (1964); the (1965); the Mahler Medal (Bruckner and Mahler Society of America, 1967); the (Denmark, 1968); the (1974); and the Ravel Prize (1974). Prizes for individual works included 's 1961 for A Midsummer Night's Dream; and in 1963 and 1977 for the War Requiem., 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. 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 in 1958 and was described by Britten as a 'magnificent work'.

In June 2013 Dame Janet Baker officially opened the Britten-Pears archive in a new building in the grounds of the Red House. The 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. Scallop by is a sculpture dedicated to Benjamin Britten on the beach. 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. There are memorial plaques to him at three of his London homes: 173 Cromwell Road, 45a High Street, and 8 Halliford Street in. In April 2013 Britten was honoured by the in the UK, as one of ten people selected as subjects for the 'Great Britons' issue. 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. Works commemorating Britten include an orchestral piece written in 1977 by, and '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.

Depicts Britten in a 2009 play, 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.

Tony Palmer made three documentary films about Britten: Benjamin Britten & his Festival (1967); A Time There Was (1979); and Nocturne (2013). Elected member of the in 1955. 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.

Among the events were the release of a feature film Benjamin Britten – Peace and Conflict, and a centenary exhibition at the. The issued a piece, to mark the centenary – the first time a composer has featured on a British coin. 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, Gloriana by, and Peter Grimes, Death in Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Peter Grimes was performed on the beach at Aldeburgh, opening the 2013 Aldeburgh Festival in June 2013, with conducting and singers from the Chorus of and the Chorus of the, described by as 'a remarkable, and surely unrepeatable achievement.' In June and July 2013 as part of the centenary, and Mahogany Opera gave performances of, and at (where all three pieces were premiered) to critical acclaim. The director was Freddie Wake-Walker and the musical director was. 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, and performances at the, the and. Notes, references and sources [ ] Notes. • Britten's siblings were (Edith) Barbara (1902–82), Robert Harry Marsh ('Bobby', 1907–87), and (Charlotte) Elizabeth ('Beth', 1909–89). • Britten later gave an example of the detailed skill instilled in him by Bridge: 'I came up with a series of 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'.

• 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.' In his later years, Britten helped secure a place at the school for, • 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,, to the effect that Britten was to be distrusted for his 'superficial effects', whereas Tippett was considered 'awkward and technically unskilled but somehow authentic.' • Britten later wrote about his youthful discovery of Mahler that he had been told that the composer was 'long-winded and formless. 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. 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.'

• Koussevitzky's generosity later extended to waiving his rights to mount the first production, allowing Britten and his associates the chance to do so. The opera's first performance under Koussevitzky's aegis was at the in 1947, conducted by the young. 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. • in, 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. •,,,,, and were among the leading British composers of their time who held posts at conservatoires or universities.

Those who, like Britten, were not known for teaching included and. • The critic 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.'

• The principal law against homosexual acts was the, in which made any kind of sexual activity between men illegal for the first time. It was not repealed until the passage of the • Some writers have supposed that Britten was earlier offered and had declined a, but his name is not included in the official list issued in 2012 by the naming everyone (except those still living at the time of publication) who had declined an honour between 1950 and 1999. • The writer 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, and in his remark to Imogen Holst, 'I'm still thirteen'.

• 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. A lot of time just really talking he in the bed next to me. 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. 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. 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. 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.'

• The journalist Martin Kettle wrote in 2012 that although there is no evidence of wrongful conduct, it is important that allegations of should be openly discussed, both to avoid covering up criminal behaviour and to avoid oversimplifying the complexity of Britten's sexuality and creativity. • In 1938, Britten attended what was only the second British performance of, the 'Symphony of a Thousand', with and the. Britten declared himself 'tremendously impressed' by the music, though he thought the performance 'execrable'. • 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 and presented, a musical set in England.

• Matthews comments that the work is 'so much more sensuous when sung by the soprano voice for which the songs were conceived'. • The piece was much admired by Tippett as 'one of the wonderful things in Britten's music', an opinion with which Britten apparently concurred. • 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. •, 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.' • In 2006 magazine invited eminent present-day accompanists to name their 'professional's professional': the joint winners were Britten and Moore.

• Britten once said, 'It's not bad Brahms I mind, it's good Brahms I can't stand'. • So writes John Bridcut, but Webster's biographer,, 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. • Elgar was an exclusive artist; Walton, after a brief spell with Decca, made most of his recordings for. • 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.' • 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. • • at • in the • • (Britten-Pears Foundation's website for the Britten centenary) • (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) •.

•, lecture and performance investigating the relation between the two composers, 5 February 2008 (available for download as text, audio or video file) •, Britten Project • (Britten's publishers up to 1963): biographies, work lists and descriptions, recordings, performance schedules • (Publisher set up by Britten for his works after 1963): biography, work lists, recordings, performance schedules • MusicWeb International., by Rob Barnett • National Portrait Gallery., 109 portraits.

