In 1934, a twenty-three-years-old former student of
Arthur Benjamin and Malcolm Sargent at the Royal College of Music, Muir
Mathieson, was appointed musical director of London Film Productions,
a company set up in 1931 by the Hungarian film director and producer
Alexander Korda at Denham studios on the outskirts of London, with the
express aim of reinvigorating a declining British film industry. Two
years later, Korda released Things to Come, a prestigious, futuristic
fantasy film starring Raymond Massey and featuring a musical score by
Arthur Bliss composed especially for the film and structurally inherent
in it.
Bliss’ score for Things to Come heralded the
advent of what Jan Swynnoe describes as a golden age for British film
music, which peaked in the decade of the 1940s, both during and after
the Second World War.
Mathieson, whose example was followed a little later
by Ernest Irving at Ealing studios, recruited leading serious composers
of the day for his projects, not only providing them thereby with much-needed
employment in difficult, austere times, but in the process lending the
distinction of their musical personalities to an industry whose artistic
reputation was notably enhanced in the process. International recognition
of the outstanding quality of the best British film scores of the period
was eventually gained by the world-wide success of such films as Laurence
Olivier’s masterly Henry V, with unforgettable music by William
Walton, and Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes, which in 1948 won,
for the first time by a British composer, an Academy Award for the best
original film score.
The first three chapters of this lucidly written book
are concerned to trace in outline the differences in approach to the
musical scoring of films in Britain and America during the period under
discussion, namely the 1930s and 1940s - the first two decades of sound-film
production. In simplified terms, these differences can be traced by
way of national traditions: on the one hand American film-making: extravert,
visual, favouring sensation and melodrama, and employing formulaic musical
scoring by a team of largely German/Austrian/Jewish refugee composers
steeped in the late-Romantic leitmotivic techniques of such European
masters as Wagner, Strauss and Puccini; and on the other, British film-making:
inward-looking, drawing on a long-established background of educated,
literary and theatrical endeavour, favouring complex character exploration
at the expense of visually-driven, cinematic exposition, and employing
the creative talents of largely native composers distinguished by their
uniquely recognisable musical personalities.
There follow three chapters exploring in analytical
fashion specific examples of feature-film scoring by British composers:
William Alwyn, Bernard Stevens, Malcolm Arnold, Arnold Bax (a single
chapter on David Lean’s Oliver Twist), Vaughan Williams, Lord Berners
and Grace Williams; two chapters examining dialogue-scoring in British
films of the 1930s and 1940s - that describing the impact of the Second
World War is particularly interesting; a chapter investigating the contribution
of foreign composers, such as Miklós Rózsa and Georges
Auric, to British films of the period; and finally a chapter discussing
British cinema of the 1950s, and composers (Alan Rawsthorne, Alwyn and
Arnold again, Benjamin Frankel) involved in what may now be seen as
a period of decline preceding the ‘new wave’ revival of the early 1960s,
which saw the arrival on the scene of specifically ‘film’ composers
such as Ron Goodwin and John Barry, who quite swiftly replaced their
older, ‘serious’ colleagues.
The book is completed by the inclusion of three appendices,
two of which are transcriptions of conversations recorded between the
author and, respectively, Roy Douglas, who worked as arranger and orchestrator
so notably and extensively with both Vaughan Williams and Walton, and
Doreen Carwithen, Alwyn’s widow and a film composer in her own right.
The third appendix is a reprint of a short article by Roy Douglas on
the background and genesis of Richard Addinsell’s famous ‘Warsaw
Concerto’, featured in the wartime movie Dangerous Moonlight.
There is much of interest in this book for those drawn to its subject.
Some of the films discussed in more detail are now rather obscure, and
not available to view, for instance, on video e.g. Blue Scar,
the first feature-length film scored by a female composer, Grace Williams;
and there is often a rather wearisome ‘British is best’ assumption underlying
the text, particularly in the earlier sections where American film music
is included in discussion. Nevertheless, a good read.
John Talbot
This appears courtesy of the BMS
Details of membership of the British
Music Society from
Stephen Trowell, 7 Tudor Gardens, Upminster, Essex RM14 3DE (
01708 224795
