The Library
The Library is situated across a small courtyard to the west of the house. On the way we pass Red Cottage, the upstairs of which once comprised Britten's composition studio. Britten and Pears had moved into the Red House in 1957, but the size and layout of the rooms meant that there was no adequate rehearsal or music-making space, and not enough space for their collections of books, art and music. In 1963 therefore they engaged the architect Peter Collymore to design a library and music room. This involved the demolition of a cowshed on the chosen site, which was in a dangerous state of repair, although the east wall was retained in the new building. Once completed, the room was used by Britten and Pears not only for their private library, but also as a private rehearsal space for vocal, chamber and small choral ensembles. The size of the room also gave Britten the opportunity to acquire a full size concert grand piano.
Pears particularly enjoyed the opportunities for showing off the art collection, and he installed what he was to describe as a “fabulously expensive” system of spotlights to light up the collection, made up of “small torpedo shaped lights” which exactly covered each picture.
The result, although “wonderful” and “dramatic” proved to be impractical, as the bulbs couldn’t easily be replaced; also the exact coverage of each picture demanded that small masks of exactly the right size be made for the ceiling fitting to match each picture. If you wanted to put a different picture up you had to start again. So the system was replaced by the less sophisticated arrangements now in use.
Today, with the original furniture and books still filling the space designed for them, the Library retains much of the ambience instilled there by its founders. Time, however, has not stood still, and since Britten’s death, the Library buildings have been much expanded to incorporate a reading room, archival storage space, offices, and a large exhibition area,, built in 1993 to a design by Robert Wilson and Malcolm Ness over the swimming pool that Britten and Pears had installed in 1960, but which had fallen into disuse after Britten’s death in 1976. The pool is memorably recaptured in Mary Potter's painting The Swimming Pool.
Britten’s piano
This Steinway was Britten’s own piano, bought to replace the instrument lost on the night of the disastrous fire that destroyed the Maltings on the first night of the Aldeburgh Festival, 7 June 1969. Britten had lent the piano for a concert in the Festival, a tradition that the Library continues to this day. Photos show Britten and Pears standing disconsolate among the ruins, but the hall was rebuilt and improved in time for the following year’s festival. Britten in fact thought the replacement piano better than the original.
Other features of the Library room
- A large work table, formerly the dining table at Crag House, Britten’s and Pears’s house on the seafront. Before being placed in the Library, the table was a prominent feature of Britten's composition studio. Of all the notable visitors to the Library over the years, perhaps none is more significant than the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who sat at this table and studied the sketches for Britten’s last opera Death in Venice in 1972. Normally, Britten showed no-one his work in progress, and while Shostakovich was looking at the sketches, he spent the time nervously engaged in small talk with the composer's wife and her interpreter, only relaxing when Shostakovich emerged with a smile on his face.
- Busts of Britten and Pears by their friend the sculptor Georg Ehrlich. Pears came to know the work of Ehrlich in the 1950s, and from this developed a friendship that led to Britten and Pears acquiring several pieces, which are now on display in the house and gardens. The bust of Pears was commissioned as a fiftieth birthday present for Britten (1963), with the bust of Britten being completed three years later.
- A 5000 year old amphora given to Britten and Pears on their Armenian trip in 1965 by the mayor in Dilidjan from the museum’s collection. In thanking the museum for this very generous gift, Pears promised that “we would make sure that as many people [as possible] saw it and knew where it came from”.
- Two engraved blocks by Eric Gill, large initials used for printing the original of Gill’s The Four Gospels in 1931, and then sold as independent works of art.