Benjamin Britten ~ Composer's Centenary

Celebrating 100 years ago today the birth of Benjamin Britten ~ British Composer, Conductor and Pianist. 

Benjamin was born in Lowestoft on the 22nd November 1913 and was the youngest of four children. His father Robert was a dentist and would not allow a gramophone or radio into the house, but his mother Edith was a talented amateur musician and secretary of the Lowestoft Musical Society who held musical soirees at their house.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin's mother gave him piano lessons and he showed musical talent from an early age. He later studied at the Royal College of Music in London and first came to public attention with a choral work in 1934 with 'A Boy was Born'. Britten leapt to international fame in 1945 with the premier of 'Peter Grimes'.

Peter Pears in 'Peter Grimes'

Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas and established himself as one of the leading 20th Century composers in that genre. 

Britten's other works included, solo vocal, chamber, orchestral, choral, instrumental and film music. He took great interest in writing music for children and wrote 'The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra' in 1945.

'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra' played by the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra

 Britten would often compose with particular performers in mind and his frequent choice was his personal and professional partner, the tenor Peter Pears.

Britten was also a celebrated pianist and conductor who performed many of his own works as well as those of other composers such as Bach's Brandenburg concertos.

Britten and Pears

Together with Peter Pears and Eric Crozier, Benjamin Britten founded the annual Aldeburgh Festival and was responsible for the creation of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1967. In the last year of Britten's life, he was the first composer to be awarded a life Peerage.

Benjamin Britten died on the 4th December 1976 of heart failure, 10 years later his partner Peter Pears rests eternally by his side in the churchyard of St.Peter and St.Paul in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Man's Best Friend

SNOOKS

This memorial was erected

by the people of this borough

to Dr "Robin" PM Acheson

who cared for them 

from 1931 to 1959

and to Dr Nora

his wife

who died 1981

whilst still caring

Whilst walking along the seafront in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, we met Snooks, the beloved pet dog of Doctors Robin and Nora Acheson.

However, this is not the original 'Snooks', unfortunately he was stolen from his plinth in 2003. But he was obviously loved by more than just his owners, as the town had another one made to replace it.

This picture was taken in Februaury and as we have had a particularly cold winter this year, someone had kindly knitted poor Snooks a scarf which was wrapped around his neck. So before I could take this photograph, I had to remove it, and it goes without saying, that I securely replaced it when I was done.

Life Boat Tragedy

The Island of Great Britain ensures that we are never too far from the Sea. Over the years we have relied on its bounty for food and voyaged to brave new worlds with a sense of adventure and discovery.
But the Sea can be an unpredictable force and for those who find themselves in peril upon it, the RNLI ~ Royal National Lifeboat Institute ~ attempts to rescue those unfortunate souls, even when it comes to their own lives being put at risk too.

This is one such occasion........

A Launching of The Aldeburgh

A Lifeboat named 'The Aldeburgh' was said to be unsinkable. However in 1899, during an attempt to rescue another vessel, the lifeboat capsized as she was struck broadside by two huge waves. 12 of the 18 man crew were able to make it to shore, but 6 men were trapped beneath the upturned boat.

As The Aldeburgh came ashore, desperate efforts were made to release the men, a hole was cut into the upturned hull, however the buoyancy tanks could not be penetrated and prevented them from releasing the trapped men until the tide went out, when rescuers were finally able to raise the vessel. Tragically, by that time all of them had died. A seventh crew member, also died of his injuries later.

The rectangular blocks that surround the Lifebelt, are the cork floats that were worn by the Lifeboat men as an early form of Lifevest. 

In Loving Memory of

James Miller Ward

aged 21

The Lord hath need of him

~ 

In Loving Memory of

Allan Arthur Easter

aged 28

God is Love

~

In Loving Memory of

Herbert William Downing

aged 23

In the Midst of Life we are in Death

~In Loving Memory of

Walter George Ward

aged 33

Thy Will Be Done

~

In Loving Memory of

John Butcher

aged 52

Death is Swallowed up in Victory

~In Loving Memory of

Charles Crisp

aged 51

Gone but Not Forgotten

~

In Loving Memory of

Thomas Morris

aged 36

I will Trust and Not be Afraid

For the full newspaper reports of the tragedy, as written by The Evening Star and Daily Herald, please click on the bold type link below. 
More Details on The Aldeburgh






   

Unknown ~ Lost, But Not Forgotten

I often shed tears when I discover something particularly heart-breaking, as I make my way through the stones in the Sleeping Gardens of Churchyards and Cemeteries.

