Benjamin Britten Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (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 "Peter Grimes" (1945), the "War Requiem" (1962) and the orchestral showpiece "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" (1945). Born in Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer
Benjamin Britten 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 "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" (1945), written for an educational film, "Instruments of the Orchestra", directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent. It became, and remained, his most often played and popular work. Britten's next opera, "The Rape of Lucretia",