William Alwyn

A Research and Information Guide

John C. Dressler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136660023
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

William Alwyn: A Research and Information Guide is a catalogue, discography and annotated bibliography of the nearly 500 works of this twentieth-century British composer. It will be invaluable to twentieth-century British composer researchers and aficionados, music history courses, and film music courses.

I

Biography

Biographical Sketch

Andrew Knowles

William Alwyn (1905–1985)

William Alwyn was born in Northampton on 7 November 1905, and died in Southwold, Suffolk on 11 September 1985 just two months short of what would have been his eightieth birthday. He began his musical studies in 1920 aged just fifteen studying flute, piano, and composition at London’s Royal Academy of Music (RAM) where, in 1926, at the age of twenty-one, he was appointed Professor of Composition, a position that he was to retain for almost thirty years. During his long and prolific career Alwyn produced close to three hundred compositions that include music in the majority of genres: opera, ballet, orchestral, chamber, instrumental, and song. His major orchestral works include five symphonies, concertos for flute, oboe, violin, harp, and piano (two), a Sinfonietta for string orchestra, and three concerti grossi. In addition to this Alwyn contributed approximately two hundred scores for the cinema, seventy of which are feature films with the remainder being documentaries. He began his career in the documentary movement in 1936 and along with fellow British composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) became somewhat of a pioneer in this medium. In 1941 he wrote his first feature length score for Penn of Pennsylvania. Other notable film scores include the following: Desert Victory, The Way Ahead, The True Glory, Odd Man Out, The History Of Mr. Polly, The Rake’s Progress, The Fallen Idol, The Rocking Horse Winner, The Crimson Pirate, The Million Pound Note, The Winslow Boy, The Card, A Night To Remember, Carve Her Name With Pride, etc. This dedication to the art of writing film music was recognized in 1951 when Alwyn was made a fellow of The British Film Academy, the only composer until very recently to receive this honor. In addition to his work in the cinema, Alwyn also provided much incidental music for both radio and television.

He was also active in many administrative posts that include serving as Chairman for the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain (an organization which he was instrumental in founding), for three terms in 1949, 1950, and 1954; a Director of the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, a Vice President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) and Director of the Performing Right Society. Also, for many years he was one of the panel reading new scores for the BBC. During the 1950s his music was championed by the conductor, Sir John Barbirolli (1899–1970), who gave many first performances of Alwyn’s works amongst which are Symphonies nos. 1 (dedicated to Barbirolli), 2 and 4.

Alwyn spent the last twenty-five years of his life in the Suffolk village of Blythburgh, where, in those tranquil surroundings, he found the necessary inspiration to compose two operas, Juan, or the Libertine in four acts to his own libretto and Miss Julie in two acts after the play by August Strindberg. In addition to chamber and vocal music, he composed his last major orchestral works there; the Concerto Grosso No. 3, commissioned as a tribute to Sir Henry Wood to mark the twentieth anniversary of his death in 1964 and first performed at the Proms that year by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer; the Sinfonietta for String Orchestra in 1970 and the Symphony No. 5 ‘Hydriotaphia’ during 1972–73. In 1978 Alwyn was awarded a CBE in recognition of his services to music. Such was his desire to always be creative that when not composing music he spent his time painting and writing. Amongst his writings is a short autobiography entitled Winged Chariot, some poetry, and prose, and perhaps most fascinating of all, a diary that he kept between September 1955 and August 1956 while completing his Third Symphony entitled Ariel to Miranda, that documents his daily routine, composing for the cinema and concert hall.

Discovering Alwyn

John Dressler

When William Alwyn Smith was born at 54 Kettering Road in Northampton in 1905 there was no immediate indication that he would be destined for greatness in the London musical scene of the 1940s and 1950s. His parents were ordinary working folk who enjoyed music, but neither of them was moving in any important musical circles outside London. The concerts of the local band to which William’s father regularly took his children inspired William to take up the piccolo. William attended the public school system in Northampton and by 1914 was taking private piano lessons from R.W.Strickland, who recognized William’s talent straight away. And it was through Strickland’s encouragement and formal recommendation that William would commute twice a week from Northampton to the Royal Academy of Music for lessons on the flute and piano beginning in 1915. After later joining the RAM as a continuing student William would discover another musical talent: composition. By 1921 William was studying flute, piano, and elements of harmony at the RAM with the likes of Daniel Wood, Edward Morton, Leo Livins, Russell Chester, John McEwen, and Arthur Hinton. No doubt the Oliveria Prescott and Sir Michael Costa awards for composition which he won at the RAM in 1924 would encourage all of his efforts in that field.

After several successful publications at Oxford University Press in the mid-1920s and after recognizing that indeed composition would be his chosen field, William officially changed his name by dropping “Smith” and by making “Alwyn” his surname citing that Alwyn would be a much more unique name in the music world than Smith. For a closer look at Alwyn’s own thoughts about his youthful discovery and subsequent devotion to the world of music, the reader is encouraged to study Early Closing, his unpublished autobiographical recollections housed in the William Alwyn Archive at the Cambridge University Library. In addition, Adrian Wright’s 2008 full-length biography of Alwyn has recently been published. It was sponsored by the William Alwyn Foundation and contains over 300 pages of text and plates. This is the major source of information on Alwyn’s life and contributions to Western music: The Innumerable Dance: The Life and Work of William Alwyn, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, ISBN: 9781843834120.

After leaving the RAM in 1924 to return to Northampton upon his father’s death to work at the family grocery, Alwyn quickly recognized his talents lay in music, not in managing a grocery. He became a music master at a private residential school in Haslemere (Surrey) and did freelance work as a flautist in and around London. On recommendation of the Principal, Alwyn was appointed professor of composition at the RAM in June, 1927. Now as a composer, teacher, and performer in London his destiny lay ahead of him.

He was married on January 1, 1929, to Olive Pull, a fellow former RAM student and fine pianist by all accounts, and in October 1930 their first son, Jonathan, was born. Life was complicated for Alwyn in the succeeding years attempting to balance freelance performing, teaching, and composing juxtaposed with family obligations. As a composer of pedagogical works for piano at that time in his career he even spent 3 months in Canada in 1934 as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music; he had also spent time the previous year in Australia on a similar trip. In 1936 Alwyn found himself in the right place at the rig...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• I. Biography
• II. Bibliography
• III. Discography
• IV. Related Materials
• Index of Standard Periodical Numbers
• Alphabetical Index of Works
• Index of Names