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Raymond Henry Charles Warren "Warren, Prof. Raymond Henry Charles", Who's Who (online edition, University of Oxford, December 2018). Retrieved 18 November 2018. (7 November 1928 – 4 June 2025) 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. Stevens, Ian. 'Raymond Warren', in Grove Music Online (2001)
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.
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. Acton, Charles. 'The Music of Raymond Warren', Musical Times, October 1969, pp. 1031-1033 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 (Symphony No.3, In My Childhood) and the London Children's Ballet ( Ballet Shoes, 2001).
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, Erich Gruenberg, Cecil Aronowitz, Janet Price, Christopher Austin, Jeremy Huw Williams, David Ogden and the Colin Sauer.
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. Seamus Heaney composer dies, aged 96
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 (1968) written for Methodist College, Belfast and several pieces written for youth orchestras including Ring of Light (2005), A Star Danced (2009) and Variations on a Gloucester Chime (2012).
Chamber music includes two Piano sonatas, a Violin sonata, three String quartets and the Piano trio Burnt Norton Sketches (1985), which were later orchestrated by Christopher Austin (1999). Peter Jacobs has recorded the Monody movement from Warren's Second Piano Sonata (1977), which consists of a single line of melody with decoration. The Peter Jacobs Anthology: Twentieth Century British Piano Music, Heritage HTGCD159 (2021) Song cycles include Spring 1948 (1956), The Pity of Love (1966), Songs of Old Age (1968), the orchestral song cycle In My Childhood (1998), Another Spring (2008) and The Coming (2010).
His shorter choral works include the cantata The Death of Orpheus (1953 revised 2009), the motet Salvator Mundi (1976), The Starlight Night (1990), the evening canticles written for Bristol Cathedral: The Bristol Service (1991) and Celtic Blessings (1996). Music for dance includes two notable collaborations with Helen Lewis, There is a Time (1970) and the London Children's Ballet, Ballet Shoes (2001).
Warren worked closely with several poets, providing instrumental music to complement spoken words, including Lares (1972) with Michael Longley and The Sound of Time (1984) with Charles Tomlinson. The first of these was with his contemporary Seamus Heaney, A Lough Neagh Sequence (1970). Warren wrote:
Heaney made a recording of this version of his poetry with Warren's music in 2011. The Next Ocean, UH Recordings (2011) The Next Ocean, reviewed at MusicWeb International by Nick Bernard
Many of his shorter works are among his most powerful including the solo cantata for flute, piano and mezzo soprano, Drop, Drop Slow Tears (1960) and the Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1967) 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 (1970). British Light Music Discoveries 2, Royal Ballet Sinfonia, Gavin Sutherland, White Line CD WHL2126
Selected works
(Impulse Music has a complete list) List of Compositions by Raymond Warren, Impulse Music
Discography
Publications
External links
Categories: 1928 Births, 2025 Deaths, 20th-century British Classical Composers, Academics Of Queen's University Belfast, Academics Of The University Of Bristol, British Opera Composers, British Male Opera Composers, Alumni Of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 20th-century British Male Musicians, People Educated At Bancroft's School
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