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 Some 100,000 schoolchildren singing in locations across
Britain were hooked up via the Web with performances of the same
songs by children who kicked off the birthday celebration in
Melbourne, Australia, at 0300 GMT and were to bring down the
curtain in Santa Monica, California, at 2200 GMT.
"One of the things I liked about the songs is they're slightly
old-fashioned, so it makes me feel sort of special in a way, I
don't know why," said Ellie Robertson, 9, one of the
participating singers from nearby Ixworth Primary School.
The various versions of the cycle were posted on a website set
up by Aldeburgh Music, which runs the Snape Maltings hall
Britten founded. The BBC will play Britten's music live and from
recordings all weekend on its classical music station Radio 3.
Britten died in 1976, a few years after a failed heart
operation, and for many composers that might mark the beginning
of their reputation fading.
But not for this native of Suffolk, where he built the Snape
Maltings concert hall and is buried in nearby Aldeburgh beside
his lifelong partner, the tenor Peter Pears.
After a recent performance in London's cavernous Royal Albert
Hall of Britten's pacifist "War Requiem," written for symphony
orchestra, three soloists, a boy's choir and a 250-person choir,
conductor Semyon Bychkov said the work still had the impact of
its premiere half a century ago.
"It will never lose its power," Bychkov told Reuters.
WIDE APPEAL
Britten was nothing if not prolific, having composed more than
1,000 pieces in his lifetime.
Some of those, including his operas "Peter Grimes", "Billy Budd"
and "Death in Venice", the "War Requiem", his works for cello
and his "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" are mainstays of
opera houses and concert halls around the world and if anything
have become more popular since his death.
What performers and musicians say they find special about his
music is that it appeals to people across the spectrum — from
those looking for music that runs deep but also to audiences
that can take it or leave it.
"Britten writes from the heart, and if you play him from the
heart and you set it up right with the audience, it goes right
to their hearts," British cellist Matthew Barley said.
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 Barley has been touring Britain since January,
playing Britten's Third Cello Suite in 100 concerts and workshops at
locations ranging from a parlor in Sheffield to a lighthouse on the
Dover cliffs to inmates of a prison in Glasgow.
"You could cynically say they were a captive audience but I do know
from warders there that if they have a performer they don't like
they make sure they heckle them — and they were absolutely silent,"
Barley said.
Britten is, in effect, a "crossover" composer who was completely in
tune with the turbulent changes in music during the 20th century but
at the same time attached to the tried and trusted values of
tonality and key.
"I would say that Britten's music has a much more vivid emotional
range than a lot of music that is popular," said Philip Rupprecht,
author of "Rethinking Britten". "It's popular music but it's not
easy music. It digs very deep."
He also was a perfectionist who, according to Paul
Kildea, a conductor and writer of another recent Britten biography,
helped transform musical culture in Britain from "good enough" to
requiring the same high standards that were in place in the United
States and continental Europe during his lifetime.
"He was what I call the 20th century's preeminent musician. He was
the absolutely consummate musician and people always balk at that
and say what about (Igor) Stravinsky. But I say Britten was a much
better performer than Stravinsky, even though Stravinsky's music
attempts things that were more complex."
Britten was homosexual at a time when to be so was illegal, and he
also had a strong affection for children, especially pre-pubescent
boys.
One of the boy sopranos who sang in Britten's chamber opera "The
Turn of the Screw" has described sleeping in the same bed with
Britten — but of the composer never having touched him.
"There are a lot of middle-aged men now who say he was nothing but
like a wonderful uncle," said Colin Matthews, a conductor and
composer who worked with Britten in the last years of his life.
"I think Britten had a sexual attraction, but he kept it completely
controlled."
(Editing by Gareth Jones)
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