Peter Warlock was one of English music’s maverick figures—a passionate admirer both of Delius and of Elizabethan music of the 16th century, two very different influences that helped to shape his own style as a composer of songs and choral music. His real name was Philip Heseltine, born in London’s Savoy Hotel in 1894,. Rejecting his father’s profession for a life in music, Heseltine pursued an erratic and combative career as a music critic, while building turbulent friendships with fellow-artists Frederick Delius, D. H. Lawrence, W. B. Yeats and the Dutch composer Bernard van Dieren. When Heseltine submitted some songs to a music publisher with whom he had quarrelled, he used the name “Peter Warlock”; the publisher took the songs, and Heseltine kept the name for his composing activities. In spite of a feckless and alcohol-fuelled lifestyle, he produced an output of over 100 songs, besides choral works that include small masterpieces in “Bethlehem Down” and “Balulalow” (Lullaby), and The Curlew (1922), a darkly brooding sequence of Yeats settings for tenor and chamber group. In 1930, after a period of depression, Heseltine was found dead in his gas-filled basement flat in London.