Lutyens, (Agnes) Elizabeth (1906–1983)

English composer. Her works, using the twelve-tone system, are expressive and tightly organized, and include chamber music, stage, and orchestral works. Her choral and vocal works include a setting of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus and a cantata The Tears of Night (1971). She also composed much film and incidental music.

The youngest daughter of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, she married the BBC director of music Edward Clark. In a lecture at Dartington in the 1950s she coined the term ‘cowpat music’ to describe the work of those early 20th-century English composers who had turned to pictorial pastoralism in their music. Her works include the opera Infidelio (1956) and Fleur du silence for tenor and ensemble (1980). Her autobiography A Goldfish Bowl was published in 1973.

She studied viola and composition at the Royal College of Music in London, the latter with Harold Darke, and later with Caussade at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, France.

Works Opera Infidelio (1956, produced 1973) and Time Off? – Not a Ghost of a Chance! (1967–68, produced 1972).

Ballet The Birthday of the Infanta (after Oscar Wilde, 1932).

Choral chamber cantata Winter the Huntsman (Osbert Sitwell), Bienfaits de la lune (Baudelaire), and other choral works.

Orchestral three symphonic preludes (1942), Petite Suite, Divertissement, viola concerto, Lyric Piece for violin and orchestra.

Chamber six chamber concertos (1939–48), 12 string quartets (1938–82), string trio, Suite gauloise for wind octet, Aptote for solo violin (1948), sonata for solo viola.

Voices and instruments O saisons, o châteaux (Rimbaud, 1946), and other works for voice and chamber ensemble, including And Suddenly it's Evening for tenor and 11 instruments (1967), Essence of our Happiness for tenor and ensemble (1968), Vision of Youth (1970), Dirge for the Proud World (1971), The Tears of Night (1971), Elegy for the Flowers (1978), two Cantatas (1979), Echoes (1979), Fleur du silence for tenor and ensemble (1980), Mine Eyes, My Bread, My Spede for tenor and string quartet (1980); songs.

Other piano music, suite for organ.