Benjamin Britten interview, 1968

Britten in 1968 talking to a CBC interviewer about how he sees his role as a composer. He explains that his approach is always to write for a person or occasion and that he can’t write in a vacuum, isolated from the rest of humanity in an ivory tower and detached from the treatment and reception of his works by musicians and the general public. He speaks of how the artist must struggle – that great works come from labour and strife and not from an easy life. Perhaps most entertaining and beguiling are his thoughts and views on the Beatles, also expressed here ...