Creativity, Productivity, Aging

The Case of Benjamin Britten

Abstract

British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) died at the age of only six- ty-three, but ill health in his last years parachuted him into what he himself saw as older age and its consequences. His story of challenge and adaptation allows us to examine the particular impact of illness and impairment on the role of productivity in definitions of creativity. Composing was the life blood of this prolific artist, known for his work ethic and professionalism. Though he completed only nine independent works after his operation, the last works stand as some of his best creations.

Britten’s sense of selfhood depended to a large extent upon this self-iden- tification as an active working composer. While he retained this to the end, his other life narrative had to be abandoned with his sudden entry into older age: that of being ever youthful. His self-fashioning as youthful and his tastes— in food, humor, habits—were formed in boyhood and never changed. Yet, through his letters and creative work, Britten reconstructed in the face of the challenges of aging that evolving life narrative of himself as the professional “working composer” that enabled his continuing creativity.