This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

Peter Grimes, Op. 33, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Montagu Slater based on the section "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's long narrative poem The Borough (1810). The "borough" of the opera is a fictional small town that bears some resemblance to Crabbe's – and later Britten's – home of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on England's east coast. The work was conceived while Britten was living in the US in the early years of the Second World War and completed when he returned to Britain in 1943. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in Britain and internationally, and has become part of the standard repertoire. Among the tenors who have performed the title role in the opera house, or on record, or both are Britten's partner Peter Pears, who sang the part at the premiere, and Allan Clayton, Ben Heppner, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Jonas Kaufmann, Philip Langridge, Stuart Skelton, Set Svanholm and Jon Vickers. Four Sea Interludes, consisting of purely orchestral music from the opera, were published separately and are frequently performed as an orchestral suite. Another interlude, a passacaglia, was published separately and is also often performed, either together with the Sea Interludes or by itself.

An American Overture (originally titled Occasional Overture), Op. 27 is an orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten. It was composed in 1941, while Britten and his life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, lived in the United States. Personal difficulties, global events, and the desire to earn more money goaded Britten to leave England and pursue a career in the United States. Britten began to compose An American Overture while he and Pears were living at the home of the piano duo Bartlett and Robertson in Escondido, California. The work had resulted from a proposal initiated in August 1941, by the conductor Artur Rodziński for a short orchestral work he intended to conduct in concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in October and November of that year respectively. Britten completed the work on October 16, during a guest stay at the home of Elizabeth Mayer in Amityville, New York. For reasons undetermined, Rodziński never conducted An American Overture, possibly because it was never delivered to him. Britten soon became critical of the work and entered a period of creative crisis, which was further worsened by the poor reception to his operetta Paul Bunyan, difficulties with the American Federation of Musicians, and his unreciprocated attraction to the young son of a hardware store owner in Amityville. Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, but left behind the score to An American Overture. After being acquired by a musical rental agency, the score was deposited in the New York Public Library in the mid-1950s. A staff archivist discovered it and contacted Britten about it in 1972, whereupon the composer replied that he did not recall the work. After indicating that he preferred to have the score destroyed, he allowed permission for it to be available for private viewing by library patrons, but demanded that it never be published. After Britten's death, it was published by Faber Music. Its world premiere took place on November 8, 1983, played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.

An American Overture (originally titled Occasional Overture), Op. 27 is an orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten. It was composed in 1941, while Britten and his life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, lived in the United States. Personal difficulties, global events, and the desire to earn more money goaded Britten to leave England and pursue a career in the United States. Britten began to compose An American Overture while he and Pears were living at the home of the piano duo Bartlett and Robertson in Escondido, California. The work had resulted from a proposal initiated in August 1941, by the conductor Artur Rodziński for a short orchestral work he intended to conduct in concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in October and November of that year respectively. Britten completed the work on October 16, during a guest stay at the home of Elizabeth Mayer in Amityville, New York. For reasons undetermined, Rodziński never conducted An American Overture, possibly because it was never delivered to him. Britten soon became critical of the work and entered a period of creative crisis, which was further worsened by the poor reception to his operetta Paul Bunyan, difficulties with the American Federation of Musicians, and his unreciprocated attraction to the young son of a hardware store owner in Amityville. Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, but left behind the score to An American Overture. After being acquired by a musical rental agency, the score was deposited in the New York Public Library in the mid-1950s. A staff archivist discovered it and contacted Britten about it in 1972, whereupon the composer replied that he did not recall the work. After indicating that he preferred to have the score destroyed, he allowed permission for it to be available for private viewing by library patrons, but demanded that it never be published. After Britten's death, it was published by Faber Music. Its world premiere took place on November 8, 1983, played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

The Symphony for Cello and Orchestra or Cello Symphony, Op. 68, was written in 1963 by the British composer Benjamin Britten. He dedicated the work to Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the work its premiere in Moscow with the composer and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra on 12 March 1964. The work's title reflects the music's more even balance between soloist and orchestra than in the traditional concerto format. The piece is in the four-movement structure typical of a symphony, but the final two movements are linked by a cello cadenza:

Coal Face is a 1935 British documentary film short directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. With a film score by Benjamin Britten and a poem written and narrated by W.H. Auden, the film gives a glimpse into the lives of a Yorkshire mining community and the dangerous working conditions the miners routinely faced. The film largely reuses older footage from Tour of a British Coal Mine (1928), which was shot in Barnsley, Yorkshire.

