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148-525: Anthem is derived from the Greek ἀντίφωνα ( antíphōna ) via Old English antefn . Both words originally referred to antiphons , a call-and-response style of the singing. The adjectival form is "anthemic". Anthems were originally a form of liturgical music . In the Church of England , the rubric appoints them to follow the third collect at morning and evening prayer. Several anthems are included in

296-406: A Missa Brevis , and the song collection Friday Afternoons . He often composed with particular performers in mind. His most frequent and important muse was his personal and professional partner, the tenor Peter Pears ; others included Kathleen Ferrier , Jennifer Vyvyan , Janet Baker , Dennis Brain , Julian Bream , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Osian Ellis and Mstislav Rostropovich . Britten

444-468: A Pacifist March to words by Ronald Duncan for the Peace Pledge Union , of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member; the work was not a success and was soon withdrawn. The best known of his compositions from this period is probably Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra, described by Matthews as the first of Britten's works to become a popular classic. It

592-578: A dame school , run by the Misses Astle. The younger sister, Ethel, gave him piano lessons; in later life he said that he remained grateful for the excellence of her teaching. The following year he moved on to a prep school , South Lodge , Lowestoft, as a day boy . The headmaster, Thomas Sewell, was an old-fashioned disciplinarian; the young Britten was outraged at the severe corporal punishments frequently handed out, and later he said that his lifelong pacifism probably had its roots in his reaction to

740-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

888-734: A Crown dependency, uses "God Save the King" as a Royal anthem, but also has its own local anthem, "O Land of Our Birth" (Manx: " O Halloo Nyn Ghooie "). Although the United States has " The Star-Spangled Banner " as its official national anthem, all except two of its constituent states and territories also have their own regional anthem (referred to by most US states as a " state song "), along with Washington, DC . The two exceptions are New Jersey , which has never had an official state song, and Maryland , which rescinded " Maryland, My Maryland " in 2021 due to its racist language and has yet to adopt

1036-693: A Nossa Pátria Bem Amada " is the national anthem of Guinea-Bissau and was also the national anthem of Cape Verde until 1996. " Oben am jungen Rhein ", the national anthem of Liechtenstein , is set to the tune of "God Save the King/Queen". Other anthems that have used the same melody include " Heil dir im Siegerkranz " (Germany), " Kongesangen " (Norway), " My Country, 'Tis of Thee " (United States), " Rufst du, mein Vaterland " (Switzerland), " E Ola Ke Alii Ke Akua " (Hawaiʻi), and " The Prayer of Russians ". The Estonian anthem " Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm "

1184-533: A Theme by Frank Bridge for full orchestra for the Frederick Ashton ballet Le Rêve de Léonor (1949), but he later described the teacher–pupil relationship as "beneficial five per cent to [Britten] and ninety-five per cent to me!" Throughout the 1950s Britten continued to write operas. Billy Budd (1951) was well received at its Covent Garden premiere and was regarded by reviewers as an advance on Peter Grimes . Gloriana (1953), written to mark

1332-511: A bit but not for long (he was quite tough), the staff couldn't object if his work and games didn't suffer. He wrote lots of it, reams and reams of it. Audrey Alston encouraged Britten to go to symphony concerts in Norwich . At one of these, during the triennial Norfolk and Norwich Festival in October 1924, he heard Frank Bridge 's orchestral poem The Sea , conducted by the composer. It was

1480-723: A composition scholarship at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London; his examiners were the composers John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams and the college's harmony and counterpoint teacher, S P Waddington. Britten was at the RCM from 1930 to 1933, studying composition with Ireland and piano with Arthur Benjamin . He won the Sullivan Prize for composition, the Cobbett Competition for chamber music, and

1628-628: A conservative style. Major composers have usually written anthems in response to commissions and for special occasions: for instance Edward Elgar 's 1912 "Great is the Lord" and 1914 "Give unto the Lord" (both with orchestral accompaniment); Benjamin Britten 's 1943 " Rejoice in the Lamb " (a modern example of a multi-movement anthem, today heard mainly as a concert piece); and, on a much smaller scale, Ralph Vaughan Williams 's 1952 "O Taste and See" written for

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1776-443: A damaged heart, and doctors warned his parents that he would probably never be able to lead a normal life. He recovered more fully than expected, and as a boy was a keen tennis player and cricketer. To his mother's great delight he was an outstandingly musical child, unlike his sisters, who inherited their father's indifference to music, while his brother, Robert, though musically talented, was interested only in ragtime . Edith gave

1924-785: A dominion and colony of the UK, the " Ode to Newfoundland ". It was the only Canadian province with its own anthem until 2010, when Prince Edward Island adopted the 1908 song " The Island Hymn " as its provincial anthem. Czechoslovakia had a national anthem composed of two parts, the Czech anthem followed by one verse of the Slovak one . After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia , the Czech Republic adopted its own regional anthem as its national one, whereas Slovakia did so with slightly changed lyrics and an additional stanza. In Germany , many of

2072-551: A farmer had been thwarted by lack of capital, and he had instead trained as a dentist, a profession he practised successfully but without pleasure. While studying at Charing Cross Hospital in London he met Edith Hockey, the daughter of a civil service clerk in the British Government's Home Office . They were married in September 1901 at St John's, Smith Square , London. The consensus among biographers of Britten

2220-491: A few days later, Britten gave him what he had written of Praise We Great Men . I heard of his death ... and took a long walk in total silence through gently falling snow across a frozen lake, which corresponded exactly to the inexpressible sense of numbness at such a loss. The world is colder and lonelier without the presence of our supreme creator of music. Peter Maxwell Davies , 1977 Britten died of congestive heart failure on 4 December 1976. His funeral service

