Benjamin Britten
Considered to be the greatest English composer of the 20th century, Benjamin
Britten's modernism was applied to a wide range of forms, including vocal music
( War Requiem), opera ( Peter Grimes ) and orchestral music ( The Young Person's
Guide to the Orchestra and Simple Symphony). The son of a dentist and a singer
in an amateur choir, he was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on November 22, 1913,
and contracted pneumonia in infancy. In poor health, Edward Benjamin Britten
learned to play the piano with his mother and began to write short pieces, then
the viola with a family friend, wh...