An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead".

Gloriana, Op. 53, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Lytton Strachey's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. The first performance was presented at the Royal Opera House, London, in 1953 during the celebrations of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Gloriana was the name given by the 16th-century poet Edmund Spenser to his character representing Queen Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene. It became the popular name given to Elizabeth I. The opera depicts the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex, and was composed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. Several in the audience of its gala opening were disappointed by the opera, which presents the first Elizabeth as a sympathetic, but flawed, character motivated largely by vanity and desire. The premiere was one of Britten's few critical failures, and the opera was not included in the series of complete Decca recordings conducted by the composer. However, a symphonic suite extracted from the opera by the composer (Opus 53a), which includes the Courtly Dances, is often performed as a concert piece.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

Leonard Bernstein ( BURN-styne; born Louis Bernstein; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan. Bernstein's honors and accolades include seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award) as well as an Academy Award nomination. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981. As a composer, Bernstein wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music, and pieces for the piano. Bernstein's works include the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (1961 and 2021) feature films, as well as three symphonies, Serenade (after Plato's Symposium) (1954) and Chichester Psalms (1965), the original score for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), and theater works including On the Town (1944), Wonderful Town (1953), Candide (1956), and his Mass (1971). Bernstein was the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major orchestras, generating a legacy of audio and video recordings. Bernstein was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, in whose music he was most interested. A skilled pianist, Bernstein often conducted piano concertos from the keyboard. He shared and explored classical music on television with a mass audience in national and international broadcasts, including Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein worked in support of civil rights; protested against the Vietnam War; advocated nuclear disarmament; raised money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness; championed Janis Ian at age 15 and her song about interracial love, "Society's Child", on his CBS television show; and engaged in multiple international initiatives for human rights and world peace. He conducted Mahler's Resurrection Symphony to mark the death of president John F. Kennedy, and in Israel at a concert, Hatikvah on Mt. Scopus, after the Six-Day War. The sequence of events was recorded for a documentary entitled Journey to Jerusalem. Bernstein was a member of the executive committee for Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group. On Christmas Day, 1989, Bernstein conducted a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Less than a year later, in October 1990, he died of a heart attack brought on by mesothelioma in New York, aged 72.

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

Night Mail is a 1936 British documentary film directed and produced by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and produced by the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit. The 24-minute film documents the nightly postal train operated by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) from London to Scotland alongside the staff who operate it. Narrated by John Grierson and Stuart Legg, the film ends with a "verse commentary" written by W. H. Auden to a score composed by Benjamin Britten. The locomotive featured in the film is LMS Royal Scot Class 6115 Scots Guardsman. Night Mail premiered on 4 February 1936 at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in Cambridge, England in a launch programme for the venue. Its general release gained critical praise and became a classic of its own kind, much imitated by adverts and modern film shorts. Night Mail is widely considered a masterpiece of the British Documentary Film Movement. A sequel was released in 1987, titled Night Mail 2.

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

Peter Grimes, Op. 33, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Montagu Slater based on the section "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's long narrative poem The Borough (1810). The "borough" of the opera is a fictional small town that bears some resemblance to Crabbe's – and later Britten's – home of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on England's east coast. The work was conceived while Britten was living in the US in the early years of the Second World War and completed when he returned to Britain in 1943. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in Britain and internationally, and has become part of the standard repertoire. Among the tenors who have performed the title role in the opera house, or on record, or both are Britten's partner Peter Pears, who sang the part at the premiere, and Allan Clayton, Ben Heppner, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Jonas Kaufmann, Philip Langridge, Stuart Skelton, Set Svanholm and Jon Vickers. Four Sea Interludes, consisting of purely orchestral music from the opera, were published separately and are frequently performed as an orchestral suite. Another interlude, a passacaglia, was published separately and is also often performed, either together with the Sea Interludes or by itself.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

Benjamin Britten's Piano Concerto, Op. 13, is the composer's sole piano concerto.

