The composer Adrian Sutton, who has died of cancer aged 58, became best known for his music for a string of theatrical hits, many of them for the National Theatre, over the last two decades. These included Coram Boy (2005), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2012, which earned him an Olivier award), Tony Kushner’s Aids-era epic Angels in America (2017, prompting a Tony award nomination), and above all War Horse.

Following its initial production at the National in 2007, War Horse became a record-breaking phenomenon in the West End – the Times called it “the theatrical event of the decade” – before going on to international success, winning five Tony awards in 2011 for its Broadway production.

In 2014 it featured in a special concert performance at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and two years later War Horse: The Story in Concert premiered at the same venue, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Joanna Lumley and Michael Morpurgo, the author of the War Horse novel. A recording was released in 2017.

Sutton remarked on how the story of a horse sent to the western front in the first world war matched the essential Englishness in his music, influenced by his passion for composers such as Benjamin Britten, Edward Elgar and especially William Walton.

The score also deployed English folk songs of the period, on which Sutton worked with the folk musician John Tams, a collaboration that brought them an Olivier award nomination. “The arc of War Horse – moving from tranquil English countryside to the shattering horrors of trench warfare – afforded me a wide exploration of my palette,” he said.

Sutton described how his work at the National had broadened his creative horizons and “taught me the value of collaborative environments in rehearsal rooms, with world-class actors and directors, real flesh-and-blood performers whom I can react to in real time”.

He also composed for productions in other theatres, including Cyrano de Bergerac (2019) and Dr Semmelweis (2022, both Bristol Old Vic), and Murder on the Orient Express (2022, Chichester).

His score for Ken Russell’s film of Treasure Island for Channel 4 (1995) came from a period when he was a partner in a company in Soho (1992-2005), composing “applied music”, much of it for television commercials. He made the best of a world he found to be brutal: “When you’re faced with infinite possibilities it can be quite paralysing, so a very good first step in the composition process is to narrow down what your field of vision is and work with the restrictions.”

For the comedian and satirist Chris Morris he composed music for the Blue Jam show on Radio 1, the Jam television series (Channel 4) and the 2002 short film My Wrongs 8245-8249 & 117, starring Paddy Considine.

Chris’s brother Tom Morris was artistic director of Battersea Arts Centre in London, and in 2003 he commissioned Sutton as one of the composers contributing to its production Newsnight: The Opera. He was assigned the famous 1997 confrontation between the home secretary Michael Howard and Newsnight interviewer Jeremy Paxman – Howard’s part was impishly assigned to a soprano.

In 2004 Tom Morris became an associate director at the National, and urged Sutton to make a pitch to write music for an adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s novel Coram Boy. The story was based around Thomas Coram’s 18th-century foundling hospital in London, of which the composer Handel was a benefactor. Sutton incorporated elements of Handel’s music in his score.

Born in Tenterden, Kent, Adrian was the son of Audrey (nee Hooper) and Henry Sutton. His parents separated when he was three, and he and his two elder brothers, Steven and Clive, moved with their mother to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

She subsequently married Norman Bisby, a British special needs teacher and TV presenter, but his political sympathies made him a target for the country’s regime, and when Adrian was 11 the family had to make a hasty escape to South Africa, pursued by armed militiamen, with Norman clutching a sack of cash.

A precocious musical talent, Adrian could reproduce tunes on the piano from the age of three or four. In South Africa, he went to Rand Park high school, near Johannesburg, studied with Alan Solomon, one of the country’s leading violinists, and took easily to other instruments.

When his military service in South Africa was coming due, the family returned to the UK, and he took a music degree at what is now Goldsmiths, University of London, the only British university to have a Fairlight synthesiser, a revolutionary device used by artists including Mike Oldfield, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

His long-term partner Matthew Gough said: “He had a traditional focus on musicality and not just using the technology as a gimmick. He wanted to make electronic music in the way that an orchestra made music.”

Then he worked as a lecturer and research assistant and briefly for Ziff Davis, a firm specialising in computer and technology publishing, as reviews editor at PC Direct magazine, having taught himself how to develop software from his early teens.

He wrote about the sense of urgency that sprang from his bowel cancer diagnosis three years ago. It spurred him to organise a Seize the Day concert of orchestral works at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in 2023, again with the RPO. An album followed in 2024: the main work is Sutton’s Violin Concerto, with Fenella Humphreys as soloist, and it also includes a further suite from War Horse.

At the time of his death, Sutton was working on a two-piano version of Aerobatics Over Lake Wanaka, originally composed for the six pianos of Piano Circus.

He is survived by Matthew, his brothers, Steven and Clive, and his mother, Audrey.

• Adrian Geoffrey Sutton, composer, born 15 August 1967; died 10 October 2025