Better Know a Composer - Alwyn

William Alwyn (Nov. 7, 1905 - Sept. 11 1985)

  This week we're going to take a look at a more recent and obscure composer, William Alwyn. He was an English composer, conductor, performer, and music teacher. He wrote a very wide range of music including orchestral symphonies, pieces for wind ensemble, film scores, and many more types of music.

  He was born in Northhampton, England and at a very young age his gift for music was apparent when he took to playing the piccolo. When he was 15 he began to study flute and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He excelled at both areas as he later became a professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music and for awhile he was a flautist in the London Symphony.

  If you want to hear some of Alwyn's compositions then one of your best bets would be to check out some of his film scores. Some of the movies which he wrote for were Odd Man Out, History of Mr. Polly, The Fallen Idol, and The Crimson Pirate. All in all he wrote over 70 different film scores throughout his life.

  Being a more modern composer, Alwyn liked to use dissonance throughout his writing. If you listen to his Symphony No. 3 you can hear quite a few modern compositional techniques in his music. I enjoy how he smoothly adds these elements of dissonance into his work without going to the extreme like most new works these days.

  The way I found this composer was this morning when I went to collect my DePaul Wind Symphony music after group piano. Both pieces are new to me and the one that stood out to me at first was Fanfare for a Joyful Occasion, by Alwyn. After spending a couple hours working out some technique on it I decided it'd be best to listen to some recordings and find out a bit about the composer... And wah-lah! If you get a chance to check the DePaul concert schedule you should come to a wind symphony concert as we'll also be playing an arrangement of Ralph William's Variations for Brass Band, Holst's Suite No. 2, and Gordon Jacob's William Byrd. Below, enjoy  Fanfare for a Joyful Occasion which is for 12 brass and percussion.