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

The Simple Symphony, Op. 4, is a work for string orchestra or string quartet by Benjamin Britten. It was written between December 1933 and February 1934 in Lowestoft, using material that the composer had written as a child, between 1923 and 1926. It received its first performance in 1934 at Stuart Hall in Norwich, with Britten conducting an amateur orchestra. The piece is dedicated to Audrey Alston (Mrs Lincolne Sutton), Britten's childhood viola teacher. The piece is based on eight themes which Britten wrote during his childhood (two per movement) and for which he had a particular fondness. He completed his final draft of this piece at age twenty.

Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20, for orchestra is a sinfonia written by Benjamin Britten in 1940 at the age of 26. It was one of several works commissioned from different composers by the Japanese government to mark Emperor Jimmu's 2600th Anniversary Celebrations of the Japanese Empire (taken to be 11 February 660 BCE from birth of Emperor Jimmu). The Japanese government rejected the Sinfonia for its use of Latin titles from the Catholic Requiem for its three movements and for its somber overall character, but it was received positively at its world premiere in New York on 29 March 1941 under John Barbirolli. A performance in Boston under Serge Koussevitzky led to the commission of the opera Peter Grimes from the Koussevitzky Music Foundations. The Sinfonia is Britten's largest purely orchestral work for the concert hall. It was his first major orchestral work that did not include a soloist and, according to musicologist Peter Evans, marks the peak of his early writing in this idiom. Unlike many of Britten's works from this time, it has remained popular and continues to be programmed on orchestral concerts.

Benjamin Britten's Sinfonietta was composed in 1932, at the age of 18, while he was a student at the Royal College of Music. The sinfonietta was first performed in 1933 at The Ballet Club, London conducted by Iris Lemare. It was published as his Op. 1 and dedicated to his teacher Frank Bridge.

Spring Symphony is a choral symphony by Benjamin Britten, his Opus 44. The work is scored for soprano, alto and tenor soloists, mixed choir, boys' choir and orchestra. Britten used texts of several poems related to spring, mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries and also one by W. H. Auden. Britten dedicated the work to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The work received its premiere in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on 14 July 1949 as part of the Holland Festival

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

An American Overture (originally titled Occasional Overture), Op. 27 is an orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten. It was composed in 1941, while Britten and his life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, lived in the United States. Personal difficulties, global events, and the desire to earn more money goaded Britten to leave England and pursue a career in the United States. Britten began to compose An American Overture while he and Pears were living at the home of the piano duo Bartlett and Robertson in Escondido, California. The work had resulted from a proposal initiated in August 1941, by the conductor Artur Rodziński for a short orchestral work he intended to conduct in concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in October and November of that year respectively. Britten completed the work on October 16, during a guest stay at the home of Elizabeth Mayer in Amityville, New York. For reasons undetermined, Rodziński never conducted An American Overture, possibly because it was never delivered to him. Britten soon became critical of the work and entered a period of creative crisis, which was further worsened by the poor reception to his operetta Paul Bunyan, difficulties with the American Federation of Musicians, and his unreciprocated attraction to the young son of a hardware store owner in Amityville. Britten and Pears returned to England in 1942, but left behind the score to An American Overture. After being acquired by a musical rental agency, the score was deposited in the New York Public Library in the mid-1950s. A staff archivist discovered it and contacted Britten about it in 1972, whereupon the composer replied that he did not recall the work. After indicating that he preferred to have the score destroyed, he allowed permission for it to be available for private viewing by library patrons, but demanded that it never be published. After Britten's death, it was published by Faber Music. Its world premiere took place on November 8, 1983, played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

This list of compositions includes all the published works by English composer Benjamin Britten with opus number.

Matinées musicales is a 1941 composition by Benjamin Britten using music composed by Gioachino Rossini in and around the 1830s. The suite is a successor to Britten's earlier suite based on Rossini, Soirées musicales (1937).

