John Arthur Casken (born 15 July 1949) is an English composer. Casken was born in Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. While at Barnsley Grammar School in the 1960s his music teacher played a recording of Berg's Violin Concerto, which had a lasting influence. He studied composition at the University of Birmingham with John Joubert and Peter Dickinson. He attended the Warsaw Academy of Music between 1971 and 1972, where he studied with Andrzej Dobrowolski but also met and became friends with Witold Lutosławski. He has lectured at the universities of Birmingham (from 1973) and Durham (from 1981), and between 1992 and 2008 he was Professor of Music at the University of Manchester. Casken's students include Michael Alcorn, David Jennings and James MacMillan.