Benjamin Britten

A popular British composer of operas, such as Peter Grimes (1941), and most other musical forms, including choral and orchestral music and solo vocal music. Several of Britten's works, including "A Ceremony of Carols," are performed on a seasonal schedule. Britten has also achieved renown as an opera composer, using themes from American, Japanese, and British cultures. He is equally famous for his vocal music, whose aesthetics of matching word and music showed the influences of Auden and Isherwood. As a conscientious objector, he spoke eloquently against militarism in his War Requiem.