In a letter of 1919 to Bernard van Dieren, a composer
whom he greatly admired, Philip Heseltine explained
how he had submitted a group of songs to the publisher
Winthrop Rogers under the pseudonym of Peter
Warlock, having failed to find a publisher under his own
name. The ruse was soon revealed, but not before
distinguished singers of the time had started to take an
interest in them.
Born in London in 1894, Heseltine had been
encouraged in his musical enthusiasms during his time
at school, latterly at Eton. There followed an
introduction to Delius, who continued to show an
interest in his work, and after study in Germany and a
year at Oxford reading Classics, he turned his attention
to the study of earlier English music, although himself
without formal musical training. As a pacifist, in any
case medically unfit for military service, he spent the
war years in Cornwall and then in Ireland, before
returning to London, the centre of his later activities,
broken by a period with his mother in Wales and a time
in Kent. A certain instability of character, evident,
perhaps, in the dual Heseltine/Warlock identities, has
been attributed in part to the early death of his father in
1896. Peter Warlock died in December 1930 of gas
poisoning, whether by accident or suicide.
Warlock is remembered in particular for his Capriol
Suite, an attractive reworking for string orchestra of
French dance music of the sixteenth century, also
arranged for piano duet and fuller orchestra. A number
of his carols have a firm place in Christmas choral
repertoire, while his many songs form a remarkable
body of work, influenced by Delius, Van Dieren, and the
Elizabethan and Jacobean composers that had formed
the core of his musicological studies as Philip Heseltine.