Annual music festival inaugurated in 1948 and held each June. It was established around Benjamin Britten and based on the small Suffolk coastal town where he lived from 1947 (and which is the historical setting for his Peter Grimes). Britten’s taste, imagination and personality helped to give it a distinctive character. His own music has always formed an important but not preponderant element in the programmes, which regularly include new and recent works by other British and occasionaly foreign composers. A variety of greater and lesser classics is customarily performed by leading British and foreign artists.
The festival was born from a suggestion by Peter Pears and set out to provide a focus of cultural events in East Anglia. It also secured an outlet for productions by the English Opera Group, which Britten and Pears helped to found. Britten and Pears were named as artistic directors in 1955. The team was later expanded to a panel which included, at various times, Imogen Holst, Philip Ledger, Colin Graham, Steuart Bedford, Murray Perahia, Mstislav Rostropovich and Oliver Knussen; since 1987 Bedford and Knussen have been artistic directors. The English Chamber Orchestra has generally served as resident festival ensemble since 1961.
Pears's original idea of ‘concerts by friends’ has continued to be the basis of festival programmes. Britten and Pears regularly performed at the festival, the former often appearing as conductor as well as pianist. They collaborated with a number of visiting foreign composers, including Copland, Henze, Kodály, Lutosławski and Poulenc. Fruitful friendships were established in the early years with such artists as Kathleen Ferrier and Dennis Brain; later with Julian Bream, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and others, and especially with a group of Soviet artists including Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya, Sviatoslav Richter and Shostakovich (whose Symphony no.14, dedicated to Britten, had its British première at the 1970 festival). During the 1980s a composers-in-residence scheme was introduced; the composers have included Takemitsu, Dutilleux, Lukas Foss, Elliott Carter and Magnus Lindberg.
For several years the festival’s scope was restricted by the available buildings. Even opera productions were confined to the Jubilee Hall which, after extensions in 1960, seats about 350. Besides Aldeburgh parish church the festival scheme has at different times been extended to neighbouring churches at Blythburgh, Framlingham and Orford (notably for the premières of Britten's church parables) and to Ely Cathedral. When a 19th-century malthouse in the nearby village of Snape became available, it was converted into a multi-purpose concert hall and open-stage auditorium seating nearly 800. Snape Maltings, formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1967, was destroyed by fire on the opening night (7 June) of the 1969 festival; it was rebuilt and reopened in time for the following festival on 5 June 1970. From 1977 its buildings also housed a School of Advanced Musical Studies.
The fine acoustic qualities of the Maltings have encouraged its additional use as a studio for television, radio and recording, and its availability enabled festivals to be planned on a larger scale than previously; but rising costs meant that, from 1982, performances were presented under professional direction with students from the courses at the School of Advanced Musical Studies. The operas have included works by Britten and other composers as well as the premières of John Tavener's Mary of Egypt (1992) and The Wildman by Nicola LeFanu (1995). In 1972 a modification of festival policy led to events being organized at different times of the year, rather than concentrated in a single summer period; these have included concerts at Easter, a Snape Maltings Proms season, an October Britten festival and, in 1994, an Early Music Festival directed by Philip Pickett.
The following works by Britten were given first performances at the festivals noted: Saint Nicolas (1948); Let’s Make an Opera, incorporating The Little Sweep (1949); Lachrymae for viola and piano, and a new realization of The Beggar’s Opera (1950); Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe (1951); a Variation on ‘Sellenger’s Round’ (1953); Noye’s Fludde (1957); Songs from the Chinese (1958); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960); Cello Sonata (1961); Curlew River, and Nocturnal for guitar (1964); Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, Suite no.1 for Solo Cello and Gemini Variations (1965); The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966); The Golden Vanity and Overture, The Building of the House (1967); The Prodigal Son and Suite no.2 for Solo Cello (1968); Suite in C for Harp (1969); Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi (1971); Death in Venice (1973); String Quartet (1975); Cantata, Phaedra, and the first British production of Paul Bunyan (1976).
I. Holst: Britten (London, 1966; 3/1980)
Opera (1967), festival issue, 7–20 [incl. interview with Britten; contributions by J. Cross, M. Harewood, I. Holst, P. Pears]
E.W. White: Benjamin Britten: his Life and Operas (London, 1970; rev. 2/1983 by J. Evans)
R. Blythe, ed.: Aldeburgh Anthology (London, 1972)
A. Kendall: Benjamin Britten (London, 1973)
M. Kennedy: Britten (London, 1981/R)
H. Carpenter: Benjamin Britten, a Biography (New York, 1992)
C. Headington: Peter Pears, a Biography (London, 1992)
NOËL GOODWIN