The authors summarise the collaborative work of Benjamin Britten (1913–76) and, in turn, artist John Piper (1903–92) and choreographer John Cranko (1927–73). Britten relied on having an early visual conception of whatever dramatic work he was undertaking. Piper’s work as a stage designer was therefore a crucial part of Britten’s creative process, as specific examples in this essay demonstrate. Britten’s inexperience with dance meant that in his largest collaboration with Cranko, the full-length ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957), he leaned to an unusual extent on the choreographer for the overall conception and even for the character and length of individual numbers. Both working relationships reveal the extent to which Britten’s creative process was fuelled by collaboration.

In offering a context for Benjamin Britten, we approached his milieu from vantage points that could adequately represent the fullness of his position in England and in the twentieth century. We were rewarded by the richness of Britten’s engagement with his contemporaries in music, art, literature, and film, British musical institutions, royal and governmental entities, and the church. Equally, his ground-breaking projects that intersected across diverse entities and explored his philosophical and ideological tenets provided food for thought.

Benjamin Britten did more than any other composer since Henry Purcell to promote the genre of English opera and its use of the English language. There is less consensus on the contribution made by Myfanwy Piper as Britten’s librettist for The Turn of the Screw, Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice. Even a limited degree of familiarity with her libretti for Britten induces admiration owing to the precision behind her choice of word and phrase and the way they it can enhance immediacy. She herself has observed that all three libretti that she wrote for Britten were based on sophisticated texts. In his librettist, Britten trusted his closest concerns: someone who could translate the drama in the literary texts into taut succinct scenes; manage abrupt changes of mood; dovetail each scene neatly into the next so that narrative suspense is was sustained; and who could also manage pace, climax, and dramatic development with tact and sensibility. In all this Myfanwy Piper excelled, and she remains unsurpassed in the economy with which she handled words.

This chapter examines the early intersections between Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, well before their American years (1939–42) and the official beginning of their romantic relationship, as well as the tenor’s early career. Pears’s earliest professional singing engagements began with the BBC Wireless Chorus, in the newly established Wireless Octet (renamed the BBC Singers B in March 1935) intended to function alongside the BBC Singers and take part in BBC Chorus performances and Promenade Concerts; he remained in these various ensembles until October 1937. In both late 1936 and late 1937, Pears travelled to the United States on tours with the New English Singers. In April 1939, Pears travelled to the United States via Canada with Britten. Pears’s career in the United States is explored, but more significant is his vocal study with Clytie Mundy, to whom he attributed the greatest growth in his emerging solo voice. On their return to wartime England, Pears and Britten registered for conscientious objector status. At the same time, Pears enjoyed considerable success as a leading soloist on the operatic (and touring) stage and in recital and BBC broadcasts with Britten.

Britten’s early love for the cinema - when he was spellbound in particular by the work of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers - and his later apprenticeship as a composer for documentary films in the 1930s are both charted in this chapter, which analyses his comments on the medium in his youthful letters and diaries and goes on to consider the impact film music had on his later stylistic development as a composer of works for the stage. High points of his own work in film include his scores for the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit, including two celebrated collaborations with the poet W. H. Auden (Coal Face, 1935; Night Mail, 1936), his score for the feature film Love from a Stranger (1937), and his virtuosic orchestral music for Muir Mathieson’s educational film Instruments of the Orchestra (1946). The chapter concludes with an account of Britten’s close involvement with his own local cinema in Aldeburgh during the late 1960s.

Britten and Pears regarded their relationship as a ‘marriage’ and described it as such as early as 1943. Although comfortable with using this term privately, they were aware of the legal prohibition and social stigma that prevented them from proclaiming their partnership openly. And yet throughout their nearly forty years together they made no immediate secret among their circle of friends and relatives about living their lives as a couple. As this essay suggests, theirs was a special case, in that they lived their relationship with relative openness among those who knew them. Works such as the Michelangelo Sonnets and Canticle I were a declaration of sorts about the nature of their relationship, although it was not until after the composer’s death that Pears commented overtly in an interview about their love for one another. A decade after the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the UK, and with social discussion on homosexuality widening, Pears believed that his and Britten’s marriage need no longer be regarded as a secret.

Britten’s relationship to his predecessors and contemporaries in the ‘English Musical Renaissance’ was complicated. He found the Royal College of Music parochial and amateurish, and was frustrated by composition lessons there with John Ireland, not least in comparison to his private study with Frank Bridge. He largely rejected the influence of English folk traditions and Tudor music important to the ‘pastoral school’, favoring the more cosmopolitan example of Bridge, and his own exploration of continental European modernism. Britten’s view of composers such as Vaughan Williams as insular and regressive has shaped the historiography of British music in ways that still reverberate today. Scholars have typically taken such attitudes at face value; but this obscures a more complex reality, in which the composer attempted to annex and reimagine, rather than simply reject, core achievements of his predecessors, incurring conceptual if not direct stylistic debts to them. In the case of Holst in particular, whom Britten came to embrace in later life, insufficient attention has been paid to this legacy.

This essay provides insight into some of the content of Britten and Pears’s book collection. It draws attention to why certain volumes were used as the source material for various musical works. The essay also emphasises how friendships with writers, such as art historian Kenneth Clark and novelist and critic E. M. Forster, influenced key aspects of Britten and Pears’s lives: their passion for fine art and their faith in pacifism. This survey of the collection underlines why their books are often useful bases of information for biographical background about both musicians. Their library tells us stories about their childhoods and discloses their interests in topics ranging from classic English literature to gardening to the developing genre of gay fiction. Additionally, it adds context to fundamental aspects of their lives, such as their anti-war stance and their enduring commitment to one another.

