Raymond Warren


Raymond Henry Charles Warren was a British composer and university teacher.
Warren studied at Cambridge, and taught at Queen's University Belfast, where he was the first person in the UK to be given a personal chair in composition in 1966, before becoming Hamilton Harty Professor of Music in 1969. He was Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music at the University of Bristol from 1972 until his retirement in 1994.
His works include a choral Passion, a Violin Concerto, three Symphonies, a Requiem, the oratorio Continuing Cities, six operas and an extensive amount of music for children, young people and community music making.

Biography

Raymond Warren was born in Axbridge, Somerset on 7 November 1928. His mother was Gwendoline C. Warren, née Hallett. Warren studied at Bancroft's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, reading mathematics at first and then changing to music under Boris Ord and Robin Orr. Later he studied privately with Michael Tippett, Lennox Berkeley and Benjamin Britten. From 1955 to 1972 he taught at Queen's University, Belfast, where from 1966 he held a personal Chair in composition. While in Belfast, an association with the Lyric Players theatre company involved writing music for many of the plays of W. B. Yeats.
For the years 1966–72 he was Resident Composer to the Ulster Orchestra, writing for them a number of orchestral works and also conducting the Orchestra in a series of Sunday afternoon concerts of contemporary music. In 1972 he was appointed Professor of Music at the University of Bristol, a post from which he retired in 1994. Following retirement he composed to commission for a wide variety of performers notably the Brunel Ensemble and the London Children's Ballet.
He collaborated with many other artists of note including the poets John Reed, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Charles Tomlinson, the choreographer Helen Lewis and the founders of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, and wrote for performers including Peter Pears, Julian Bream, Eric Gruenberg, Cecil Aronowitz, Janet Price, Christopher Austin, Jeremy Huw Williams, David Ogden and the Dartington String Quartet.
As a teacher, Warren's students included a number of composers and musicians who have gone on to have significant careers including: Christopher Austin, Eibhlis Farrell, Philip Hammond, David Byers and Will Todd.
Warren died on 4 June 2025, at the age of 96.

Music

Major works include the oratorio The Passion, Symphony No.1, the Violin Concerto, Songs of Old Age, Symphony No.2, the oratorio Continuing Cities, Symphony No.3, In My Childhood and Cello Requiem as well as his six operas.
Four of the operas were written for children. Two of them, Let My People Go and St. Patrick, were commissioned by the Liverpool Education Authority and first performed by the Liverpool Schools Symphony Orchestra. Aside from the operas, works for children and young people include Songs of Unity written for Methodist College, Belfast and several pieces written for youth orchestras including Ring of Light, A Star Danced and Variations on a Gloucester Chime.
Chamber music includes two Piano sonatas, a Violin sonata, three String quartets and the Piano trio Burnt Norton Sketches, which were later orchestrated by Christopher Austin. Peter Jacobs has recorded the Monody movement from Warren's Second Piano Sonata, which consists of a single line of melody with decoration. Song cycles include Spring 1948, The Pity of Love, Songs of Old Age, the orchestral song cycle In My Childhood, Another Spring and The Coming.
His shorter choral works include the cantata The Death of Orpheus, the motet Salvator Mundi, The Starlight Night, the evening canticles written for Bristol Cathedral: The Bristol Service and Celtic Blessings. Music for dance includes two notable collaborations with Helen Lewis, There is a Time and the London Children's Ballet, Ballet Shoes.
Warren worked closely with several poets, providing instrumental music to complement spoken words, including Lares with Michael Longley and The Sound of Time with Charles Tomlinson. The first of these was with his contemporary Seamus Heaney, A Lough Neagh Sequence. Warren wrote:
Heaney made a recording of this version of his poetry with Warren's music in 2011.
Many of his shorter works are among his most powerful including the solo cantata for flute, piano and mezzo soprano, Drop, Drop Slow Tears and the Song for St. Cecilia’s Day scored for tenor, flute, viola, guitar and first performed by Peter Pears, Richard Adeney, Cecil Aronowitz and Julian Bream. His best selling work as a recording is the orchestral suite Wexford Bells.

Selected works

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Discography

  • ', Bristol Cathedral Choir, Priory PRCD 528
  • In My Childhood, A Lough Neagh Sequence, Piano Sonata No 2, on . Raymond Warren and Seamus Heaney, Philip Mead, Olivia Robinson, University of Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra conducted by Robin Browning. UH Recordings
  • Golden Rings, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis and Salvator Mundi
  • . The Brunel Ensemble conducted by Christopher Austin
  • Monody; Chaconne. Peter Jacobs. . Dunelm Records
  • ', Royal Ballet Sinfonia, Gavin Sutherland, on , ASV CD WHL 2126

    Publications

  • Warren, Raymond: Opera Workshops: Studies in Understanding and Interpretation
  • Warren, Raymond: The Composer and Opera Performance in Thomas, W., Composition – Performance – Reception: Studies in the Creative Process in Music, Ashgate, 1998,
  • Davies, Edward. Raymond Warren: A Study of His Music. Work in preparation.