Concert and film composer-musician Doreen Mary Carwithen, known later primarily as wife of composer William Alwyn, died Jan. 5. She was 80.
Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, England, native was, like younger sister Barbara, gifted in music. At 4, she began playing piano and violin (her mother was a music teacher) and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music. She also played cello in local orchestras and, with her sister on piano, entertained war-torn England.
She began composing at 16, studied harmony at the Royal Acad with her future husband and continued composing, including 1945's overture ODTAA ("One Damn Thing After Another"), selected in 1947 by the Music Advisory Committee of the London Philharmonic Orchestra for premiere and which enjoyed repeated success. It also is the first work on the 1997 retrospective Chandos CDs of her work. A third CD is planned.
Also in 1947, she was the first student to be selected from the Royal Acad to apprentice for J. Arthur Rank to train young musicians to write film music. Over a period of about 15 years, she scored 35 films, including "Harvest from the Wilderness" (1948), "Boys in Brown" (1950), "Mantrap" (1952), "East Anglian Holiday" (1954) and "Break in the Circle" (1955) as well as the score for the official film of Queen Elizabeth's coronation plus docus "The Stranger Left No Card" (1952), "Teeth of the Wind," (1953) and "On the Twelfth Day" (1956).
In 1961, frustrated that publishers weren't interested in music composed by women, she retired and became Mary Alwyn. Only after her husband's death in 1985 did she begin to resume an interest in composing again. However, in 1999, a severe stroke left her paralyzed.
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