Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Introduction:

Britten was a highly acclaimed English composer. His operas - especially the first, Peter Grimes (1945), about child maltreatment - helped revitalize English opera, languishing since the time of Henry Purcell. He was a lifelong pacifist, and cruelty is a frequent theme of his works. He was made a life peer in 1976.

Britten attended the Royal College of Music, and his early works comprise music for documentary films, radio dramas, and expressionist plays by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. Recognition came early in Britten's career with a performance in 1934 of the choral piece A Boy Was Born (1933). Three years (1939-42) of intense creativity in the United States produced many works, including a setting of Arthur Rimbaud's (Rimbaud had had a long love affair with the 16 year-old Paul Verlain) 'Les Illuminations'. A large number of Britten's works feature boys as characters or performers or both.

Britten worked in a traditional style and was not given to avant-garde experimentation. He possessed a remarkable ability to compose for voice and text, and his work is characterized by extremely personal instrumentation and melodies. Peter Grimes is particularly impressive for its turbulent chorus scenes and atmospheric sea interludes. The conflict between an honest man and a corrupt society is one frequently addressed by Britten.

His non-operatic works include The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), and The War Requiem (1961), written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, is based on poems by Wilfred Owen.

His operas include Let's Make an Opera (1949, written for children), and he explored youthful and child sexuality in Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw (1954) and Death in Venice (1973, based on the openly paederastic Thomas Mann novella).

The evidence:

Britten was also attracted to adult men, but his paedophilia is also ably documented, and many of Britten's relationships with young boys described in detail, in:

Carpenter, Humphrey. Benjamin Britten - a Biography. London. Faber and Faber, 1992. 680 pages.

For numerous discussions of Britten's attraction to 12-year-old boys, see:

Mitchell, Donald. and Reed, Phillip. (Eds.) Letters From A Life - selected letters and diaries of Benjamin Britten. 2 vols. London. Faber and Faber, 1991.

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