Author
Alongside his distinguished career as a composer, Payne has simultaneously built up a substantial reputation as a writer on music, both as an author of books about Arnold Schoenberg and Frank Bridge and also as a well regarded music critic for the Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Country Life. He has been a visiting lecturer at a number of universities in Britain, Australia and the U.S.A.
Payne's famous realisation of the sketches to Elgar's third Symphony took several years to complete. When Elgar died in 1934, he left more than 130 pages of incomplete score for a third symphony. Although initially reluctant to allow anyone to use this material (Elgar himself had expressed a wish that no-one should "tinker" with the sketches), the Elgar family realised that in 2005 they would come out of copyright. They therefore approved Payne's elaboration of the sketches, on which he had been working and lecturing intermittently since 1993, and he subsequently completed the piece. Payne's version of the symphony was first performed in 1998 to immediate acclaim, and has received numerous subsequent performances and several recordings.
Payne has subsequently also composed a version of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6 from Elgar's incomplete sketches for the work, which received its first performance under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis at a Prom concert on 2 August 2006 - Payne's 70th birthday. In a radio interview on the BBC's Today programme on 28 April 2006 when he was asked about the March, Payne said that he had composed about 43% of the music and carried out all of the orchestration, amounting to well over half the piece. In the same interview he said that to carry out his completions he felt that he had to try to "become" Elgar, in much the same way that an actor would assume a stage role.
Payne is married to the distinguished soprano Jane Manning for whom he has composed a number of striking vocal works including the song cycle Evening Land. In 2007, the couple were jointly awarded Honorary Doctorates by the University of Durham.
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