Doreen Carwithen

Doreen Mary Carwithen (15 November 19225 January 2003) was a British composer of classical and film music. She was also known as Mary Alwyn following her marriage to William Alwyn. Biography Doreen Carwithen was born at 8 High Street, Haddenham, Buckinghamshire on 15 November 1922, At the age of 16 Doreen Carwithen began composing by setting Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” for voice and piano. In 1938 she began taking cello lessons with Peers Coetmore, and in 1941 she entered the Royal Academy of Music and played the cello in a string quartet and with orchestras. She was a member of the harmony class of William Alwyn, who began to teach her composition. Her first orchestral work, the overture ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another), was premiered at Covent Garden by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Boult on 2 March 1947. The previous year she had become the first recipient of a J. Arthur Rank Film Scholarship. In 1961 she became William Alwyn’s devoted secretary and amanuensis, becoming his second wife in 1975, adopting 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