In offering a context for Benjamin Britten, we approached his milieu from vantage points that could adequately represent the fullness of his position in England and in the twentieth century. We were rewarded by the richness of Britten’s engagement with his contemporaries in music, art, literature, and film, British musical institutions, royal and governmental entities, and the church. Equally, his ground-breaking projects that intersected across diverse entities and explored his philosophical and ideological tenets provided food for thought.

This chapter examines the early intersections between Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, well before their American years (1939–42) and the official beginning of their romantic relationship, as well as the tenor’s early career. Pears’s earliest professional singing engagements began with the BBC Wireless Chorus, in the newly established Wireless Octet (renamed the BBC Singers B in March 1935) intended to function alongside the BBC Singers and take part in BBC Chorus performances and Promenade Concerts; he remained in these various ensembles until October 1937. In both late 1936 and late 1937, Pears travelled to the United States on tours with the New English Singers. In April 1939, Pears travelled to the United States via Canada with Britten. Pears’s career in the United States is explored, but more significant is his vocal study with Clytie Mundy, to whom he attributed the greatest growth in his emerging solo voice. On their return to wartime England, Pears and Britten registered for conscientious objector status. At the same time, Pears enjoyed considerable success as a leading soloist on the operatic (and touring) stage and in recital and BBC broadcasts with Britten.

Britten and Pears regarded their relationship as a ‘marriage’ and described it as such as early as 1943. Although comfortable with using this term privately, they were aware of the legal prohibition and social stigma that prevented them from proclaiming their partnership openly. And yet throughout their nearly forty years together they made no immediate secret among their circle of friends and relatives about living their lives as a couple. As this essay suggests, theirs was a special case, in that they lived their relationship with relative openness among those who knew them. Works such as the Michelangelo Sonnets and Canticle I were a declaration of sorts about the nature of their relationship, although it was not until after the composer’s death that Pears commented overtly in an interview about their love for one another. A decade after the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the UK, and with social discussion on homosexuality widening, Pears believed that his and Britten’s marriage need no longer be regarded as a secret.

From mid-1943 until late-1950, Eric Crozier was an essential asset to Britten’s industry. His work alongside director and radio producer Tyrone Guthrie not only introduced Crozier to the Old Vic in London, but to the BBC as well, where Guthrie also worked. Joan Cross invited Crozier and Guthrie to each direct two different productions at Sadler’s Wells in 1943. Crozier directed and produced Britten’s first two operas, Peter Grimes in 1945 at Sadler’s Wells, and The Rape of Lucretia in 1946 for the short-lived Glyndebourne English Opera Company. Crozier wrote the librettos for Albert Herring and the children’s entertainment Let’s Make an Opera (with its central opera, The Little Sweep), in addition to writing the text for the cantata Saint Nicolas, and with E. M. Forster, he was co-librettist for Billy Budd. Britten, Crozier, and designer John Piper founded the English Opera Group. The endeavour was based on ‘the Britten–Crozier doctrine’ that sought the group’s own autonomy and ultimately a home to produce such works. That home was largely realised in the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts in 1948, for which Crozier was a founder and co-artistic director.

This essay provides insight into some of the content of Britten and Pears’s book collection. It draws attention to why certain volumes were used as the source material for various musical works. The essay also emphasises how friendships with writers, such as art historian Kenneth Clark and novelist and critic E. M. Forster, influenced key aspects of Britten and Pears’s lives: their passion for fine art and their faith in pacifism. This survey of the collection underlines why their books are often useful bases of information for biographical background about both musicians. Their library tells us stories about their childhoods and discloses their interests in topics ranging from classic English literature to gardening to the developing genre of gay fiction. Additionally, it adds context to fundamental aspects of their lives, such as their anti-war stance and their enduring commitment to one another.

Pears was innately skilled at the creation of new song works, making him the ideal collaborator for composers and clearly an inspirational artist for whom to write. Yet there was something more. With Pears there was the concomitant presence of all of the particles inherent to the creative process. He was a prolific reader and therefore the ideal text interpreter, with an extensive range of colours and dynamics that were technically available in his voice paired with his seemingly boundless artistic instincts. This tenor’s voice was not universally admired. Yet Pears’s recordings of Britten set the gold standard against which all successive generations of Britten interpreters would need to measure up – defining if not implying an authoritative version for phrasing, dynamics, vocal colours, textual inflection, and tempi, at the very least. This chapter explores the first performances of Pears’s association with dozens of living composers, works for unaccompanied tenor, and combinations of tenor and piano, guitar, harp, and chamber orchestra. The chapter concludes with a table of all of the tenor’s premieres.