2368-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

2516-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

2664-506: A normal song (although certain sections may be repeated when marked). An example of an anthem with multiple meter shifts, fuguing, and repeated sections is "Claremont", or "Vital Spark of Heav'nly Flame". Another well known example is William Billing 's "Easter Anthem", also known as "The Lord Is Risen Indeed!" after the opening lines. This anthem is still one of the more popular songs in the Sacred Harp tune book. The anthem developed as

2812-480: A poem by Edith Sitwell . He returned to Aldeburgh in August, and wrote Welcome Ode for children's choir and orchestra. In November, Britten realised that he could no longer compose. On his 63rd birthday, 22 November, at his request Rita Thomson organised a champagne party and invited his friends and his sisters Barbara and Beth, to say their goodbyes to the dying composer. When Rostropovich made his farewell visit

2960-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

3108-648: A replacement for the Catholic "votive antiphon" commonly sung as an appendix to the main office to the Blessed Virgin Mary or other saints . During the Elizabethan period , notable anthems were composed by Thomas Tallis , William Byrd , Tye, and Farrant but they were not mentioned in the Book of Common Prayer until 1662 when the famous rubric "In quires and places where they sing here followeth

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3256-494: A replacement. The state songs are selected by each state legislature , and/or state governor, as a symbol (or emblem) of that particular US state. Some US states have more than one official state song, and may refer to some of their official songs by other names; for example, Arkansas officially has two state songs, plus a state anthem, and a state historical song. Tennessee has the most state songs, with 12 official state songs and an official bicentennial rap . Arizona has

3404-576: A separate flag anthem for such purposes. Not all countries have flag anthems. Some used them in the past but no longer do so, such as Iran, China, and South Africa. Flag anthems can be officially codified in law, or unofficially recognized by custom and convention. In some countries, the flag anthem may be just another song, and in others, it may be an official symbol of the state akin to a second national anthem, such as in Taiwan. Many pop songs are used as sports anthems , notably including Queen 's " We Are

3552-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

3700-424: A song that was written specifically as a state anthem in 1915, as well as the 1981 country hit "Arizona", which it adopted as the alternate state anthem in 1982. Two individuals, Stephen Foster , and John Denver , have written or co-written two state songs. Foster's two state songs, " Old Folks at Home " (better known as "Swanee Ribber" or "Suwannee River"), adopted by Florida, and " My Old Kentucky Home " are among

3848-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

3996-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

4144-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

4292-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

4440-473: Is based on Mazurek Dąbrowskiego , which has also been the anthem of Poland since 1926, but the Yugoslav variation is much slower and more accentuated. Between 1991 and 1994 " Deșteaptă-te, române! " was the national anthem of both Romania (which adopted it in 1990) and Moldova , but in the case of the latter it was replaced by the current Moldovan national anthem, " Limba noastră ". Between 1975 and 1977,

4588-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

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4736-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

4884-509: Is generally a patriotic musical composition that extols and praises a flag, typically one of a country, in which case it is sometimes called a national flag anthem. It is often either sung or performed during or immediately before the raising or lowering of a flag during a ceremony. Most countries use their respective national anthems or some other patriotic song for this purpose. However, some countries, particularly in South America, use

5032-517: Is set to a melody composed in 1848 by Fredrik (Friedrich) Pacius which is also that of the national anthem of Finland : " Maamme " (" Vårt Land " in Swedish). It is also considered to be the ethnic anthem for the Livonian people with lyrics " Min izāmō, min sindimō " ("My Fatherland, my native land"). " Hey, Slavs " is dedicated to Slavic peoples . Its first lyrics were written in 1834 under

5180-644: Is that his father was a loving but somewhat stern and remote parent. Britten, according to his sister Beth, "got on well with him and shared his wry sense of humour, dedication to work and capacity for taking pains." Edith Britten was a talented amateur musician and secretary of the Lowestoft Musical Society. In the English provinces of the early 20th century, distinctions of social class were taken very seriously. Britten described his family as "very ordinary middle class", but there were aspects of

5328-543: Is the longest national anthem in the world by length of text. In 1865, the first three stanzas and later the first two officially became the national anthem of Greece and later also that of the Republic of Cyprus . " Forged from the Love of Liberty " was composed as the national anthem for the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958–1962) and was adopted by Trinidad and Tobago when it became independent in 1962. " Esta É

5476-531: The BBC Singers , who first performed it the following year. In this same period he wrote Friday Afternoons , a collection of 12 songs for the pupils of Clive House School, Prestatyn , where his brother was headmaster. In February 1935, at Bridge's instigation, Britten was invited to a job interview by the BBC's director of music Adrian Boult and his assistant Edward Clark . Britten was not enthusiastic about

5624-538: The Basque Country , and " Os Pinos " of Galicia , all written and sung in the local languages. The United Kingdom's national anthem is " God Save the King " but its constituent countries and Crown Dependencies also have their own equivalent songs which have varying degrees of official recognition. England , Scotland , Wales , and Northern Ireland each have anthems which are played at occasions such as sports matches and official events. The Isle of Man ,

5772-703: The British coronation service . The words are selected from Holy Scripture or in some cases from the Liturgy and the music is generally more elaborate and varied than that of psalm or hymn tunes . Being written for a trained choir rather than the congregation, the Anglican anthem is analogous to the motet of the Catholic and Lutheran Churches but represents an essentially English musical form . Anthems may be described as " verse ", "full", or "full with verse", depending on whether they are intended for soloists ,

