Constance Jessie Warren (12 August 190516 October 1984) was an English composer and piano teacher. Warren was born in

Sparkhill Sparkhill is an inner-city area of Birmingham, England, situated between Springfield, Hall Green and Sparkbrook. Historically part of Worcestershire, Sparkhill once existed as a rural area with its main industry being agriculture until the 18 ...

, Yardley, near Birmingham. Her mother Jessie was a professional pianist. Constance studied piano with the Russian pianist Maria Levinskaya in London, and also with

Clifford Curzon Sir Clifford Michael Curzon CBE (né Siegenberg; 18 May 19071 September 1982) was an English classical pianist. Curzon studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and subsequently with Artur Schnabel in Berlin and Wanda Landowska and Nad ...

(who was two year her junior). She attended the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

under

York Bowen Edwin York Bowen (22 February 1884 – 23 November 1961) was an English composer and pianist. Bowen's musical career spanned more than fifty years during which time he wrote over 160 works. As well as being a pianist and composer, Bowen was a ...

and

Benjamin Dale Benjamin James Dale (17 July 188530 July 1943) was an English composer and academic who had a long association with the Royal Academy of Music. Dale showed compositional talent from an early age and went on to write a small but notable corpus of ...

. All of Warren's compositions date from her student days at the Royal Academy, which she left in 1932, returning to Birmingham to teach at the

Birmingham School of Music The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is a music school, drama school and concert venue in Birmingham, England. It provides professional education in music, acting, and related disciplines up to postgraduate level. It is a centre for scholarly re ...

and Birmingham Conservatoire. Her pupils there included the composer

Brian Ferneyhough Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and ...

and the

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) is a British chamber ensemble based in Birmingham, England specialising in the performance of new and contemporary music. BCMG performs regularly at the CBSO Centre and Symphony Hall in Birmingham, tour ...

principal pianist Malcolm Wilson. ''Heather Hill'' for string orchestra has been recorded. Other larger scale works include a Nocturne for orchestra, performed by

Henry Wood Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hund ...

, and a String Quartet in B minor, performed by the

Griller Quartet The Griller String Quartet was a British musical ensemble particularly active from 1931 to c.1961 or 1963, when it was disbanded. The quartet was in residence at the University of California at Berkeley from 1949 to 1961. It performed a wide repert ...

. The majority of her pieces are miniatures.

Duncan Honeybourne Duncan Honeybourne (born 27 October 1977) is an English pianist, teacher and lecturer. Biography Honeybourne was born at Weymouth, Dorset. He began his studies at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department, where he won the senior piano priz ...

has recorded her Idyll in G-Flat Major (1930) in which, he says, "an intense chromaticism lends an emotional depth and ambiguity to the thematic material".Duncam Honeybourne. Notes to
A Hundred Years of British Piano Miniatures
', Grand Piano GP789 (2018) Others include the Prelude in A minor for piano, a ''Lament'' and a ''Ballade'' for cello and piano and the Two Miniatures for flute and piano.Constance Warren. British Music Collection
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Warren, Constance 1905 births 1984 deaths 20th-century classical composers British women classical composers English classical composers Musicians from Birmingham, West Midlands 20th-century English composers 20th-century English women musicians 20th-century British women composers Academics of the Birmingham School of Music