Background
Doreen Carwithen was born in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire on 15 November 1922. As a child she had her first music lessons from her mother, a music teacher, starting both piano and violin with her at the age of four.
Doreen Carwithen was born in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire on 15 November 1922. As a child she had her first music lessons from her mother, a music teacher, starting both piano and violin with her at the age of four.
Royal Academy of Music.
She was also known as Mary Alwyn. At age 16 she began composing by setting Wordsworth"s "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils)" for voice and piano. In 1941 she entered the Royal Academy of Music and played the cello in a string quartet and with orchestras.
Her overture ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another) was premiered at Covent Garden by Adrian Boult in 1947.
The same year she was selected by the Royal Academy to train as composer of film music She later worked as a Sub Professor of Composition at the Random Access Memory. 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 then also resumed interest in her own music In 1999 a stroke left her paralysed on one side.
She died at Forncett Street Peter, near Norwich, on 5 January 2003.
She was a member of the harmony class of William Alwyn, who began to teach her composition.