Becoming a Composer

by Errollyn Wallen

Overview

'Singer, composer, musician . . . Renaissance Woman of contemporary music.’ - The Observer

I am a composer. A composer of classical music. Quite honestly I am not quite sure how that happened to a girl born in Belize and brought up in Tottenham . . . It is clear that composing found me. It crept up on me and wouldn’t let me out of its grasp.

Now a leading international composer and a singer-songwriter, Errollyn Warren is as much at home in jazz and pop as in the classical world. Part memoir, Becoming a Composer offers an intriguing glimpse into the mind and motivation of a composer and covers aspects of Wallen’s sometimes troubled childhood, and her experiences of growing up as a black composer in the UK. It includes a collection of observations, diaries following the progress of new works and essays and seeks to shed light on the way a composer sees and hears the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571370139
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	03/12/2024
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	829,868
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Errollyn Wallen is a multi-award-winning Belize-born composer. Her output includes over twenty operas and numerous orchestral, chamber and vocal works. She composed works for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in 2012, for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees and a re-imagining of Parry’s Jerusalem for the Last Night of the Proms. Her acclaimed Concerto Grosso was released on the NMC label in January 2020, performed by Chineke! Errollyn was awarded an MBE in 2007 and was made a CBE in 2020. She has received an Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music, a British Composer Award and a FIPA D’Or for Best Music for a Television Series.

Editorial Reviews

2023-12-14
Demystifying an often misunderstood and underappreciated art.

Wallen, born in Belize and raised in Tottenham, recalls how, when she was a toddler, composing “crept up on me, tapped me on the shoulder, tackled me to the ground and wouldn’t let me out of its grasp.” She describes her life in witty, conversational style, explaining that she has “always lived in a parallel world—gripped in the vice of the immortal, invisible world of music.” As a child, she was talented and bright; she was also admittedly awkward, overcoming a suicide attempt and depression in order to work with musicians. Wallen discusses her creative process and the importance of intuition in composing Our English Heart, a commission about Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. “I feel things before I understand them,” she writes. “I walk towards a sound before I can hear it. I can know what a work is before I find the notes.” The author recommends the New York City subway as the “perfect place to start for ear-training exercises,” and she goes into adoring, occasionally excessive detail about a wide range of pieces. She includes substantial prose excerpts from librettos, which she loves to write. When creating an opera, Wallen believes the characters come first with the vocal score and then the orchestration. Her career has been wide-ranging: She wrote award-winning music in 2011 for the BBC drama One Night and has recorded her own songs, composed solo piano music, appeared in a band on Top of the Pops, composed two songs for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games and worked with Elvis Costello. “What preoccupies me is here and now,” she writes. “Now is where I choose to make my reputation and to be remembered.”

Despite some rambling, this is a thoughtful, reflective musical memoir.

Kirkus Reviews