Imogen Holst, Rosamund Strode, and Colin Matthews, who all served in the amanuensis role to Benjamin Britten, represent an important but often overlooked tradition of musical assistantship. This chapter traces the professionalisation of that position with Britten from one of close personal friendship with the composer, in the case of Holst, to something more formal when considering Strode and Matthews. Understanding the relationship between these individuals, alongside their contributions to the culture which surrounded Britten and his music at Aldeburgh, uncovers a rich tapestry of interconnections underscoring the collaborative nature of Britten’s achievements while also revealing how these figures contributed to the composer’s legacy.

This chapter considers Britten’s unique position in the sometimes unstable history of English opera. While acknowledging his central significance as the composer who (almost) single-handedly revived its fortunes with the instant and phenomenal success of Peter Grimes in 1945, it offers a nuanced assessment that views his achievements as part of a much broader picture in which the genre was arguably never as moribund as traditional accounts (and those perpetuated by Britten himself) might suggest. After surveying the riches of the courtly masque and the stage works of Henry Purcell, Italian baroque opera in London, and the surprisingly healthy state of English-language opera in the nineteenth century, the chapter provides a concise overview of Britten’s steady output of operas post-Grimes and his wider significance as a canny entrepreneur who promoted the genre widely – and indeed internationally – at the helm of the English Opera Group.

This essay summarises the working relationship between composer Benjamin Britten (1913–76) and writer William Plomer (1903–73). After listing their completed collaborations – Gloriana (1953), Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966), The Prodigal Son (1968) – and abandoned projects, the essay turns to broader points of comparison and particularly to Britten and Plomer’s shared sense of ‘exile’, which the author argues informs their independent and collaborative work. Plomer’s shift away from the novel as a genre parallels Britten’s away from full-length opera. Their choice of subject, particularly in their work together, shows a movement away from realism. They cultivate a sense of humour marked by irony, and they increasingly pursue an economy of artistic material. These shared traits may point to the artists’ sense of ‘estrangement’ and may also be indicators of ‘late style’.

The Postlude offers a brief discussion of Forster’s listening to Hugo Wolf’s lieder in 1935 and a reflection on the limits of past gay discussion of Forster’s contribution to the opera Billy Budd. It suggests that a renewed close investigation into the relation between text and its historical context enables us to uncover the complexity in Forster’s ideology and generate fresh readings of his work. If the political energy of his comment on Hugo Wolf’s music reminds us of the political suggestiveness of his references to music, the revelation of the whiteness of Billy Budd is a timely signal, for readers in the twenty-first century, to reach beyond existing critical parameters and stay alert to the conditioning forces of our own perspectives. At the heart of Forster’s engagement with and representations of music is his protean interest in a broad range of topical subjects and political issues. The Postlude suggests that it is necessary to acknowledge and interpret the multiple frontiers of Forster’s ideological exploration and the many concerns he registers and raises in his writing.

In the years from his death to the outbreak of the Second World War, Mahler’s music was in various degrees admired, misunderstood, celebrated, condemned, and ignored. The range of musical figures who engaged with it spans the continent geographically and aesthetically: the Viennese creative, critical, and academic intelligentsia; Europe’s leading conductors (Oskar Fried, Willem Mengelberg, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Hermann Scherchen, and Wilhelm Furtwängler); younger, forward-thinking Germans (Kurt Weill); adventurous British musicians and writers (Benjamin Britten, Henry Wood, Hamilton Hardy, Donald Francis Tovey, T. E. Clark); curious French pedagogues (Nadia Boulanger); central personalities in US music (Aaron Copland, Leopold Stokowski, Serge Koussevitzy, Olin Downes, Deems Taylor); and Russians eager to remain connected (Ivan Sollertinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich). The varied interests and opinions embodied in this group are surveyed here with a view to laying out the lively breadth with which this music was discussed in a supposedly quiet time of the composer’s reception history.

The chapter opens with an account of the Golden Jubilee orchestral concert (1933) because the orchestra (made up of former students) is representative of the major orchestral players the College had trained, and Leopold Stokowski, the conductor. Yet this did not seem quite so likely at the end of the First World War. The College was fortunate that Hugh Allen succeeded Parry as Director, because he transformed its prospects through his selection of staff (including Adrian Boult) and revitalizing of its curriculum. Anxious to ensure employment for College students, Allen cooperated with the Teachers’ Registration Council to institute the Graduate diploma (GRSM) in association with the RAM. Allen brought about the Parry Theatre, beginning the RCM’s reputation for opera training. Allen’s liberal regime of allowing students to remain at the College for as long as they wanted helped some initially unpromising students to find themselves and to flourish within the RCM’s unconventional milieu. But Allen saw the RCM as representative of British musicians’ interests and this led to clashes with the BBC. George Dyson and Constant Lambert are discussed as two antipodal figures of Allen's RCM.

The chapter opens with an account of the Golden Jubilee orchestral concert (1933) because the orchestra (made up of former students) is representative of the major orchestral players the College had trained, and Leopold Stokowski, the conductor. Yet this did not seem quite so likely at the end of the First World War. The College was fortunate that Hugh Allen succeeded Parry as Director, because he transformed its prospects through his selection of staff (including Adrian Boult) and revitalizing of its curriculum. Anxious to ensure employment for College students, Allen cooperated with the Teachers’ Registration Council to institute the Graduate diploma (GRSM) in association with the RAM. Allen brought about the Parry Theatre, beginning the RCM’s reputation for opera training. Allen’s liberal regime of allowing students to remain at the College for as long as they wanted helped some initially unpromising students to find themselves and to flourish within the RCM’s unconventional milieu. But Allen saw the RCM as representative of British musicians’ interests and this led to clashes with the BBC. George Dyson and Constant Lambert are discussed as two antipodal figures of Allen's RCM.