The Turn of the Screw, Op. 54, is a 20th-century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. It concerns a young, inexperienced governess sent to a country house to care for two children, who she is gradually convinced have been corrupted by the ghosts of a previous manservant and governess. The drama grows increasingly tense, with a tragic outcome. It has been described by The Guardian as one of the most dramatically appealing of Britten's operas, and by music professor Peter Evans as "Britten's most intricately organized opera". It is in two acts of eight scenes each, with a prologue that ends with the introduction of a twelve-note 'Screw' theme. Each scene is preceded by a variation on that theme. Several other related leitmotifs occur through the opera. Typically of Britten, the music mixes tonality and atonality.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10, is a work for string orchestra by Benjamin Britten. It was written in 1937 at the request of Boyd Neel, who conducted his orchestra at the premiere of the work at that year's Salzburg Festival. It was the work that brought Britten to international attention.

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34, is a 1945 musical composition by Benjamin Britten with a subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. It was based on the second movement (a rondeau) of the Abdelazer suite. It was originally commissioned for the British educational documentary film called Instruments of the Orchestra released on 29 November 1946, directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent; Sargent also conducted the concert première on 15 October 1946 with the Liverpool Philharmonic in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, England.

A concerto (; plural concertos, or concerti from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typical three-movement structure, a slow movement (e.g., lento or adagio) preceded and followed by fast movements (e.g., presto or allegro), became a standard from the early 18th century. The concerto originated as a genre of vocal music in the late 16th century: the instrumental variant appeared around a century later, when Italians such as Arcangelo Corelli and Giuseppe Torelli started to publish their concertos. A few decades later, Venetian composers, such as Antonio Vivaldi, had written hundreds of violin concertos, while also producing solo concertos for other instruments such as a cello or a woodwind instrument, and concerti grossi for a group of soloists. The first keyboard concertos, such as George Frideric Handel's organ concertos and Johann Sebastian Bach's harpsichord concertos, were written around the same time. In the second half of the 18th century, the piano became the most used keyboard instrument, and composers of the Classical Era such as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven each wrote several piano concertos, and, to a lesser extent, violin concertos, and concertos for other instruments. In the Romantic Era, many composers, including Niccolò Paganini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff, continued to write solo concertos, and, more exceptionally, concertos for more than one instrument; 19th century concertos for instruments other than the piano, violin and cello remained comparatively rare, however. In the first half of the 20th century, concertos were written by, among others, Maurice Ravel, Edward Elgar, Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofiev, George Gershwin, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Joaquín Rodrigo and Béla Bartók, the latter also composing a concerto for orchestra, that is without soloist. During the 20th century concertos appeared by major composers for orchestral instruments which had been neglected in the 19th century such as the clarinet, viola and French horn. In the second half of the 20th century and onwards into the 21st a great many composers have continued to write concertos, including Alfred Schnittke, György Ligeti, Dmitri Shostakovich, Philip Glass and James MacMillan among many others. An interesting feature of this period is the proliferation of concerti for less usual instruments, including orchestral ones such as the double bass (by composers like Eduard Tubin or Peter Maxwell Davies) and cor anglais (like those by MacMillan and Aaron Jay Kernis), but also folk instruments (such as Tubin's concerto for Balalaika, Serry's Concerto in C Major for Bassetti Accordion, or the concertos for Harmonica by Villa-Lobos and Malcolm Arnold), and even Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a concerto for a rock band. Concertos from previous ages have remained a conspicuous part of the repertoire for concert performances and recordings. Less common has been the previously common practice of the composition of concertos by a performer to be performed personally, though the practice has continued via certain composer-performers such as Daniil Trifonov.

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34, is a 1945 musical composition by Benjamin Britten with a subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. It was based on the second movement (a rondeau) of the Abdelazer suite. It was originally commissioned for the British educational documentary film called Instruments of the Orchestra released on 29 November 1946, directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent; Sargent also conducted the concert première on 15 October 1946 with the Liverpool Philharmonic in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, England.