CAREY BLYTON - BIOGRAPHY -

(Links to sub-sections are shown underlined and initially in blue)

This section has long since outgrown a single page and, as we add yet more content, we are taking the opportunity to re-structure the sub-pages which can be reached from here. In addition to the links underlined in the brief biographical text below, you may now select from:
THE BLYTON FAMILY HISTORY & FAMILY TREE
A CAREY CHRONOLOGY
CAREY'S 70th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS
CAREY'S DEATH & OBITUARIES

Now to continue with the biography . . . .

Carey Blyton, nephew of the children's writer Enid Blyton, was born at Beckenham, Kent, on 14 March 1932. He was the second child (and only son) of Hanly and Floss Blyton and his elder sister (born in 1926) was named Yvonne.

 He was educated at the Grammar School there and showed, during the earlier part of this time, not merely an apathy towards music but a marked hostility to it until, as a convalescent from polio during 1947/8, he was taught the piano to while away the time. His natural bent for science throughout his schooldays took him in 1950 to University College, London, as an undergraduate in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, where he began studying for a special degree in Zoology. After only one year there his increasing interest in music - he was at this time composing prolifically - forced a decision upon him and, abandoning his studies, he left to work as a research assistant for the Gas Council while studying music privately.

The years from 1948 - when Carey began to take piano lessons and start to show an increasing interest in music - to 1953 - when he commenced his formal training as a musician - were crucial years, in which his style as a composer was forged. These years included his participation in the activities of The Beckenham Salon as accompanist in his own songs and have been described by one writer as his 'naïve period'.

It must have been in the late 1940s or very early 1950s that Carey met Pat Dennis, introduced by a friend, and they were to marry in 1953. It is related that Carey forgot the wedding ring at the ceremony and had to borrow one from the mother of this same friend. Unfortunately the marriage did not last and, although few facts are known, it seems they were separated / divorced by 1957 or so.

In 1953 he entered Trinity College of Music, London, by examination, and during four years there he obtained all three college diplomas (Associate, Licentiate and Fellow) and in 1954 won the Sir Granville Bantock Prize for Composition. He studied harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and musical history with Dr William Lovelock, piano with Joan Barker, harpsichord with Valda Aveling and viola with Alison Milne.

In 1957 he obtained a B.Mus. (London) degree and was awarded by the Sir Winston Churchill Endowment Fund a 10-month scholarship in composition tenable at Det Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium, Copenhagen. There he studied composition, musical analysis and more advanced orchestration with the Danish Composer, Jörgen Jersild.

Returning to England in 1958, he became music editor to Mills Music Ltd in Denmark Street ('Tin Pan Alley'), which position he held for five years. This was the time when he met and married Mary (née Mills - no relation to Mills Music!). Mary used to meet Carey at the Bromley bus stop on the way back from work. Carey was living in a flat in a large house owned by two elderly ladies, Mary worked for Ferranti Ltd in Portland Place and was living with her parents in Beckenham - thus they would regularly meet at the bus stop. After a 3-year courtship they were married on 28 October 1961 in Beckenham Congregational Church. For three or four months they lived in Beckenham then, early in 1962, moved into Richard Rodney Bennett's old flat in Marylebone High Street. Here the impecunious couple 'shopped with Carey's naval telescope' - for example deciding what to buy or not to buy from Macfisheries, etc! Ten days before Matthew, their elder son, was born - in 1965 - they moved to Swanley, first to a new estate and later - in 1974 - to 'Hawthornden', Goldsel Road. Mary and Carey's second son, Daniel, was born in 1971.

After June 1963 he freelanced as composer, arranger, music editor and lecturer. He was Professor of Harmony, Counterpoint & Orchestration at Trinity College of Music, London, from 1963 to 1973, and Visiting Professor of Composition for Film, Television & Radio at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, from 1972 to 1983, where he pioneered the first course of tuition in these specialised aspects of musical composition at a musical conservatoire in this country. In September, 1964, he was appointed music editor to the Music Department of Faber & Faber Ltd (now Faber Music Ltd), which position he held until 1974. While at Faber's he was Benjamin Britten's personal editor, from 1963 to 1971, being responsible for the editorial work on that composer's works from Curlew River to Owen Wingrave, and on many works by Gustav Holst.

