As the centenary of her birth approaches, the British composer’s versatile brilliance is at last getting its due recognition, says Leah Broad
ILLUSTRATION: MATT HERRING
Composer of the month
When visitors came to see the composer William Alwyn at his home in Blythburgh in Suffolk, they were always greeted by his wife, Mary. Their house was silent, almost eerily so. Mary kept it that way so nothing would disturb William as he composed. She was dedicated to William and his work – guests remembered her as quiet and unassuming, and terrible at making tea.
Few realised that Mary Alwyn had once been a famous composer herself, and a quite different woman altogether. Born Doreen Mary Carwithen, she changed her name after she eloped with William to Suffolk in 1961, eventually becoming his wife in 1975. It’s at least partly because of this relationship that Carwithen’s name is still relatively unfamiliar today. She put her career aside to promote his. It was only after William died in 1985 that she allowed herself a small re-emergence as a composer, and in the 1990s oversaw the recording of her string quartets, Violin Sonata and some of her orchestral works. Carwithen’s fame has been slowly growing since then, and her centenary this year has been celebrated with the first ever festival dedicated to her and country-wide performances including at the BBC Proms.
It’s unsurprising that Carwithen’s music is enjoying a renaissance. Her style is utterly captivating. She can just as easily write energetic, rhythmically driven music as she can intimate, introspective pieces built on luminous harmonies and lingering chords. And shining through in all her works is a pure, unadulterated love of melody. She never embraced atonality or experimentalism – she belongs to the same brand of 20th-century British composition as Walton, Grace Williams and Britten.
Carwithen received her first musical training from her mother, Dulcie. She had wanted to be a concert pianist herself, and gave music lessons to her two daughters, Doreen and Barbara. Both went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music, where Doreen started out as a pianist and cellist in 1941. Judging by her works that feature the cello and piano, she was clearly an accomplished performer on both instruments, but it was at the Academy that she began the harmony lessons that would change the direction of her life. It was these classes that ultimately resulted in her shift of focus to composition – and they were also where she first met William Alwyn. He was assigned as her harmony tutor, and even though he was already married the two began
