Composer
Benjamin Britten
A 20th-century modernist best known for a piece written to teach children the orchestra.
Benjamin Britten was the leading British composer of the mid-20th century, working across opera, orchestral music, and choral music with a distinctly modern harmonic language that never fully abandoned melody and clear structure the way some of his continental contemporaries did.
His most widely known work by far is The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, commissioned for an educational documentary film and built specifically to introduce every section of the orchestra in turn — strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion — each playing a theme by Purcell before the whole orchestra combines it into a closing fugue. It remains one of the most effective, widely used pieces for teaching listeners of any age how to identify individual instruments by ear.
Beyond that famous introduction to the orchestra, Britten was also a major opera composer, with works like Peter Grimes helping revive serious English-language opera as a living tradition in the 20th century.
Where to start listening: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra remains one of the best possible companions to this site's own Instruments section.