THAT BENJAMIN BRITTEN already possessed in his early twenties a most astonishing technical assurance has never been in doubt; nor that he commanded a range of feeling and a stylistic integrity which proclaimed a uniquely precocious maturity. So much was evident from early published scores like the Sinfonietta, Phantasy for oboe quartet, Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, and Our Hunting Fathers. The route by which he had reached this early maturity, however, was not generally known until comparatively recently, and the book which was for decades to remain the most reliable and perceptive guide to his music—the symposium of 1952 edited by Donald Mitchell and Hans Keller—said little about the pre-opus 1 works, or about influences.