His early musical education took place at the ILEA Centre for Young Musicians[verification needed], specialising in flute (though also playing piano and singing in choirs).
Causton began his formal composition training in India under the direction of Param Vir, before studying for a bachelor's degree at the University of York under Roger Marsh between 1990 and 1993.
He also undertook a Foundation Scholarship at the Royal College of Music, studying composition under Jeremy Dale Roberts and conducting under Edwin Roxburgh.
Causton's contemporary Julian Anderson (former Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music) has described him as being one of "the most original of his generation" and of possessing "exceptionally high standards of invention and imagination.
[2] In December 2010, it was announced that Causton had been selected as one of twenty composers to participate in the New Music 20x12 project as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
[7] He has also experimented with compositions utilising unusually placed sound sources - his radical 2001 arrangement of the Sanctus from Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame featured two instrumental groups separated as far as possible (a strategy which anecdotally once broke up a Sinfonia 21 rehearsal when a "burly, tattooed Fire Officer" took exception to one of the groups blocking a fire exit).
[8] Causton has cited Pierre Boulez, Sir Michael Tippett, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Elliott Carter, Carl Nielsen, and Igor Stravinsky as particular musical inspirations.
"[9] In 2015, Causton was commissioned to compose a new carol to be premièred at the King's College service of Nine Lessons and Carols: The Flight was set to a poem by George Szirtes; Causton explained that he 'had a growing sense that at this precise moment it is perverse to be writing a piece about a child born in poverty, away from home and forced to flee with his parents, without in any way paying reference to the appalling refugee crisis that is unfolding.
I certainly have favourite types of harmony and habits of voice-leading, part-writing, and instrumentation, but that's not really the same thing...it's usually more intuitive and I work hard trying to 'feel my way' into a piece - and often towards the end find myself paring material away so that what remains feels quite tightly written.
"[13] Regarding his inspirations for individual compositions, Causton has said "I suppose in one sense they come from whatever I feel I need to do in a particular piece - currently, for example, I'm really letting my hair down and doing some things that not long ago I would have considered in bad taste.