For other uses, see. Billy Budd Author Country United States, England Language English Genre, Published 1924 (London: Constable & Co.) Billy Budd, Sailor is the final by American writer, first published posthumously in London in 1924 as edited by, a professor at Columbia University. Other versions were later published.

Melville had begun writing the original work in November 1888, but left it unfinished at his death in 1891. Acclaimed by British critics as a masterpiece when published in London, it quickly took its place as a literary work in the United States. The novella was discovered in manuscript form in 1919 by Weaver, who was studying Melville's papers as his first biographer. Melville's widow had begun to edit the manuscript, but had not been able to decide her husband's intentions at several key points or even to see his intended title. Poor transcription and misinterpretation of Melville's notes marred the first published versions of the text. After several years of study, and published what was considered the best transcription and critical reading text in 1962. In 2017, the Northwestern University Press published a 'new reading text' based on a 'corrected version' of the genetic text prepared.

The novella was adapted as a stage play in 1951 and produced on, where it won the and for best play. Adapted it as an by the same name, first performed in December 1951. The play was adapted into a in 1962, produced, directed, co-written, and starring with receiving an nomination in his film debut. Contents • • • • • • • • • • • Plot [ ] The plot follows Billy Budd, a seaman into service aboard HMS Bellipotent in the year 1797, when the British was reeling from two and was threatened by the 's military ambitions.

He is impressed to this large warship from another, smaller, merchant ship, The Rights of Man (named after the by ). As his former ship moves off, Budd shouts, 'Good-bye to you too, old Rights-of-Man.' Billy, a from, has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. His only physical defect is a which grows worse when under intense emotion.

He arouses the antagonism of the ship's, John Claggart. Claggart, while not unattractive, seems somehow 'defective or abnormal in the constitution', possessing a 'natural depravity.' Envy is Claggart's explicitly stated emotion toward Budd, foremost because of his 'significant personal beauty,' and also for his innocence and general popularity. (Melville further opines that envy is 'universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime.'

) This leads Claggart to falsely charge Billy with conspiracy to mutiny. When the captain, Edward Fairfax 'Starry' Vere, is presented with Claggart's charges, he summons Claggart and Billy to his cabin for a private meeting. Claggart makes his case and Billy, astounded, is unable to respond, due to his stutter. He strikes his accuser to the forehead, and the blow is fatal.

There appear to be three principal conceptions of the meaning of Melville's Billy Budd: the first, and most heavily supported, that it is Melville's 'Testament of acceptance,' his valedictory and his final benediction. The second view, a reaction against the first, holds that Billy Budd is ironic, and that its real import is precisely the opposite of its ostensible meaning. Still a third interpretation denies that interpretation is possible; a work of art has no meaning at all that can be abstracted from it, nor is a man's work in any way an index of his character or his opinion. All three of these views of Billy Budd are in their own sense true.

Fogle agrees that 'masterpiece' is an appropriate description of the book, but he adds a proviso. Examining the history and reputation of Billy Budd has left me more convinced than before that it deserves high stature (although not precisely the high stature it holds, whatever that stature is) and more convinced that it is a wonderfully teachable story—as long as it is not taught as a finished, complete, coherent, and totally interpretable work of art. Given this unfinished quality and Melville's reluctance to present clear lessons, the range of critical response is not surprising. Some critics have interpreted Billy Budd as a historical novel that attempts to evaluate man's relation to the past. Scorza has written about the philosophical framework of the story.

He understands the work as a comment on the historical feud between poets and philosophers. By this interpretation, Melville is opposing the scientific, rational systems of thought, which Claggart's character represents, in favor of the more comprehensive poetic pursuit of knowledge embodied by Billy. In her book Epistemology of the Closet (1990/2008),, expanding on earlier interpretations of the same themes, posits that the interrelationships between Billy, Claggart and Captain Vere are representations of male homosexual desire and the mechanisms of prohibition against this desire. She points out that Claggart's 'natural depravity,' which is defined tautologically as 'depravity according to nature,' and the accumulation of equivocal terms ('phenomenal', 'mystery', etc.) used in the explanation of the fault in his character, are an indication of his status as the central homosexual figure in the text. She also interprets the mutiny scare aboard the Bellipotent, the political circumstances that are at the center of the events of the story, as a portrayal of homophobia. Melville's dramatic presentation of the contradiction between the requirements of the law and the needs of humanity made the novella an 'iconic text' in the field of.

