Benjamin Britten: biography
1913-1919
Mrs Britten and her children, circa 1914
Edward Benjamin Britten was born in the East Suffolk town of Lowestoft in 1913 on 22 November, the feast of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music. Apart from a few years away, first in London and then in the United States, he made Suffolk his home for most of his life. His father, Robert, was a dentist whose practice was situated on the lower floor of the family house at 21 Kirkley Cliff Road. His mother, Edith, was a keen amateur musician who fully encouraged the children’s love of music. Britten was the youngest of four, the others being Robert, Barbara and Beth. He attended South Lodge Preparatory School, very near his home in Lowestoft and there developed what became an enduring love of sport, particularly tennis, swimming and cricket. He was a competent student showing particular skill in mathematics, but his passion was music. His first attempts at composing were made when he was five, although, as he later confessed: "it was the pattern on the paper which interested me and when I asked my mother to play [the music], her look of horror upset me considerably".
1920-1927
Britten plays to his mother and sister, Beth, 1921
At the age of seven Britten started having piano lessons with a near neighbour, Miss Ethel Astle, a teacher at his pre-prep. school, and at the age of ten he began to learn the viola with Mrs Audrey Alston, a professional violist who encouraged her pupil to attend concerts whenever he could. It was at one such concert during the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival that he heard Frank Bridge’s orchestral poem The Sea and was, in his own words, ‘knocked sideways’. Mrs Alston arranged a meeting with Bridge and soon afterwards, during the school holidays of 1927, Britten began composition lessons with him. Britten’s creative output was prodigious. As a child he produced a great many works, some of which were of a very high standard. They include a symphony, various other orchestral pieces, works for chamber ensemble, suites for solo piano, drafts for Masses, a symphonic poem Chaos and Cosmos and many songs. All these works now form the extensive collection of his juvenilia at the Britten-Pears Library.
Listen to Britten speaking about his work before the age of 13 at BBC Four
1928-1933
In September 1928 Britten went as a boarder to Gresham’s School at Holt in Norfolk. Although often homesick he continued to enjoy sport and to write, perform and listen to music at every opportunity, often reading scores in bed. From this time come his settings of poems by Walter de la Mare in Tit for Tat, Ford Madox Ford The Song of the Women: A Wealden Trio, Hilaire Belloc’s The Birds, Quatre Chansons Françaises (Victor Hugo and Verlaine) and the anonymous 14th Century A Hymn to the Virgin.
Britten in 1933
At sixteen Britten won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and so left Gresham’s for London, where he shared a flat with his sister Beth. He studied composition with John Ireland, whom he admired but often found difficult to work with, and piano with the genial Arthur Benjamin. Although the training he received was a useful supplement to his work with Bridge he was frustrated by a perceived lack of interest in the kind of music that he wished to write. From these three years at the College come his String Quartet in D major (1931), the Phantasy in F minor for string quintet, the Sinfonietta op.1 for chamber orchestra, Phantasy op. 2 for oboe, violin, viola and cello (all 1932) and the choral variations for unaccompanied voices A Boy was Born op.3 (1933).
Explore an animated timeline of Britten's life