5920-660: The Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

6068-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

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6216-596: The Länder (states) have their own anthems, some of which predate the unification of Germany in 1871. A prominent example is the Hymn of Bavaria , which also has the status of an official anthem (and thus enjoys legal protection). There are also several unofficial regional anthems, like the " Badnerlied " and the " Niedersachsenlied ". Some of the states and union territories of India have officially adopted their own state anthem for use during state government functions. All

6364-605: The Middle East , Oceania , Africa , and the Caribbean use a simpler fanfare . Some countries that are devolved into multiple constituent states have their own official musical compositions for them (such as with the United Kingdom, Russian Federation, and the former Soviet Union); their constituencies' songs are sometimes referred to as national anthems even though they are not sovereign states . A flag anthem

6512-612: The Montenegrin and Serbian regions of Serbia and Montenegro adopted their own regional anthems. When the two regions both became independent sovereign states in mid-2006, their regional anthems became their national anthems. Fourteen of the fifteen constituent states of the Soviet Union had their own official song which was used at events connected to that region, and also written and sung in that region's own language. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic used

6660-598: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical), Hoagy Carmichael 's " Georgia on My Mind ", " Tennessee Waltz ", " Missouri Waltz ", and " On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away ". Many of the others are much less well-known, especially outside the state. New Jersey has no official state song, while Virginia 's previous state song, " Carry Me Back to Old Virginny ", adopted in 1940, was later rescinded in 1997 due to its racist language by

6808-572: The Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge . Britten first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden , he wrote chamber operas for small forces, suitable for performance in venues of modest size. Among

6956-659: The Slovene one on the brink of the breakup of Yugoslavia . Before 1989, Macedonia did not officially use a regional anthem, even though one was proclaimed during the World War II by the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM). Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of

7104-475: The South African national anthem has been a hybrid song combining new English lyrics with extracts of "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" and the former state anthem " Die Stem van Suid-Afrika ". For North and South Korea, the folk song Arirang is considered a shared anthem for both countries. For example, it was played when the two Koreas marched together during the 2018 Winter Olympics . " Hymn to Liberty "

7252-610: The Soviet Union . Accordingly, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, and Ukraine have banned those anthems amongst other things deemed to be symbols of fascism, socialism, communism, and the Soviet Union and its republics. In Poland , dissemination of items which are “media of fascist, communist, or other totalitarian symbolism” was criminalized in 1997. However, in 2011 the Constitutional Tribunal found this sanction to be unconstitutional. In contrast to this treatment of

7400-778: The Suite on English Folk Tunes "A Time There Was" (1974); the Third String Quartet (1975), which drew on material from Death in Venice ; and the dramatic cantata Phaedra (1975), written for Janet Baker . In June 1976, the last year of his life, Britten accepted a life peerage – the first composer so honoured – becoming Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. After the 1976 Aldeburgh Festival, Britten and Pears travelled to Norway, where Britten began writing Praise We Great Men , for voices and orchestra based on

7548-562: The Virginia General Assembly . In 2015, " Our Great Virginia " was made the new state song of Virginia. Iowa (" The Song of Iowa ") uses the tune from the song " O Tannenbaum " as the melody to its official state song. In Yugoslavia , each of the country's constituent states (except for Bosnia and Herzegovina ) had the right to have its own anthem, but only the Croatian one actually did so initially, later joined by

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7696-559: The coronation of Elizabeth II , had a cool reception at the gala premiere in the presence of the Queen and the British Establishment en masse . The downbeat story of Elizabeth I in her decline, and Britten's score – reportedly thought by members of the premiere's audience "too modern" for such a gala – did not overcome what Matthews calls the "ingrained philistinism" of the ruling classes. Although Gloriana did well at

7844-431: The full choir , or both. Another way of describing an anthem is that it is a piece of music written specifically to fit a certain accompanying text, and it is often difficult to make any other text fit that same melodic arrangement. It also often changes melody and/or meter, frequently multiple times within a single song, and is sung straight through from start to finish, without repeating the melody for following verses like

7992-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

8140-583: The symbolism , promotion of fascist, communist and other totalitarian ideology remains illegal. Those laws do not apply to the anthems of Russia , Belarus , Uzbekistan , Kazakhstan , and Tajikistan which used the melody with different lyrics. In Spain , the situation is similar to that in Austria and Germany. Unlike the national anthem, most of the anthems of the autonomous communities have words. All are official. Three prominent examples are " Els Segadors " of Catalonia , " Eusko Abendaren Ereserkia " of

8288-530: The 1950s. Hemmings later said, "In all of the time that I spent with him he never abused that trust", and Crawford wrote "I cannot say enough about the kindness of that great man ... he had a wonderful patience and affinity with young people. He loved music, and loved youngsters caring about music." It was long suspected by several of Britten's close associates that there was something exceptional about his attraction to teenage boys: Auden referred to Britten's "attraction to thin-as-a-board juveniles ... to

8436-530: The 1960s, the Aldeburgh Festival was outgrowing its customary venues, and plans to build a new concert hall in Aldeburgh were not progressing. When redundant Victorian maltings buildings in the village of Snape, six miles inland, became available for hire, Britten realised that the largest of them could be converted into a concert hall and opera house. The 830-seat Snape Maltings hall was opened by

8584-415: The 19th century, Samuel Sebastian Wesley wrote anthems influenced by contemporary oratorio which stretch to several movements and last twenty minutes or longer. Later in the century, Charles Villiers Stanford used symphonic techniques to produce a more concise and unified structure. Many anthems have been written since then, generally by specialists in organ music rather than composers , and often in

