2 - Composing Influence

Summary

Above all, Elisabeth Lutyens wanted to be a professional composer. This was not a simple goal for a young, modern, British, and female composer in what Sarah Collins has dubbed the ‘anti-intellectual’ climate in early twentieth-century British music criticism.² Looking back, Lutyens later refined this goal: ‘the writing & making of music is my occupation, my profession, my livelihood, my giver of spiritual nourishment, my whole way of living & as a dog barks & a child screams I write music & for me it’s doing what comes naturally’.³ From this idea of composition as a natural outlet of creative energy stemmed her pride in being able to produce both ‘art’ and ‘journalistic’ music with intricate knowledge of the conventions in the differing musical and social circles and hierarchies she moved in.