Benjamin Britten’s
Song Catalogue
An indexed repository of all Britten’s published songs,
made available for singers and instrumentalists of all abilities
Welcome
Welcome to the Britten song catalogue! Benjamin Britten was one of the most prolific song composers of the twentieth century, setting the words of over 100 poets in his 15 song cycles, 8 volumes of folk songs and many other individual settings.
Explore the huge wealth of vocal music written by the composer from his very early days (some of the songs here were composed when he was no more than 9 years old) through to the final years of his life.
Much of the music was written for his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and there are some truly wonderful cycles for the tenor voice. But there are also many, many other songs for all voice types and for many different types of accompaniment, including piano, harp and guitar.
Click on the links below to find out about the songs, the accompaniments, where to get the music, and much, much more. Happy singing!
Brittens Song Catalogue
You can browse Britten’s Song Catalogue in three different ways. If you know a key word or title from any song cycle, movement or individual song then use the Search too. If you are looking for a range of songs that fit your specific requirements then use the Refine tool where you can select from a number of options. If you just want to view what songs are available within different categories then use the Explore tool.
Which ever way you choose, we hope you find what you’re looking for.
Search
Text based keyword search for matching titles 
Refine
Results based on your selected options
Explore
View every available song, indexed into categories
Search
Type a key word or title into the field below to search any song cycle, movement or individual song.
Refine
If you would like to see a range of songs that meet your specific criteria then select from the options below to see all results that match.
Explore
View all of the available songs by clicking the category you would like to explore
- Fish in the unruffled lakes
- 3 Early Songs
- Quatre chansons françaises
- Tit for Tat
- 6 Early Songs
- Our Hunting Fathers
- Cabaret Songs
- On this Island
- The Red Cockatoo and other songs
- Les Illuminations
- Seven sonnets of Michelangelo
- Ballads from Paul Bunyan
- Serenade
- The holy sonnets of John Donne
- Winter Words
- Three songs from The heart of the matter
- Songs from the Chinese
- Songs and Proverbs of William Blake
- The Poet's Echo
- Who are these children?
- Friday Afternoons
- Two Ballads
- Nocturne
- Evening, morning, night
- Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente
- A charm of lullabies
- A birthday hansel
- A Cradle song: Sleep, beauty bright
- Canticle I My beloved is mine
- Canticle II Abraham and Isaac
- Canticle III Still falls the rain - the raids, 1940, night and dawn
- Canticle IV Journey of the Magi
- Canticle V The death of Saint Narcissus
- Corpus Christi Carol [Arr. Voice and Piano]
- Corpus Christi Carol [Arr. Voice or Unison Voices with Organ]
- Fancie
- May
- Now sleeps the crimson petal
- Phaedra
- The Birds
- The Ship of Rio