8732-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

8880-489: The Aldeburgh Festival. One of the best known of Britten's works, the War Requiem , was premiered in 1962. He had been asked four years earlier to write a work for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral , a modernist building designed by Basil Spence . The old cathedral had been left in ruins by an air-raid on the city in 1940 in which hundreds of people died. Britten decided that his work would commemorate

9028-624: The Anthem" first appears. Early anthems tended to be simple and homophonic in texture, so that the words could be clearly heard. During the 17th century, notable anthems were composed by Orlando Gibbons , Henry Purcell , and John Blow , with the verse anthem becoming the dominant musical form of the Restoration . In the 18th century, famed anthems were composed by Croft, Boyce, James Kent , James Nares , Benjamin Cooke , and Samuel Arnold . In

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9176-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

9324-515: The Brittens that were not ordinary: Edith's father was illegitimate, and her mother was an alcoholic; Robert Britten was an agnostic and refused to attend church on Sundays. Music was the principal means by which Edith Britten strove to maintain the family's social standing, inviting the pillars of the local community to musical soirées at the house. When Britten was three months old he contracted pneumonia and nearly died. The illness left him with

9472-647: The Champions " and " We Will Rock You ", and some sporting events have their own anthems, most notably including UEFA Champions League . Although anthems are used to distinguish states and territories, there are instances of shared anthems. " Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika " became a pan-African liberation anthem and was later adopted as the national anthem of five countries in Africa including Zambia , Tanzania , Namibia and Zimbabwe after independence. Zimbabwe and Namibia have since adopted new national anthems. Since 1997,

9620-443: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He

9768-421: The Kid and An Outdoor Overture , both of which influenced his own music. In 1940 Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo , the first of many song cycles for Pears. Britten's orchestral works from this period include the Violin Concerto , Sinfonia da Requiem , and An American Overture . In 1941 Britten produced his first music drama, Paul Bunyan , an operetta , to a libretto by Auden. While in

9916-434: 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 , was presented at the first post-war Glyndebourne Festival in 1946. It was then taken on tour to provincial cities under

10064-481: The Queen at the start of the twentieth Aldeburgh Festival on 2 June 1967; it was immediately hailed as one of the best concert halls in the country. The hall was destroyed by fire in 1969, but Britten was determined that it would be rebuilt in time for the following year's festival, which it was. The Queen again attended the opening performance in 1970. The Maltings gave the festival a venue that could comfortably house large orchestral works and operas. Britten conducted

10212-448: The Second World War began, Britten and Pears turned for advice to the British embassy in Washington and were told that they should remain in the US as artistic ambassadors. Pears was inclined to disregard the advice and go back to England; Britten also felt the urge to return, but accepted the embassy's counsel and persuaded Pears to do the same. Already a friend of the composer Aaron Copland , Britten encountered his latest works Billy

10360-463: The Soviet Union ", was used until its dissolution in 1991, and was given new words and adopted by the Russian Federation in 2000 to replace an instrumental national anthem that had been introduced in 1990. " Bro Gozh ma Zadoù ", the regional anthem of Brittany and, " Bro Goth Agan Tasow ", the Cornish regional anthem, are sung to the same tune as that of the Welsh regional anthem " Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau ", with similar words. Some countries, such as

10508-571: The Soviet Union's national anthem as its regional anthem (" The Internationale " from 1917 to 1944 and the " National Anthem of the Soviet Union " from 1944 to 1990) until 1990, the last of the Soviet constituent states to do so. After the Soviet Union disbanded in the early 1990s, some of its former constituent states, now sovereign nations in their own right, retained the melodies of their old Soviet-era regional anthems until replacing them or, in some cases, still use them today. Unlike most national anthems, few of which were composed by renowned composers,

10656-497: The Soviet Union's various regional anthems were composed by some of the best Soviet composers, including world-renowned Gustav Ernesaks (Estonia), Aram Khachaturian (Armenia), Otar Taktakishvili (Georgia), and Uzeyir Hajibeyov (Azerbaijan). The lyrics present great similarities, all having mentions to Vladimir Lenin (and most, in their initial versions, to Joseph Stalin , the Armenian and Uzbek anthems being exceptions), to

10804-461: The Stone (1939). In 1937 there were two events of huge importance in Britten's life: his mother died, and he met the tenor Peter Pears . Although Britten was extraordinarily devoted to his mother and was devastated at her death, it also seems to have been something of a liberation for him. Only after that did he begin to engage in emotional relationships with people his own age or younger. Later in

10952-599: The String Quartet in F, completed in April 1928, and the Quatre Chansons Françaises , a song-cycle for high voice and orchestra. Authorities differ on the extent of Bridge's influence on his pupil's technique. Humphrey Carpenter and Michael Oliver judge that Britten's abilities as an orchestrator were essentially self-taught; Donald Mitchell considers that Bridge had an important influence on

11100-568: The US, Britten had his first encounter with Balinese gamelan music, through transcriptions for piano duo made by the Canadian composer Colin McPhee . The two met in the summer of 1939 and subsequently performed a number of McPhee's transcriptions for a recording. This musical encounter bore fruit in several Balinese-inspired works later in Britten's career. Moving to the US did not relieve Britten of

11248-419: The US, Koussevitzky, always generous in encouraging new talent, offered him a $ 1,000 commission to write the opera. Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942. During the long transatlantic sea crossing Britten completed the choral works A Ceremony of Carols and Hymn to St Cecilia . The latter was his last large-scale collaboration with Auden. Britten had grown away from him, and Auden became one of

