Benjamin Britten in the context of "Royal College of Music"

Edward Morgan Forster OM CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as biographies and pageant plays. His short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) is often viewed as the beginning of technological dystopian fiction. He also co-authored the libretto to Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd (1951). Many of his novels examine class differences and hypocrisy. His views as a humanist are at the heart of his work.

Considered one of the most successful of the Edwardian era English novelists, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 22 separate years. He declined a knighthood in 1949, though he received the Order of Merit upon his 90th birthday. Forster was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1953, and in 1961 he was one of the first five authors named as a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

Aldeburgh (/ˈɔːlbərə/ AWL-bər-ə) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England, north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the international Aldeburgh Festival of arts at nearby Snape Maltings, which was founded by Britten in 1948. It also hosts an annual poetry festival and several food festivals and other events.

Aldeburgh, as a port, gained borough status in 1529 under Henry VIII. Its historic buildings include a 16th-century moot hall and a Napoleonic-era Martello Tower. A third of its housing consists of second homes. Visitors are drawn to its Blue Flag beach and fisherman huts, where fresh fish is sold, to Aldeburgh Yacht Club and to its cultural offerings. Two family-run fish and chip shops have been rated among the country's best. The independent Aldeburgh bookshop has been in business for more than seventy years, is locally thought to have been the site of the birthplace of George Crabbe (1754–1832) and has organised the annual Aldeburgh Literary Festival since 2002.

Billy Budd, Op. 50, is an opera by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by the novelist E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, based on the novella Billy Budd by Herman Melville. Originally in four acts, the opera received its premiere at the Royal Opera House (ROH), London, on 1 December 1951. Britten later revised the work into a two-act opera, with a prologue and an epilogue. The revised version received its first performance at the ROH, Covent Garden, London, on 9 January 1964.

Britten Pears Arts is a large music education organisation based in Suffolk, England. It aims to continue the legacy of composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, singer Peter Pears, and to promote the enjoyment and experience of music for all. It is a registered charity.

The charity manages two historic locations on the Suffolk coast: Snape Maltings Concert Hall, a converted Victorian malting building on the edge of the River Alde in the village of Snape, Suffolk, and The Red House, the former home of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. The organisation was founded by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1947 as an organisation to present the first Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts in 1948.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (short: Siemens Music Prize, German: Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis) is an annual music prize given by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts) on behalf of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung (de) (Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation), established in 1972. The foundation was established by Ernst von Siemens (1903–1990) and promotes contemporary music. The prize honors a composer, performer, or musicologist who has made a distinguished contribution to the world of music. In addition to the main prize, other prizes are also given. The total prize money given is currently €3.5 million, with the winner of the main prize receiving €250,000. The prize is sometimes known as "the Nobel Prize of music".

Smaller awards are called "Förderpreis" (encouragement award). "Komponisten-Förderpreise" ("Composer Prizes") are given to young composers for one of their works. "Förderprojekte" ("Grant-in-Aid Projects") support music festivals, concerts, musical institutions, and young musicians.

A choral symphony is a musical composition for orchestra, choir, and sometimes solo vocalists that, in its internal workings and overall musical architecture, adheres broadly to symphonic musical form. The term "choral symphony" in this context was coined by Hector Berlioz when he described his Roméo et Juliette as such in his five-paragraph introduction to that work. The direct antecedent for the choral symphony is Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Beethoven's Ninth incorporates part of the ode An die Freude ("Ode to Joy"), a poem by Friedrich Schiller, with text sung by soloists and chorus in the last movement. It is the first example of a major composer's use of the human voice on the same level as instruments in a symphony.

A few 19th-century composers, notably Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt, followed Beethoven in producing choral symphonic works. Notable works in the genre were produced in the 20th century by Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich, among others. The final years of the 20th century and the opening of the 21st century have seen several new works in this genre, among them compositions by Mikis Theodorakis, Peter Maxwell Davies, Tan Dun, Philip Glass, Hans Werner Henze, Krzysztof Penderecki, William Bolcom and Robert Strassburg.

Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's Cardillac (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergolesi's La serva padrona (1733) are sometimes known as chamber operas.

Other 20th-century examples include Gustav Holst's Savitri (1916). Benjamin Britten wrote works in this category in the 1940s when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. The Rape of Lucretia (1946) was his first example in the genre, and Britten followed it with Albert Herring (1947), The Turn of the Screw (1954) and Curlew River (1964). Other composers, including Hans Werner Henze, Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès, George Benjamin, William Walton, and Philip Glass have written in this genre.

Ronald Frederick Henry Duncan (6 August 1914 – 3 June 1982) was an English writer, poet and playwright of German descent, now best known for his poem The Horse and for preparing the libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia, first performed in 1946.

Hans Wild (1912–1969) was a British photographer who worked for Life magazine from 1938 to 1946. Some of his best known work appeared on the cover of Life including a photo of historian Charles Seltman in 1943 and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill while painting with an easel in 1946.

Wild became a professional photographer at 24 years old in 1936, and worked for Life in various capacities in the United States, England, France and Italy. He took numerous photos documenting World War II, as well as portraits of famous people including John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Vivien Leigh, Mary Welsh Hemingway, Bing Crosby, actress Pat Kirkwood, the painter Thomas Hart Benton, E. V. Knox editor of Punch, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Rupert Neve, fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, Laurence Olivier, Daphne du Maurier, C. S. Lewis, Alexander Fleming, Chinese Ambassador Guo Taiqi, Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, Benjamin Britten, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and American diplomats Jefferson Caffery and Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, Jr., Louis II, Prince of Monaco with Ghislaine Dommanget and Rainier III, Robert Anthony Eden, David Lloyd George, Thomas Beecham.