A Seaman

Of The Great War

Royal Navy

7th November 1914

Known Unto God

A Sailor

Of The Second World War

Merchant Navy

23rd December 1939

Known Unto God

In the Churchyard of St. Peter and Paul in Aldeburgh in Suffolk, I discovered the War graves of these young men who had laid down their lives for their Country. Both of them a Mother's Son, whose loved ones and friends, had surely grieved for, and missed them. For they never knew what had become of them, or even where they were finally laid to rest.

I trust they are now Re-united.

Count Maurice Coreth ~ Modern Day Adventurer

Count Maurice Coreth

Born 24th August 1929 ~ Died 11th February 1997

Life is Eternal

and love is immortal

and death is only an horizon

and an horizon is nothing

save the limit of our sight.

The bronze carving of Elephants under an African Acacia tree, marks the resting place of Count Maurice Coreth and was created by his son the sculptor Mark Coreth. 

Maurice Coreth was an exuberant sportsman and swashbuckling adventurer whose love of big-game hunting led him to organize an acclaimed campaign to save the African Rhinoceros from extinction. He died in England on Februaury 11th 1997.

He was 67 and the founder of Rhino Rescue, an organization credited with reversing an alarming decline in the animal's population.

According to The Times of London, the cause of death was an aortic aneurysm.

To say that Count Maurice Rudolf Coreth von und zu Coredo und Starkenberg was imbued with a spirit of adventure would be something of an understatement.
Whether it came from his aristocratic Austrian father, chamberlain to the last Emperor of Austria, or from his sporting English mother, whose uncle had been Master of the Wilton fox hunt, it surfaced early.

African Elephants under an Acacia tree

Count Coreth, who was born in Austria in 1929 and taken to England in 1936 to escape the Nazis, was a 10-year-old boarding school student when the German invasion of Poland set off World War II. That prompted the boy to steal his headmaster's bicycle and pedal off with a friend to enlist in the British Army.

After an overnight stay in a chicken coop, the boys arrived at the enlistment office, where a bemused recruiter asked the young count just which regiment he wanted to join. ''The Blues, sir,'' he replied, referring to a cavalry unit. ''I am very fond of ponies.''

Within a decade he was a master fox-hunter, show-jumper and steeplechase rider. Although he broke his back in a fall, he became Master of the Wilton at 21, living happily above the kennels, lulled to sleep, he liked to recall, by the contented ''singing'' of the hounds.

Although he had no experience with big game, when a friend who was an official in Sierra Leone invited him to go to Africa to shoot marauding elephants, he accepted. He soon became such a recognized expert that he was the first amateur to be given honorary membership in the East African Professional Hunters Association.

Settling on a farm in Kenya, the Count spent the better part of a decade riding horses (he won the Kenyan Grand National) and hunting big game. But when he had to give up his farm after Kenya gained independence in 1963, he left Africa and sought adventure on the high seas, typically without any experience.

After buying a 50-foot ketch and acquiring a rudimentary knowledge of navigation from a night-school course, he set sail from Britain for Kenya, by way of Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, blithely reassuring friends that the crossing would give him a chance to hone his skills.

See the Coronet in the tree above the Elephants heads

Despite his peripatetic life, he found time to marry and raise a family his wife, Jenny, three sons and a daughter.
Settling in Yoxford in Suffolk, he attended meetings of a group of former big-game hunters. A 1985 lecture on the plight of the Kenyan black rhinoceros, which had declined from 20,000 to 300 in 15 years, galvanized him. Within months he had established Rhino Rescue.


A charming raconteur whose life of derring-do had given him a fund of compelling stories, Count Coreth mastered the persuasive art of fund-raising as quickly and as well as he had his previous endeavors, soon enlisting the support of celebrities like Prince Philip, Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands and Jimmy Stewart.
Largely as a result of his efforts, a game preserve for rhinos was established in Kenya and tough new anti-poaching operations were established in Zimbabwe and Namibia.

On journeys to Kenya in connection with his work, Count Coreth was again in his element, a blazing campfire illuminating his face, lions bellowing in the distance, a three-course meal in preparation in the mess tent, a large whisky in his hand and yet another story on his lips, perhaps the one about the dicey little incident in East Africa that awakened his interest in the rhinoceros.

''A great black rhino chased me up a small tree and poked his horn literally inches from my behind,'' he would say, relishing the oft-told tale. As his listeners pictured him there, a slip away from certain death, he would take a long drink from his glass, a man who sought combat at 10, defied death on horseback at 15, faced charging elephants at 25, challenged the raging South Atlantic unprepared at 35 and later sailed alone into the teeth of pirates. 

''So what did you do?'' he would be asked.
"I simply crossed my legs,'' he'd say, ''and thought of Ginger Rogers.''


Story from the New York Times