Hinton, a native of
Dunfermline,
Fife, began studying music at the age of eleven; following the advice of
Benjamin Britten, he studied at the
Royal College of Music, where
Humphrey Searle and
Stephen Savage were among his teachers. Although he began composing at an early age, he later destroyed most of his pre-1985 output. His
Op. 1 was a
piano sonata (1962); although part of it was lost soon after it was written, the composer responded to a private request in 2020 to reconstruct it. His other compositions include sonatas, variations and other works for piano, a
violin concerto (dedicated to
Jane Manning), songs (amongst them settings of
Rabindranath Tagore, Hinton's Opp. 7 and 9), works for the
organ, a string quintet (for two violins, viola, cello, double-bass and
soprano, and lasting for 2 hours and 45 minutes in performance), and a
Sinfonietta. They include homages to
Karol Szymanowski (
Szymanowski-Etiud, Op. 32, for 18 wind instruments),
Richard Strauss (
Passeggiata Straussiana, for
euphonium and piano, Op. 39), and
Charles-Valentin Alkan in the Piano Sonata no. 5, which has a substantial passage marked "Alkanique". The latter influenced
Marc-André Hamelin in composing his own
Étude no. 4. Among those who have performed and recorded Hinton's works are
Donna Amato,
Jonathan Powell,
Yonty Solomon and
Kevin Bowyer. ==Sorabji==