11396-686: The Year 2000 ", and Toto 's "Child's Anthem". A national anthem (also state anthem, national hymn, national song, etc.) is generally a patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions, and struggles of a country 's people, recognized either by that state's government as the official national song , or by convention through use by the people. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. The countries of Latin America , Central Asia , and Europe tend towards more ornate and operatic pieces, while those in

11544-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

11692-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

11840-519: The banner of the "Glyndebourne English Opera Company", an uneasy alliance of Britten and his associates with John Christie , the autocratic proprietor of Glyndebourne. The tour lost money heavily, and Christie announced that he would underwrite no more tours. Britten and his associates set up the English Opera Group; the librettist Eric Crozier and the designer John Piper joined Britten as artistic directors. The group's express purpose

11988-473: The best known of these is The Turn of the Screw (1954). Recurring themes in his operas include the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society and the corruption of innocence. Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. He took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, including the opera Noye's Fludde ,

12136-783: The best-known songs in the US On March 12, 2007, the Colorado Senate passed a resolution to make Denver's trademark 1972 hit " Rocky Mountain High " one of the state's two official state songs, sharing duties with its predecessor, "Where the Columbines Grow". On March 7, 2014, the West Virginia Legislature approved a resolution to make Denver's " Take Me Home, Country Roads " one of four official state songs of West Virginia. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin signed

12284-494: The box office, there were no further productions in Britain for another 13 years. It was later recognised as one of Britten's finer operas. The Turn of the Screw the following year was an unqualified success; together with Peter Grimes it became, and at 2013 remained, one of the two most frequently performed of Britten's operas. In the 1950s the "fervently anti-homosexual" Home Secretary , Sir David Maxwell Fyfe , urged

12432-515: The cane or the slipper were happily rare (although one nocturnal expedition to stalk ghosts left its marks behind); he worked his way up the school slowly and steadily, until at the age of thirteen he reached that pinnacle of importance and grandeur, never to be quite equalled in later days: the head of the Sixth, head-prefect, and Victor Ludorum . But – there was one curious thing about this boy: he wrote music. His friends bore with it, his enemies kicked

12580-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

12728-478: The composer sustained many deep friendships to the end of his life. Throughout his adult life, Britten had a particular rapport with children and enjoyed close friendships with several boys, particularly those in their early teens. The first such friendship was with Piers Dunkerley, who was 13 years old in 1934, when Britten was aged 20. Other boys Britten befriended were the young David Hemmings and Michael Crawford , both of whom sang treble roles in his works in

12876-401: The composer's so-called "corpses" – former intimates from whom he completely cut off contact once they had outlived their usefulness to him or offended him in some way. Having arrived in Britain, Britten and Pears applied for recognition as conscientious objectors ; Britten was initially allowed only non-combatant service in the military, but on appeal he gained unconditional exemption. After

13024-654: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II . With the relaxation of the rule, in England at least, that anthems should only be in English, the repertoire has been greatly enhanced by the addition of many works from the Latin repertoire. The word "anthem" is commonly used to describe any celebratory song or composition for a distinct group, as in national anthems . Further, some songs are artistically styled as anthems, whether or not they are used as such, including Marilyn Manson 's " Irresponsible Hate Anthem ", Silverchair 's " Anthem for

13172-563: The creation of Snape Maltings concert hall in 1967. In 1976, he was the first composer to be given a life peerage . He died shortly afterwards, aged 63. Britten was born in the fishing port of Lowestoft in Suffolk , on the east coast of England on 22 November 1913, the feast day of Saint Cecilia , the patron saint of music. He was the youngest of four children of Robert Victor Britten (1877–1934) and his wife Edith Rhoda, née Hockey (1874–1937). Robert Britten's youthful ambition to become

13320-502: The cycle. In September 1928 Britten went as a boarder to Gresham's School , in Holt, Norfolk . At the time he felt unhappy there, even writing in his diary of contemplating suicide or running away: he hated being separated from his family, most particularly from his mother; he despised the music master; and he was shocked at the prevalence of bullying, though he was not the target of it. He remained there for two years and in 1930 he won

13468-474: The dead of both World Wars in a large-scale score for soloists, chorus, chamber ensemble and orchestra. His text interspersed the traditional Requiem Mass with poems by Wilfred Owen . Matthews writes, "With the War Requiem Britten reached the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece." Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be "the greatest work of

13616-540: The death of his mother in 1937 he had used money she bequeathed him to buy the Old Mill in Snape , Suffolk which became his country home. He spent much of his time there in 1944 working on the opera Peter Grimes . Pears joined Sadler's Wells Opera Company , whose artistic director, the singer Joan Cross , announced her intention to re-open the company's home base in London with Britten's opera, casting herself and Pears in

13764-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

13912-609: The documentary films Coal Face and Night Mail in 1935. They also collaborated on the song cycle Our Hunting Fathers (1936), radical both in politics and musical treatment, and subsequently other works including Cabaret Songs , On This Island , Paul Bunyan and Hymn to St Cecilia . Auden was a considerable influence on Britten, encouraging him to widen his aesthetic, intellectual and political horizons, and also to come to terms with his homosexuality. Auden was, as David Matthews puts it, "cheerfully and guiltlessly promiscuous"; Britten, puritanical and conventional by nature,

14060-543: The end of his life, when he told Pears that 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

14208-507: The first performance outside Russia of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony at Snape in 1970. Shostakovich, a friend since 1960, dedicated the symphony to Britten; he was himself the dedicatee of The Prodigal Son . Two other Russian musicians who were close to Britten and regularly performed at the festival were the pianist Sviatoslav Richter and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich . Britten composed his cello suites , Cello Symphony and Cello Sonata for Rostropovich, who premiered them at

