“November 22, ” by Rick Sanders

English: Benjamin Britten memorial window … … designed by John Piper, on the north wall of SS Peter & Paul, Aldeburgh. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1913, Benjamin Britten, the English composer, conductor, and pianist is born. He dies in 1976. From Wikipedia we get the following:

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM, CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945).

Whittall believes that one reason for Britten’s enduring popularity is the “progressive conservatism” of his music. He generally avoided the avant-garde, and did not challenge the conventions in the way that contemporaries such as Tippett did.Perhaps, says Brett, “the tide that swept away serialism, atonality and most forms of musical modernism and brought in neo-Romanticism, minimalism and other modes of expression involved with tonality carried with it renewed interest in composers who had been out of step with the times”.Britten defined his mission as a composer in very simple terms: composers should aim at “pleasing people today as seriously as we can”.