Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, Op. 60, was composed in August–September 1958 for tenor voice, seven obbligato instruments, and string orchestra. It lasts about 25 minutes, and its first performance was given on 16 October 1958 at Leeds Town Hall by Peter Pears with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Rudolf Schwarz.

The work sets texts by Shelley, Tennyson, Coleridge, Middleton, Wordsworth, Owen, Keats, and Shakespeare, in German translation by Ludwig Landgraf. Britten described it in relation to his earlier Serenade: the Nocturne revisits the same nocturnal world, but the tenor is paired with seven solo instruments, each giving a different colour to a different setting.

The cycle is carefully shaped so that the individual songs remain distinct while still forming a single arc. Britten keeps the full forces together only in the final song, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43, “When most I wink,” which gives the work a focused ending after a series of varied, closely characterised settings.