14356-499: The first substantial piece of modern music he had ever encountered, and he was, in his own phrase, "knocked sideways" by it. Audrey Alston was a friend of Bridge; when he returned to Norwich for the next festival in 1927 she brought her not quite 14-year-old pupil to meet him. Bridge was impressed with the boy, and after they had gone through some of Britten's compositions together he invited him to come to London to take lessons from him. Robert Britten, supported by Thomas Sewell, doubted

14504-551: The former Soviet Union , Spain , and the United Kingdom , among others, are held to be unions of several "nations" by various definitions. Each of the different "nations" may have their own anthem and these songs may or may not be officially recognized; these compositions are typically referred to as regional anthems though may be known by other names as well (e.g. "state songs" in the United States ). In Austria ,

14652-631: The guiding role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and to the brotherhood of the Soviet peoples, including a specific reference to the friendship of the Russian people (the Estonian, Georgian and Karelo-Finnish anthems were apparently an exception to this last rule). Some of the Soviet regional anthems' melodies can be sung in the Soviet Union anthem lyrics (Ukrainian and Belarus are

14800-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

14948-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

15096-556: The in-fighting among the company, Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945, going on to found what was to become the English Opera Group . A month after the opening of Peter Grimes , Britten and Yehudi Menuhin went to Germany to give recitals to concentration camp survivors. What they saw, at Belsen most of all, so shocked Britten that he refused to talk about it until towards

15244-443: The individual states of Malaysia have their own anthems. In Mexico , after the national anthem was established in 1854, most of the states of the federation adopted their own regional anthems, which often emphasize heroes, virtues or particular landscapes. In particular, the regional anthem of Zacatecas , the " Marcha de Zacatecas ", is one of the more well-known of Mexico's various regional anthems. In 2004 and 2005 respectively,

15392-602: The leading roles. There were complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score, as well as some ill-suppressed homophobic remarks. Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème and Madame Butterfly , which were staged during the same season. The opera administrator Lord Harewood called it "the first genuinely successful British opera, Gilbert and Sullivan apart, since Purcell ." Dismayed by

15540-434: The most fitted in this case). Most of these regional anthems were replaced with new national ones during or after the dissolution of the Soviet Union ; Belarus , Kazakhstan (until 2006), Tajikistan , Turkmenistan (until 1997), and Uzbekistan kept the melodies, but with different lyrics. Russia itself had abandoned the Soviet hymn, replacing it with a tune by Glinka . However, with Vladimir Putin coming to power,

15688-440: The national anthem of Romania " E scris pe tricolor Unire " shared the same melody as the national anthem of Albania " Himni i Flamurit ", which is the melody of a Romanian patriotic song " Pe-al nostru steag e scris Unire ". The modern national anthem of Germany , " Das Lied der Deutschen ", uses the same tune as the 19th- and early 20th-century Austro-Hungarian imperial anthem " Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser ". The " Hymn of

15836-469: The nuisance of hostile criticism: although Olin Downes , the doyen of New York music critics, and Irving Kolodin took to Britten's music, Virgil Thomson was, as the music scholar Suzanne Robinson puts it, consistently "severe and spiteful". Thomson described Les Illuminations (1940) as "little more than a series of bromidic and facile 'effects' ... pretentious, banal and utterly disappointing", and

15984-404: The old Soviet tune was restored, with new lyrics written to it. Like the hammer and sickle and red star , the public performance of the anthems of the Soviet Union's various regional anthems the national anthem of the Soviet Union itself are considered as occupation symbols as well as symbols of totalitarianism and state terror by several countries formerly either members of or occupied by

16132-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

16280-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

16428-459: The police to enforce the Victorian laws making homosexual acts illegal. Britten and Pears came under scrutiny; Britten was visited by police officers in 1953 and was so perturbed that he discussed with his assistant Imogen Holst the possibility that Pears might have to enter a sham marriage (with whom is unclear). In the end nothing was done. An increasingly important influence on Britten

16576-479: The premieres of his operas A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Jubilee Hall in 1960 and Death in Venice at Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1973. Unlike many leading English composers, Britten was not known as a teacher, but in 1949 he accepted his only private pupil, Arthur Oldham , who studied with him for three years. Oldham made himself useful, acting as musical assistant and arranging Variations on

16724-627: The principal character. After the completion of the opera Britten went into the National Heart Hospital and was operated on in May 1973 to replace a failing heart valve. The replacement was successful, but he suffered a slight stroke, affecting his right hand. This brought his career as a performer to an end. While in hospital Britten became friendly with a senior nursing sister, Rita Thomson; she moved to Aldeburgh in 1974 and looked after him until his death. Britten's last works include

16872-509: The prospect of working full-time in the BBC music department and was relieved when what came out of the interview was an invitation to write the score for a documentary film, The King's Stamp , directed by Alberto Cavalcanti for the GPO Film Unit . Britten became a member of the film unit's small group of regular contributors, another of whom was W. H. Auden . Together they worked on

17020-447: The ranks of his 'corpses' and I have always recognized that any ordinary person must soon outlive his usefulness to such a great creative artist as Ben." Dame Janet Baker said in 1981, "I think he was quite entitled to take what he wanted from others ... He did not want to hurt anyone, but the task in hand was more important than anything or anybody." Matthews feels that this aspect of Britten has been exaggerated, and he observes that

