Charles Wilfred Leslie Orr, generally known as C. W. Orr (31 July 1893 - 24 February 1976), was an English composer.
Contents |
Born in Cheltenham shortly after the death of his father (a captain in the Indian Army) from tuberculosis, he learnt the piano and studied music theory as a child. He was attracted to the singing of Elena Gerhardt, who he heard sing in London. He developed an interest in lieder, especially that of Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and after reading Ernest Newman's book on the composer, Hugo Wolf, and determined to become a songwriter, which he pursued by studying at the Guildhall School of Music. He was attracted to the music of Frederick Delius after approaching him at a London restaurant in 1915, who became his mentor and helped him with his early compositions. He also came to know Peter Warlock, who aided him in publishing his early songs.
He married in 1929 and moved to Painswick, Gloucestershire where he would remain for the rest of his life, to get away from the busy atmosphere of London, which was detrimental to his health; a vaccination as a child had left him with eczema, and he contracted tuberculosis as an adult.
His work as a composer was dominated by the composition of songs accompanied by piano; his life's study was the expressive setting of poetry to music. He wrote more settings of A.E. Housman's poetry than any other composer; he was a particular admirer of Housman, whose poetry he got to know just after World War I, during which time he was unable to fight on medical grounds, having joined up. He went on research visits to Shropshire, taking photographs, and attended one of Housman's lectures as Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge University. He asked for permission to translate A Shropshire Lad into German so he could bring his songs into wider circulation, but the request was refused.
His piano accompaniments and postludes are an integral part of each song, providing more than bare harmony; examples of its use for programme music include fluttering semiquavers depicting aspen leaves in Along the Field and heavy chords in a march to the scaffold in The Carpenter’s Son. His harmonic language is a mixture of English modality and late Romanticism. He is regarded as one of Britain’s finest 20th century songwriters.
His music is published by Chester Novello and Oxford University Press.
For solo voice and piano.