Fisher on the shingle beach in Aldeburgh, Suffolk feeding the gulls with the remains of the day

gulls squawk
shingles hush
concert for Britten

for Alan and Jack

The English composer, conductor and pianist Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976) was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk and lived for more than 20 years in Aldeburgh, 56 miles south on the coast. Britten was a co-founder of The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts. When things got to busy for Britten in Aldeburgh he fled to compose in his little cottage in Horham, 25 miles inland. East Anglia was a very important source of inspiration for Britten.

„Suffolk, with its rolling, intimate countryside; its heavenly Gothic churches, big and small; its marshes, with those wild sea-birds; its grand ports and its little fishing villages. I am firmly rooted in this glorious county,” said Britten in 1951. (Source BBC)