17168-464: The regime at the school. He himself rarely fell foul of Sewell, a mathematician, in which subject Britten was a star pupil. The school had no musical tradition, and Britten continued to study the piano with Ethel Astle. From the age of ten he took viola lessons from a friend of his mother, Audrey Alston, who had been a professional player before her marriage. In his spare time he composed prolifically. When his Simple Symphony , based on these juvenilia,

17316-517: The resolution into law on March 8, 2014. Additionally, Woody Guthrie wrote or co-wrote two state folk songs – Roll On, Columbia, Roll On and Oklahoma Hills – but they have separate status from the official state songs of Washington and Oklahoma, respectively. Other well-known state songs include " Yankee Doodle ", " You Are My Sunshine ", " Rocky Top ", and " Home on the Range "; a number of others are popular standards, including " Oklahoma " (from

17464-480: The rest of his life. The Aldeburgh Festival was launched in June 1948, with Britten, Pears, and Crozier directing. Albert Herring played at the Jubilee Hall, and Britten's new cantata for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, Saint Nicolas , was presented in the parish church. The festival was an immediate success and became an annual event that has continued into the 21st century. New works by Britten featured in almost every festival until his death in 1976, including

17612-473: The score of the new opera until August 1970. Owen Wingrave was first broadcast in Britain in May 1971, when it was also televised in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Yugoslavia. In September 1970 Britten asked Myfanwy Piper , who had adapted the two Henry James stories for him, to turn another prose story into a libretto. This

17760-716: The sexless and innocent", and Pears once wrote to Britten: "remember there are lovely things in the world still – children, boys, sunshine, the sea, Mozart, you and me." In public, the matter was little discussed during Britten's lifetime and much discussed after it. Carpenter 's 1992 biography closely examined the evidence, as do later studies of Britten, most particularly John Bridcut 's Britten's Children (2006), which concentrates on Britten's friendships and relationships with various children and adolescents. Some commentators have continued to question Britten's conduct, sometimes very sharply. Carpenter and Bridcut conclude that he held any sexual impulses under firm control and kept

17908-602: The situation is similar to that in Germany. The regional anthem of Upper Austria , the "Hoamatgsang" (English: "Chant of the Homeland" ), is notable as the only (official) German-language anthem written – and sung – entirely in dialect. In Belgium , Wallonia uses " Le Chant des Wallons " and Flanders uses " De Vlaamse Leeuw ". Most of the Brazilian states have official anthems. Minas Gerais uses an adapted version of

18056-441: The success that Frank Bridge had enjoyed in the US; the departure of Auden and his friend Christopher Isherwood to the US from England three months previously; hostile or belittling reviews of Britten's music in the English press; and under-rehearsed and inadequate performances. Britten and Pears consummated their relationship and from then until Britten's death they were partners in both their professional and personal lives. When

18204-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

18352-545: The term was invented by Lord Harewood. Both Mackerras and Harewood joined the list of corpses, the former for joking that the number of boys in Noye's Fludde must have been a delight to the composer, and the latter for an extramarital affair and subsequent divorce from Lady Harewood , which shocked the puritanical Britten. Among other corpses were his librettists Montagu Slater and Eric Crozier . The latter said in 1949, "He has sometimes told me, jokingly, that one day I would join

18500-646: The title "Hey, Slovaks" ("Hej, Slováci") by Samuel Tomášik and it has since served as the ethnic anthem of the Pan-Slavic movement, the organizational anthem of the Sokol physical education and political movement, the national anthem of Yugoslavia and the transitional anthem of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro . The song is also considered to be the second, unofficial anthem of the Slovaks. Its melody

18648-531: The traditional Italian song "Vieni sul mar" as its unofficial anthem. During the Vargas Era (1937–1945) all regional symbols including anthems were banned, but they were legalized again by the Eurico Gaspar Dutra government. The Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador , having been the independent Dominion of Newfoundland before 1949, also has its own regional anthem from its days as

18796-447: The twentieth century". In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television. Owen Wingrave was based, like The Turn of the Screw , on a ghost story by Henry James . By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer Nicholas Maw , "Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older." He did not complete

18944-536: The wisdom of pursuing a composing career; a compromise was agreed by which Britten would, as planned, go on to his public school the following year but would make regular day-trips to London to study composition with Bridge and piano with his colleague Harold Samuel . Bridge impressed on Britten the importance of scrupulous attention to the technical craft of composing and the maxim that "you should find yourself and be true to what you found." The earliest substantial works Britten composed while studying with Bridge are

19092-473: The work was much enhanced when Koussevitzky took it up shortly afterwards. In 1942 Britten read the work of the poet George Crabbe for the first time. The Borough , set on the Suffolk coast close to Britten's homeland, awakened in him such longings for England that he knew he must return. He also knew that he must write an opera based on Crabbe's poem about the fisherman Peter Grimes. Before Britten left

19240-438: The year he got to know Pears while they were both helping to clear out the country cottage of a mutual friend who had died in an air crash. Pears quickly became Britten's musical inspiration and close (though for the moment platonic) friend. Britten's first work for him was composed within weeks of their meeting, a setting of Emily Brontë 's poem, "A thousand gleaming fires", for tenor and strings. During 1937 Britten composed

19388-630: The years by Britten before his final heart complaint developed. Emotionally, according to some commentators, Britten never completely grew up, retaining in his outlook something of a child's view of the world. He was not always confident that he was the genius others declared him to be, and though he was hypercritical of his own works, he was acutely, even aggressively sensitive to criticism from anybody else. Britten was, as he himself acknowledged, notorious for dumping friends and colleagues who either offended him or ceased to be of use to him – his "corpses". The conductor Sir Charles Mackerras believed that

