A brief life history of Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock)

Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock) was born on 30 October 1894 in relative affluence at the Savoy Hotel in London. His music and scholarship were held in high regard in musical circles of the period, but he struggled with financial hardship and self-doubt, and died, probably by his own hand, on 17 December 1930, aged only 36. The Peter Warlock Society has, since 1963, played a major role in bringing his music and writings to the attention of the world.

The picture shows Philip (centre) at Eton circa 1910 with two of his classmates. Mostly self-taught in composition, he was greatly inspired by composers of his day, notably Delius, Quilter, van Dieren and Bartók at different stages of his life. Known principally for his songs, he composed around 130 in his lifetime, with particular sympathies for the Elizabethan poets as well as his contemporaries, W.B. Yeats, Robert Nichols and Bruce Blunt, the latter two being his close friends. He felt a strong Celtic affinity leading him to study the Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Manx and Breton languages. He also wrote 24 part songs, 12 items of vocal chamber music and six instrumental works, including what is probably his best-known work, Capriol for string orchestra.

Warlock’s earliest compositions to receive critical acclaim were composed during the period 1918-1920. These included Corpus Christi, As dew in Aprylle and My ghostly fader. During the early 20s he also became involved in music journalism, as editor of The Sackbut. Moving to his family home in Wales in 1921 he enjoyed perhaps the most settled and prolific period of his life and completed The Curlew, many of his finest songs, such as the Lilligay cycle, and completed a biography of Delius.


He moved to Eynsford, Kent in 1925. The picture on the left shows the cottage where he lived as it is today. Here Warlock led a colourful life of revelry and creativity in the company of the composer E. J. Moeran, Warlock’s girlfriend Barbara Peache, thier housekeeper, Hal Collins, and the numerous visitors to their rural idyll. Here some of them are pictured in the garden of the Five Bells pub, which was, and still is, opposite the cottage.



While living in Eynsford he composed some of his most highly regarded works, including the carol Bethlehem Down, Capriol and the three Belloc song settings, as well as transcribing many seventeenth-century manuscripts and writing books on The English Ayre, and on the composer Gesualdo. A worse than usual financial crisis forced him to leave in 1928. What little he wrote in his last two years included some of his finest songs, such as The Frostbound Wood and The Fox He died in December 1930, of gas poisoning, in his flat in Chelsea.