Paynter's compositions included chamber music, choral works and two children's operas, The Space Dragon of Galata (1978) and The Voyage of St Brendan (1979).
Among teachers, Paynter’s best-known short piece is Autumn,[4] a setting of a Japanese haiku for classroom performance.
[6] As an educator, Paynter's publication in 1970 of Sound and Silence had a seminal influence of the practice of classroom music teachers.
Paynter was passionate in his conviction that music was exciting for children to explore independently and that the subject could be approached in a multitude of different ways.
[7] While the public face of music education in schools tended to concentrate on instrumental learning and teacher-directed performances by choirs and orchestras, the book introduced teachers to ways of helping pupils to explore and make their own interpretive decisions about sounds through working at composing projects.
[8] Paynter’s ideas influenced the development of music in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in the 1980s and in the British National Curriculum in the 1990s.