Priaulx Rainier

Ivy Priaulx Rainier (3 February 1903 – 10 October 1986) was a South African-British composer. Although she lived most of her life in England and died in France, her compositional style was strongly influenced by the African music remembered from her childhood. She never adopted 12-tone or serial techniques, but her music shows a profound understanding of that musical language. She can be credited with the first truly athematic works composed in England. Her Cello Concerto was premiered by Jacqueline du Pré in 1964, and her Violin Concerto Due Canti e Finale was premiered by Yehudi Menuhin in 1977.

Priaulx Rainier was born in 1903 in Howick, Natal, South Africa, to a father of Huguenot descent and an English mother. One of her sisters was a cellist. She studied the violin at the South African College of Music in Cape Town after her family moved there when she was aged 10, but moved permanently to London at the age of 17, in 1920, when she took up a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music (RAM). She studied there with Rowsby Woof and Sir John Blackwood McEwen. She taught at Badminton School, Bristol, and also played violin in a string quartet. She had encouragement as a composer from Arnold Bax, and studied with Nadia Boulanger during 1937 in Paris but considered herself essentially self-taught.

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