Carey Blyton is primarily a miniaturist, composing mainly songs, chamber music and short orchestral scores. His works include a series of guitar pieces for the Italian guitarist, Angelo Gilardino, published by Edizioni Bèrben, about a dozen works for the London Saxophone Quartet, many works involving wind instruments and works reflecting his life-long interest in the music and art of the East, particularly Japan. His interest in writing for children is shown in various commissions from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) for schools cantatas in the series Music Workshop, the incidental music for three Dr Who serials, the Victorian mini-melodramas (see below), and a number of books for children, including Bananas in Pyjamas a book of nonsense songs and poems which has made his name well-known throughout the English-speaking world.

In the documentary film and television fields, in which Carey Blyton worked since 1963, he contributed scores to several international prize-winning films such as Low Water, The Goshawk and Flying Birds, and incidental music to many BBC-tv productions such as Dr. Who, both Somerset Maugham series, Play for Today, The Wednesday Play and The Web of Life series. He has some 20 pieces in the recorded music libraries of several music publishers, including several for full orchestra, and in the period 1963 to 1971 he wrote the music tracks for some 30 television commercials.

Works in later years included The Girl from Nogami, a one act opera commissioned by the Opera Department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. A Sherlock Holmes Suite for Brass Quintet, commissioned by the London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble, Yugen for Solo Guitar, commissioned for an album of contemporary guitar music (Oxford University Press), Sweeney Todd the Barber, Dracula! or The Vampire Vanquished and Frankenstein or A Bolt from the Blue, three Victorian mini-melodramas for schools (the first two named recorded by Meridian Records), After Hokusai, 5 Duets for 2 Flutes based on Hokusai prints and The Indian Coffee House Roof Garden Orchestra Tango (or The Last Tango in Pondy) for Wind Quartet (for the Workshop 21 School Series), commissioned by Universal Edition Ltd and a Nursery Song Suite for SATB unaccompanied, commissioned by The Scholars for an EMI/Toshiba record.

Later commissions include two for the London Borough of Bromley's Battle of Britain Arts Festival, 1990 - Scramble!, a fanfare for brass, and an arrangement of Lilli Marlene for children's choir (almost 1000 voices!), two pianos and side-drum; and a little suite of 'mechanical pieces' for strings, commissioned by the Petersfield Area Schools' String Orchestra, called Musica Mechanica.

On the literary front, a sixth short story, A Very Good Rate of Exchange, appeared in the June, 1994 issue of Short Story International, USA; his memories of evacuation during World War II as a 12-year-old to Somerset to escape the V1's, Summer in the Country, have been published in an anthology of evacuee stories, Children in Retreat (Sawd Publications) and issued in the USA (Student Short Story International, June, 1994); and a commissioned short story, Beggar Your Neighbour, has appeared in an anthology of stories by disabled writers aimed at a disabled readership, published by Blackie & Son Ltd, for the National Library for the Handicapped Child. The Puffin paperback of this book was published in June, 1991, and the story by Carey Blyton was issued in the USA in Student Short Story International in September, 1994.

Chief among numerous unpublished writings is his monumental In Search of Serendipity, a travel journal of a six-month trip Blyton made to Sri Lanka and India between 1984 and 1985. Vastly entertaining and companionable, Blyton's charm and humour infiltrate virtually every sentence of this huge 'albatross' - as he came to view it and its demands to be kept up every day!

Carey Blyton enjoyed something of an 'Indian Summer' of creativity in his last years, though generally he was prolific throughout his life, as his catalogue shows. Late works of particular note (all published by Fand Music) nearly all exhibit his leanings toward 'the mysterious East', from In The Spice Markets of Zanzibar for brass quintet to Lyrics from the East for tenor and piano ( a short epigrammatic song-cycle based on Eastern poems, written for Ian and Jennifer Partridge). One of his very last works was El Tango Ultimo for symphony orchestra - the essence of Blyton's art in a brief 'Tango cromatico'. 

Also among these last compositions is Vale, Diana!, a poignant tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, scored for string orchestra, and his Dirge for St Patrick's Night (a Ballad for voice and piano) setting to music a poem by Elsa Corbluth written in memory of her daughter, Eilidh, who tragically died aged 18. 

His Collected Short Stories together with Summer in the Country were published by Fand in 2002, shortly before he died.

The 'Beckenham boy', Carey Blyton, was honoured by his home town in 2002 on the occasion of his 70th birthday by an exhibition and talk of his work at Beckenham Library. Many friends, supporters and colleagues contributed to an 'appreciation' which clearly showed the incredible diversity and range of interest, all reflected in his work, of this uniquely talented man. Unfortunately, owing to ill health, Carey was unable to attend (though a video recording was made) and he died on 13 July 2002 at Woodbridge in Suffolk, of cancer and post-polio syndrome.