Everything about Doreen Carwithen totally explained
Doreen Mary Carwithen (
15 November 1922 –
5 January 2003) was a British
composer of classical and
film music. She was also known as
Mary Alwyn.
Doreen Carwithen was born in Haddenham,
Buckinghamshire on
15 November 1922. As a child she'd her first music lessons from her mother, a music teacher, starting both
piano and
violin with her at age 4. In
1941 she entered the
Royal Academy of Music and played the
cello in a string quartet and with orchestras. At age 16 she began composing by setting
Wordsworth’s
Daffodils for voice and piano.
Doreen Carwithen composed some orchestral music: an overture
ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another) (
1945); a Concerto for piano and strings (
1948); the overture
Bishop Rock (
1952) and a
Suffolk Suite (
1964). She also edited for performance the second piano concerto by
William Alwyn, and later became his second wife.
At the Royal Academy she entered the harmony class of William Alwyn, who began to teach her
composition. Her overture
ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another) was premiered at
Covent Garden by
Adrian Boult in 1947. The same year she was selected by the Royal Academy to train as composer of
film music.
She wrote scores for over 30 films, including
Harvest from the Wilderness (1948),
Boys in Brown (1950),
Mantrap (1952) (released in the U.S. as
Man in Hiding), and
East Anglian Holiday (1954). She also scored
Elizabeth is Queen, the official film of the
coronation of
Elizabeth II, and wrote two award-winning but little-known
string quartets.
In
1961 she married William Alwyn, and took Mary Alwyn as her married name, as she disliked the name Doreen, and Mary was her middle name. She later worked as a Sub Professor of Composition at the RAM.
She was devoted to her husband and acted as his secretary and
amanuensis. After he died in
1985, she resumed interest in her own music, while also founding the William Alwyn Archive and WIlliam Alwyn Foundation to promote her husband's music and facilitate related research projects. In 1999 a
stroke left her paralysed on one side and she died in Forncett St Peter, near
Norwich, on
5 January 2003.
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