Henry Broughton Raynor (29 January 1917 – 23 July 1989[1]) was a musicologist and a British author.
He was born at 11 Mellor Street, Moston, Manchester, in England, to Gertrude Raynor, an examiner of waterproof garments.[2] The Raynor family was poor and Raynor's formal education was limited by the family's lack of resources.[1] Poor health in childhood left him with time to listen to music and to read extensively.[1]
He wrote several books, mainly relating to classical music. His opus magnum, The Social History of Music, ranges from ancient to 20th-century music, placing composers and their work in cultural and economic contexts.[3]
An example of Raynor's thought is his thesis that the orchestral bombast that developed in nineteenth-century Romantic music was spurred by the need to capture and maintain a fickle, musically untrained paying audience. The demise of aristocratic patronage after the Napoleonic Wars left composers and performers in search of new ways to sustain a career in music.