The dark side of Benjamin Britten

We are only two months into the Britten centenary year and already books, articles and talks (and, of course, performances) swell the flood of existing biographical studies and the six bulky volumes of diaries and letters. Dead for less than 40 years, Britten is as copiously documented as any English composer except Elgar. Have emails wiped out areas of research? I hope that some teenage composer, a latter-day Britten, is even now baring their musical soul writing candid and maybe scurrilous opinions on the current musical scene in a diary as the young Britten did from 1928.

‘The child is father to the man’ rings true in Britten’s case. Britten the man was  a Jekyll and Hyde, with Hyde perhaps too often gaining the upper hand. The sophisticated judgments, often couched in schoolboyish jargon, tell us how Britten discovered music, not only by performing and by reading scores but also by attending concerts and listening avidly to the radio and recordings.  As well as, of course, by composing ambitious works galore.

Mr Hyde peeps through many of his adolescent verdicts on music and musicians. He was always a great ‘hater’. As it happens, I clearly remember the BBC announcement of Elgar’s death on 23 February 1934. That evening they broadcast one of Britten’s earliest and finest choral works, A Boy Was Born. Britten did not even mention the great man’s death in his diary. Not surprising, though, when you read what he had written six years earlier (aged 15) after a concert in Queen’s Hall: ‘Elgar Second Symphony. Dreadful nobilmente semplice. I came out after 3rd movement — so bored.’ But at least he went to hear it again: ‘I listen to one minute of Elgar 2 but can stand no more.’