just one damned thing after another series

Scores and parts for Bishop Rock and Suffolk Suite are available from Goodmusic. Her orchestral works include an overture ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another) (1945) (after the novel by John Masefield) a Concerto for piano and strings (1948) the overture Bishop Rock (1952) and the Suffolk Suite (1964). She gained a reputation in the film industry for her professionalism and speed under pressure: her score for Elizabeth Is Queen, the official film of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, had to be completed in just three days. Music from the score of the short British Transport Films documentary East Anglian Holiday (1954) was later reused in her Suffolk Suite. as Man in Hiding) (1952), The Men of Sherwood Forest (1954) and Three Cases of Murder (1955). She died at Forncett St Peter, near Norwich, on 5 January 2003.ĭoreen Carwithen wrote scores for over 30 films, including Harvest from the Wilderness (1948), Boys in Brown (1950), Mantrap (released in the U.S. In 1999, a stroke left her paralysed on one side. She then also resumed interest in her own music.

After her husband's death in 1985, she founded the William Alwyn Archive and William Alwyn Foundation to promote his music and facilitate related research projects.

She later worked as a Sub Professor of Composition at the RAM. 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. The previous year she had become the first recipient of a J. 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. She was a member of the harmony class of William Alwyn, who began to teach her composition. In 1941 she entered the Royal Academy of Music and played the cello in a string quartet and with orchestras. Īt the age of 16 Doreen Carwithen began composing by setting Wordsworth's ' I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' for voice and piano. Her sister Barbara Carwithen (born 1926) received similar tuition and also became a talented musician and composer. Doreen studied both piano and violin with her from the age of four. As a child she had her first music lessons from her mother Dulcie, an aspiring concert pianist and pupil of Tobias Matthay who gave up her wider ambitions to become a music teacher after her marriage in 1921. Doreen Carwithen by Alec Davison (with permission of the William Alwyn Foundation) Biography ĭoreen Carwithen was born at 8 High Street, Haddenham, Buckinghamshire on 15 November 1922, in the house attached to her father's bakery and grocery.

Just one damned thing after another series