Elinor Remick Warren (February 23, 1900 – April 27, 1991) was an American contemporary classical composer and pianist. Her mother had been a student of a student of Franz Liszt and introduced her daughter to art music. Her father was considered a good amateur singer who had once considered pursuing a professional singing career. Warren trained as a pianist with Kathryn Cocke during high school and began taking composition lessons from Gertrude Ross in her sophomore year. She sent an early composition to the Schirmer music publishing company and received her first publishing contract with them before graduating from high school. Between high school and college, she studied piano with Harold Bauer and Leopold Godowsky. After attending Mills College for a year, she moved to New York, where she studied privately with composers Frank La Forge and Clarence Dickinson, both of whom were known for their art songs. Elinor supported herself as a singer's accompanist and toured with contralto Margaret Matzenauer.
She composed in a predominantly neo-Romantic style. In demand as both a pianist and a composer, she was a two-time soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and made several recordings as a collaborator with various singers. In the 1930s, she began to work on large-scale compositions, including her piece "The Harp Weaver," a work for female chorus, orchestra, and baritone soloist, and the symphonic "The Passing of King Arthur" (later retitled "The Legend of King Arthur"). In 1940, with the success of King Arthur, she stopped performing to concentrate on composing.
She actively composed on themes of nature, especially as seen in the American West, and on mysticism. She spent much of her composing career in Los Angeles, an unusual choice at the time, as New York was considered the center of new American music. Nonetheless, her works were widely performed during her lifetime.
On June 17, 1925, she married Dr. Raymond Huntsberger in Los Angeles; they divorced four years later. In 1936, she married film producer Zachary Wayne Griffin (1907–1981), with whom she had two daughters and a son. She died at her home at the age of 91.
Another composition without Live, Suite for Orchestra (1954; rev. 1960)
The musical language of the Suite for Orchestra is neo-romantic, and in this case, finds inspiration in the vast mountain panorama that can be seen from the Corona del Valle Ranch, owned by Warren.
"At our mountain ranch," writes Miss Warren, "we look out across wide stretches of desert to the rugged, snow-capped ranges of the High Sierra. The ever-changing images of the sky have particularly moved me at all hours and in different seasons. Although My Suite has no story or program behind it, the tones of the pomp of the sky and the long shadows of the mighty mountains are undoubtedly in the structure of the work. The mood of each movement is indicated by a few lines chosen from the writings of John Gould Fletcher. These poems are included on the flyleaf of the complete score of the Suite."