Peter Pears
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears was an English tenor. His career was closely associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, his personal and professional partner for nearly forty years.
Pears' musical career started slowly. He was at first unsure whether to concentrate on playing piano and organ, or singing; it was not until he met Britten in 1937 that he threw himself wholeheartedly into singing. Once he and Britten were established as a partnership, the composer wrote many concert and operatic works with Pears's voice in mind, and the singer played roles in more than ten operas by Britten. In the concert hall, Pears and Britten were celebrated recitalists, known in particular for their performances of lieder by Schubert and Schumann. Together they recorded most of the works written for Pears by Britten, as well as a wide range of music by other composers. Working with other musicians, Pears sang an extensive repertoire of music from four centuries, from the Tudor period to the most modern times.
With Britten, Pears was a co-founder of the Aldeburgh Festival in 1947 and the Britten-Pears School in 1972. After Britten died in 1976, Pears remained an active participant in the festival and the school, where he was director of singing. His voice had a distinctive timbre, not to all tastes; however, critics recognised its uniqueness and ability to express atmosphere and nuance.
Life and career
Early years
Pears was born in Farnham, Surrey, the youngest of the seven children of Arthur Grant Pears and his wife, Jessie Elizabeth de Visme, daughter of Richard Luard. Arthur Pears was a civil engineer and successful businessman, who spent much of his time working overseas. The biographers Christopher Headington and Donald Mitchell both remark on two contrasting strands in Pears's heredity: the Luard family was notable for its naval and military connections, and on his father's side there was a strong religious tradition, both Anglican and Quaker, with Elizabeth Fry counted among his ancestors. Mitchell comments that Pears's lifelong pacifism stemmed from the Quaker side of the family, and adds, "There was indeed something of the patrician Quaker in his looks, manners, and deeds. His habitual charm and courtesy rarely deserted him."Although his father, and sometimes his mother, were absent abroad for long periods, Pears evidently had a happy childhood. He enjoyed his schooldays at his prep school, The Grange, and his public school, Lancing College, which he attended from 1923 to 1928. He showed considerable talent for music, both as a pianist and as a singer, playing leading roles in school productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. He was a capable and enthusiastic cricketer, and remembered all his life the pride he felt in scoring 81 not out in a trial match against Surrey at the Oval. Lancing had a strong Christian tradition; while there, Pears felt a sense of vocation for the priesthood, but increasingly found this impossible to reconcile with his growing awareness of his homosexuality.
In 1928 Pears went to Keble College, Oxford, to study music. He was not at this stage sure whether his musical future was as a singer or as player; during his brief time at the university, he was appointed temporary assistant organist at Hertford College, which was useful practical experience. Headington comments that a musical conservatoire such as the Royal College of Music would have suited Pears better than the Oxford course, but at the time it was seen as a natural progression for an English public school boy to continue his education at Oxford or Cambridge. In the event Pears did not take to Oxford's academic regime, which required him to study a range of subjects before specialising in music. He failed the first-year examinations and though he was entitled to resit them he decided against doing so, and went down from Oxford.