19536-408: The young Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He made his first attempts at composition when he was five. He started piano lessons when he was seven years old, and three years later began to play the viola . He was one of the last composers brought up on exclusively live music: his father refused to have a gramophone or, later, a radio in the house. When he was seven Britten was sent to

19684-781: Was Thomas Mann 's novella Death in Venice , a subject he had been considering for some time. At an early stage in composition Britten was told by his doctors that a heart operation was essential if he was to live for more than two years. He was determined to finish the opera and worked urgently to complete it before going into hospital for surgery. His long-term colleague Colin Graham wrote: Perhaps of all his works, this one went deepest into Britten's own soul: there are extraordinary cross-currents of affinity between himself, his own state of health and mind, Thomas Mann, Aschenbach (Mann's dying protagonist), and Peter Pears, who must have had to tear himself in three in order to reconstitute himself as

19832-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

19980-411: Was a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record. He also performed and recorded works by others, such as Bach 's Brandenburg Concertos , Mozart symphonies, and song cycles by Schubert and Schumann . Together with Pears and the librettist and producer Eric Crozier , Britten founded the annual Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, and he was responsible for

20128-545: Was a central figure of 20th-century British 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). Britten was born in Lowestoft , Suffolk , the son of a dentist. He showed talent from an early age. He studied at

20276-528: Was a success in North America, with performances in Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, under conductors including John Barbirolli and Serge Koussevitzky . In April 1939 Britten and Pears sailed to North America, going first to Canada and then to New York. They had several reasons for leaving England, including the difficult position of pacifists in an increasingly bellicose Europe;

20424-629: Was equally unflattering about Pears's voice. Robinson surmises that Thomson was motivated by "a mixture of spite, national pride, and professional jealousy." Paul Bunyan met with wholesale critical disapproval, and the Sinfonia da Requiem (already rejected by its Japanese sponsors because of its overtly Christian nature) received a mixed reception when Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic premiered it in March 1941. The reputation of

20572-520: Was eventually dissuaded by his parents, on the advice of the RCM staff. The first of Britten's compositions to attract wide attention were composed while at the RCM: the Sinfonietta , Op. 1 (1932), the oboe quartet Phantasy , Op. 2, dedicated to Léon Goossens who played the first performance in a BBC broadcast on 6 August 1933, and a set of choral variations A Boy was Born , written in 1933 for

20720-570: Was headed by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother . Despite his large number of works on Christian themes, Britten has sometimes been thought of as an agnostic. Pears said that when they met in 1937 he was not sure whether or not Britten would have described himself as a Christian. In the 1960s Britten called himself a dedicated Christian, though sympathetic to the radical views propounded by the Bishop of Woolwich in Honest to God . Politically, Britten

20868-453: Was held at Aldeburgh Parish Church three days later, and he was buried in its churchyard, with a gravestone carved by Reynolds Stone . The authorities at Westminster Abbey had offered burial there, but Britten had made it clear that he wished his grave to be side by side with that, in due course, of Pears. A memorial service was held at the Abbey on 10 March 1977, at which the congregation

21016-518: Was not, and learned little from him. He continued to study privately with Bridge, although he later praised Ireland for "nurs[ing] me very gently through a very, very difficult musical adolescence." Britten also used his time in London to attend concerts and become better acquainted with the music of Stravinsky , Shostakovich and, most particularly, Mahler . He intended postgraduate study in Vienna with Alban Berg , Arnold Schoenberg 's student, but

21164-496: Was on the left. He told Pears that he always voted either Liberal or Labour and could not imagine ever voting Conservative , but he was never a member of any party, except the Peace Pledge Union. Physically, Britten was never robust. He walked and swam regularly and kept himself as fit as he could, but in his 1992 biography, Carpenter mentions 20 illnesses, a few of them minor but most fairly serious, suffered over

21312-498: Was recorded in 1956, Britten wrote this pen-portrait of his young self for the sleeve note: Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy. ... He was quite an ordinary little boy ... he loved cricket, only quite liked football (although he kicked a pretty "corner"); he adored mathematics, got on all right with history, was scared by Latin Unseen; he behaved fairly well, only ragged the recognised amount, so that his contacts with

21460-502: Was sexually repressed. In the three years from 1935 to 1937 Britten wrote nearly 40 scores for the theatre, cinema and radio. Among the film music of the late 1930s Matthews singles out Night Mail and Love from a Stranger (1937); from the theatre music he selects for mention The Ascent of F6 (1936), On the Frontier (1938), and Johnson Over Jordan (1939); and of the music for radio, King Arthur (1937) and The Sword in

21608-720: Was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour there with Pears in 1956, when Britten once again encountered the music of the Balinese gamelan and saw for the first time Japanese Noh plays, which he called "some of the most wonderful drama I have ever seen." These eastern influences were seen and heard in the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) and later in two of the three semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). By

21756-419: Was to produce and commission new English operas and other works, presenting them throughout the country. Britten wrote the comic opera Albert Herring for the group in 1947; while on tour in the new work Pears came up with the idea of mounting a festival in the small Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh , where Britten had moved from Snape earlier in the year, and which became his principal place of residence for

21904-500: Was twice winner of the Ernest Farrar Prize for composition. Despite these honours, he was not greatly impressed by the establishment: he found his fellow-students "amateurish and folksy" and the staff "inclined to suspect technical brilliance of being superficial and insincere." Another Ireland pupil, the composer Humphrey Searle , said that Ireland could be "an inspiring teacher to those on his own wavelength"; Britten

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