Elisabeth Lutyens

Working completely in isolation from European trends, Lutyens developed her own innovative style of serialism in the late 1930's. Continuing amid almost total neglect in England, she eventually became known for an exceptional ability at setting texts, achieving a highly objective and original constancy of form while maintaining deeply emotional qualities. The daughter of an architect, she entered the Ecole Normale in Paris in 1922, and then studied composition and viola at the Royal College of Music. Her first remarkable breakthroughs were with the rigorously chromatic "Sec...