( b London, 9 July 1906; d there, 14 April 1983). English composer. A daughter of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, she studied in Paris and at the RCM and at the end of the 1930s began to produce serial compositions (Chamber Concerto no.1 for nonet, 1939) referable more to Webern and Stravinsky than Schoenberg; she was one of the first English composers to use 12-note methods. Her large subsequent output includes operas, orchestral and diverse chamber pieces (13 string quartets 1938-82), and numerous varied settings of English verse; she also wrote him scores. She was an esteemed teacher and published an autobiography, A Goldfish Bowl (1972).
The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.