Looking back at George Benjamin's career, one is struck by the coherence of his approach and his absolute loyalty to himself. Thus he arrived at the grand form of opera, the culmination of his development, without ever making the slightest concession or deviating from his path. He was completely himself at his first public appearance at a memorable BBC Proms concert, where his orchestral piece Ringed by the Flat Horizon was listed. How had he attained such mastery in composing, particularly for orchestra, even though this was his first attempt in the field? Where did his style, which was so personal even then, come from? These questions are still difficult to answer forty years later; and one is quickly tempted to simply refer to the genius, to whom Kant ascribes a higher power of intuition.
Benjamin's connection to English music is hard to discern, either to the conservative tradition culminating in Britten, or to the modernist aspirations of the Birtwistle generation. And the influence of Olivier Messiaen, with whom Benjamin worked for two years from the incredibly early age of sixteen, is not felt in his first works either. One rightly wonders: How could a youth who was undoubtedly blinded by the Master he had chosen for himself and to whom he says he owes so much, how could such a youth resist the Master's influence so strongly, without himself to revolt against his music as Boulez had done before him. In the early days there is just as little trace of the current trends of the 1970s: minimalism, new simplicity, spectralism, new complexity, concrete instrumental music, the development of live electronics.
Excerpt from essay (Georges Benjamin)
https://www.evs-musikstiftung.ch/de/preis/george-benjamin-essay
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