Errollyn Wallen is the composer of 22 operas, and counting, as well as numerous concertos, symphonies, song cycles and chamber works. Her music has been performed at major public celebrations such as the late Queen’s golden and diamond jubilees and the 2012 Paralympic Games. In 2022, she was in the top 20 most performed living composers worldwide. Her first orchestral commission, a concerto for percussion and orchestra, was performed at the Proms in 1998. This was, as she notes modestly in a footnote in her new book, the first time since the festival began in 1895 that a Black woman’s music had been performed there. She has since received the rare accolade of having a work premiered during the Last Night of the Proms, when her reimagining of Jerusalem was featured last year.
The prospect of a book that takes us behind the scenes of such creative success is enticing. The form and structure that she has chosen for Becoming a Composer is unusual, though. Rather than a conventional memoir, we get a patchwork of short essays, diary extracts, programme notes and poems. She invites the reader to “dip in and out”, but this fragmentary approach merely whets the appetite for a more joined-up version of her story.
Part of the book’s appeal lies in the way Wallen wears her talent so lightly. “I am a composer. A composer of classical music. As I read that sentence again, I am not completely sure how this happened to a girl born in Belize and brought up in Tottenham,” she writes.
What follows demonstrates that it was a potent combination of hard work, ability, charm and tenacity that has enabled her to succeed despite not fitting the conventional idea of what a composer should be. “I wasn’t white, male, dead, in a wig or on a wall,” she says. At one point, an influential music director says to her: “Are there any women composers?! Why don’t you come up to my office with your scores – I’ll look over them and have a good laugh.”
Although they had a complicated relationship, Wallen gives credit to her uncle Arthur for believing in her musical ability early on and speaks highly of his passion for literature and art. Her home life as a child was far from idyllic, though. Two years after she was born, her parents moved the family from Belize to London. The children were then left with Arthur and his wife, Renee, while their parents moved to New York, a permanent arrangement that young Errollyn believed was temporary, always hoping her parents would come back for her.
Her uncle’s anger dominated her childhood. In one heartbreaking vignette, she describes how once when he was pouring her a cup of coffee, the hot liquid started accidentally spilling on to her leg. Too afraid to tell him, she sat there in silent agony and let it scald her. Some of these traumatic memories are told in the third person, as if to hold them at arm’s length. “She loved her family. She survived her family,” Wallen writes.
The best parts of Becoming a Composer are those that deal with the minutiae of creating music. Wallen is excellent at explaining exactly how she composes. She shares everything, from the process of drawing sonic inspiration from her surroundings to her tendency to let the deadlines loom before she puts a single note on paper, a habit that can make collaborators nervous. She starts her music by improvising at the piano and works best before she is fully awake. Her first pieces were written before digital composition software was available, and she once lost an entire score because the only handwritten copy was in her car when it was stolen.
The diary extracts are brilliant at conveying this mixture of the sublime and the ordinary. One day, the music is pouring out of her, while the entry for another simply reads “jury service”. Such everyday details add depth and richness to her music. Listening to my favourite Wallen piece – her own performance of In Earth, her reworking of a Purcell aria – I feel I know the voice that soars so beautifully and sorrowfully a little better now.
• Becoming a Composer by Errollyn Wallen is published by Faber (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