Teacher and singer
With no clear idea of his future, Pears took a teaching post at his old preparatory school in 1929. Among his dearest friends were the twins Peter Burra and Nell Burra; Peter was a close friend from Lancing days, and Nell looked on Pears as almost another brother. She urged him not to drift into a lifetime of schoolmastering, and he concluded that his future lay in singing. He later said that it was hearing the tenor Steuart Wilson singing the Evangelist in J S Bach's St Matthew Passion that "started me off". He successfully applied for admission to the Royal College of Music in London, first as a part-time student and then, having been awarded a scholarship, studying full-time from 1934. He shared an apartment with Trevor Harvey and Basil Douglas. He appeared in student productions of opera, finding himself wholly at home on the stage, and learning from the experience of singing Delius under Sir Thomas Beecham and roles in works by Mozart and Puccini. But, as at Oxford, he failed to complete the course. He chafed at subsisting on a student's limited funds, and wanted a good, steady income. He auditioned for the BBC and was given a two-year contract as a member of the BBC Singers, a small vocal ensemble.In 1936 Pears made his first recording as a soloist, in Peter Warlock's "Corpus Christi Carol". Headington comments on "a thoughtful word delivery and a sensitive moulding of quietly flowing phrases, but also a certain whiteness of tone... a kind of English cathedral sound." In the same year, after Peter Burra was given a long-term loan of a cottage on Bucklebury Common, Berkshire, Pears began to stay with him regularly, and it was through Burra that he got to be friendly with the rising young composer Benjamin Britten, who had become another good friend of Burra's. In 1937 Burra was killed in an air crash. Pears and Britten volunteered to clear his possessions from the cottage, and their daily contact during this period cemented their friendship. Pears quickly became Britten's musical inspiration and close friend. Britten's first work for him was composed within weeks of their meeting, a setting of Emily Brontë's poem, "A thousand gleaming fires", for tenor and strings.
Up to this point Pears had not pursued his career or his vocal training with any great determination. With the stimulus of Britten's music written for him he became much more focused. After their deaths John Amis wrote that Britten would have become a great composer without Pears, but that Pears would probably not have become a great singer without Britten. Pears took vocal lessons from the eminent Lieder singer Elena Gerhardt, but they were of limited help to him, and it was some time before he found a wholly suitable voice coach. In 1938 he had his first professional experience of opera, as an understudy and member of the chorus at Glyndebourne.
America and wartime
In April 1939, Pears accompanied Britten as he sailed to North America, going first to Canada and then to New York. Their relationship ceased to be platonic, and from then until Britten's death they were partners in both their professional and personal lives. When the Second World War began, Britten and Pears turned for advice to the British embassy in Washington and were told that they should remain in the US as artistic ambassadors. Pears was inclined to disregard the advice and go back to England; Britten also felt the urge to return, but accepted the embassy's counsel and persuaded Pears to do the same.In 1940 Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first of many song cycles for Pears. The composer and biographer David Matthews described the cycle as Britten's "declaration of love for Peter". The partners made a private recording of the work in New York shortly after it was completed, but the public premiere was not for a further two years. In 1941, spurred by a magazine article by E M Forster about the Suffolk poet George Crabbe, Pears bought Britten a copy of Crabbe's collection of narrative poems The Borough. He suggested to Britten that the section about the fisherman Peter Grimes would make a good subject for an opera. Britten agreed, and, a Suffolk man himself, was struck with a deep nostalgia by the poem. He later said, "I suddenly realised where I belonged and what I lacked". He and Pears began to plan their return to England. They made the perilous Atlantic crossing in April 1942.
Having arrived in England, Britten and Pears successfully applied for official recognition as conscientious objectors, Pears's application running much more smoothly than Britten's. One of their early performances together after their return was the public premiere of the Michelangelo cycle at the Wigmore Hall in September 1942. Their recording of the work for HMV was released in February 1943. Britten was by now so obsessed with the sound of Pears's "heavenly voice" that he went out of his way to discourage sopranos from singing his earlier song cycle, Les Illuminations, though it had been specifically composed for the soprano voice. For Pears, Britten composed one of his most popular works, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.
In early 1943 Pears joined Sadler's Wells Opera Company. His roles included Tamino in The Magic Flute, Rodolfo in La bohème, the Duke in Rigoletto, Alfredo in La traviata, Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, Ferrando in Così fan tutte and Vašek in The Bartered Bride. His growing operatic experience and expertise affected the composition of Britten's opera Peter Grimes. The composer had envisaged the central figure, based on Crabbe's brutal fisherman, as a villainous baritone, but he began to rethink the character as "neither a hero nor a villain" and not a baritone but a tenor, written to fit Pears's voice. In January 1944 Britten and Pears began a long association with the Decca Record Company, recording four of Britten's folk song arrangements. In May of the same year, with Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel Orchestra, they recorded the Serenade.