Earlier readers viewed Captain Vere as good man trapped by bad law., who holds degrees in both comparative literature and law, argued that Vere was wrong to play the roles of witness, prosecutor, judge and executioner, and that he went beyond the law when he sentenced Billy to immediate hanging. Based on his study of statutory law and practices in the Royal Navy in the era in which the book takes place, Weisberg argues that Vere deliberately distorted the applicable substantive and procedural law to bring about Billy's death. He objects to ascribing literary significance to legal errors that are not part of the imagined world of Melville's fiction and accused Weisberg and others of calling Billy an 'innocent man' and making light of the fact that he 'struck a lethal blow to a superior officer in wartime.' Sees a direct connection between the hanging of Budd and the controversy around. While Melville was writing Billy Budd between 1886 and 1891, the public's attention was focused on the issue. Other commentators have suggested that the story may have been based on events onboard, an American naval vessel; Lt., a defendant in a later investigation, was a first cousin of Melville., a professor who has written a number of books on American serial killers, has said that the author's description of Claggart could be considered to be a definition of a. He acknowledges that Melville was writing at a time before the word 'sociopath' was used.

Robert Hare might classify Claggart as a psychopath, since his personality did not demonstrate the traits of a sociopath (rule-breaking) but of grandiosity, conning manipulation and a lack of empathy or remorse. The centrality of Billy Budd's extraordinary good looks in the novella, where he is described by Captain Vere as 'the young fellow who seems so popular with the men—Billy, the Handsome Sailor', have led to interpretations of a homoerotic sensibility in the novel. Added a theory of and masculine and feminine subjectivity/objectivity. This version tends to inform interpretations of Britten's opera, perhaps owing to the composer's own homosexuality. Adaptations in other media [ ]. A still from the Broadway production.

The stage [ ] • In 1951, and Robert Chapman's 1949 stage adaptation, Billy Budd, opened on Broadway, winning both the and for best play. • The best-known adaptation is the opera,, with a score by and a libretto by and.

It follows the earlier text of 1924. Since its premiere in December 1951, the opera has become a regular production at the in Manhattan, New York City.

The libretto takes many creative liberties with elements of the novella's plot. • also composed an operatic version of the novella, which premiered in 1949. Download Mp3 Takbir Muammar Za.

It has not been as widely performed as Britten's work. Film [ ] • produced, directed and worked on the script of his made in black and white in 1962, based on the stage play. It starred a young as Billy Budd, and Ustinov took the role of Captain Vere. The movie also stars as Claggart and as Wyatt, Gunnery Officer. • ' (1999), set in, is loosely based on the novel. Television [ ] • presented a live telecast of Billy Budd in 1955, starring a young as Billy Budd, with as Claggart, and as Captain Vere.

Britten's ' was included as background music. • Two different productions based on the opera were broadcast in 1988 and 1998. References [ ].

• ^ Parker, Hershel (Winter 1990). ' 'Billy Budd, Foretopman' and the Dynamics of Canonization'. College Literature. • Melville, Herman (2017).

Hayford, Harrison; MacDougall, Alma; Sandberg, Robert; Tanselle, G. Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings. The Writings of Herman Melville The Northwestern-Newberry Edition Volume Thirteen. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press.. • ^ Melville, Herman (1962). Harrison Hayford & Merton Sealts, Jr., ed.. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

• Melville, Herman (1922) [December 1850]. 'Letter to Evert Duyckinck'. In Meade Minnigerode. Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville. New York: Edmond Byrne Hackett. • Vincent, Howard P.

Twentieth Century Interpretations of Billy Budd. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. • ^ Parker, Hershel (1990).. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Pp. 'tin box': 6, 'his proviso': 45.. • Hayford & Sealts, pp.

12–23 • Hayford & Sealts, pp. 20 • Fogle, Richard Harter (1971) [1958]. 'Billy Budd – Acceptance or Irony'. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Billy Budd. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. • Scorza, Thomas J.

Northern Illinois University Press. • Sedgwick, Eve (1990)..

Berkeley: University of California Press. • Tom Goldstein, ',' New York Times June 10, 1989 • Weisberg, Richard (1989). 'The Case of Billy Budd, Sailor'.. New Haven: Yale University Press. • Posner, Richard A (2009). Law and Literature. Harvard University Press.., • Franklin, H.

Bruce (June 1997).. American Literature. Retrieved 2008-08-05. • Delbanco, Andrew (2005)..

New York: Knopf. • Schechter, Harold (2003).. New York: Ballantine Books. • (1995) [1924] Billy Budd, Sailor, Penguin Popular Classics, p. 54 • Fuller, Michael (Summer 2006). 'The Far Shining Sail: a glimpse of salvation in Britten's Billy Budd'.

The Musical Times. • Howe, Marvine (May 28, 1993).. New York Times. Retrieved 29 April 2011. External links [ ] has original text related to this article.