More British Film Music of the 40s

A few years ago I put up a fairly extensive compilation of British film music from the 1940s in vintage performances. Here is a supplement, covering some notable pieces left out of the first collection, including music by Hubert Bath, Richard Addinsell and Arnold Bax.

Bath - Cornish Rhapsody

Hubert Bath wrote many film scores and much other music, but will be remembered most for his "Cornish Rhapsody," one of the best of the quasi-concertos that followed the success of Richard Addinsell's "Warsaw Concerto" of 1941.

Bath wrote the "Cornish Rhapsody" for the 1944 film Love Story, a wildly melodramatic love triangle set in Cornwall, with one character dying of heart disease and another going blind. Margaret Lockwood is the former party, a composer-pianist who writes and performs the Rhapsody during the proceedings.

Margaret Lockwood in Love Story

Hubert Bath

Lockwood could play piano, so she reportedly is convincing in the part. The performance heard on the soundtrack, however, was by Harriet Cohen, a distinguished pianist who also features in the Bax score discussed below. 

The composer conducts the London Symphony for this well recorded performance.

Addinsell - Music from Blithe Spirit

Noel Coward's 1941 stage fantasy, Blithe Spirit, was adapted for the screen in 1945. Margaret Rutherford, Fay Compton and Kay Hammond returned from the West End cast, but Rex Harrison replaced Cecil Parker. The American poster above claimed it was a "spicy screen comedy" and "in Blushing TECHNICOLOR," although it is hardly spicy and would make no one blush. It is witty and diverting, however.

Director David Lean and Richard Addinsell

This supernatural comedy did not call for the sort of pianistic dramatics that Richard Addinsell had employed for Dangerous Moonlight's concerto. These two excerpts - the Prelude and a Waltz - are much lighter in tone while conveying a bit of unease, in keeping with the goings-on in the film.

These recordings are again from the London Symphony, with the ubiquitous Muir Mathieson at the podium.

Bax - Music from Oliver Twist

David Lean was also the director for the 1948 film adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist. The film turned out to be both highly influential and controversial for what was considered to be an anti-semitic portrayal of Fagin.

The music for Oliver Twist was by Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953), who wrote relatively little towards the end of his life, but did score a few films. The recorded excerpts include the "Oliver Theme," "The Pickpocketing," "The Chase," "Fagin's Romp" and "The Finale." Muir Mathieson conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Harriet Cohen and Arnold Bax in 1921

Harriet Cohen is featured in the "Oliver Theme," which is lovely but diffuse, as Bax's music tended to be. "The Pickpocketing," "The Chase" and "Fagin's Romp" are largely busy music. "The Finale" is Elgarian, which would seem suited to the tale's uplifting ending.

Muir Mathieson in commanding form

The sound is very good in the Bath and Addinsell pieces, which come from 78s. The Oliver Twist music is from a 10-inch LP that also includes the "Cornish Rhapsody" and the "Warsaw Concerto." I've chosen to use a 78 transfer for the Rhapsody because it had better sound. The "Warsaw Concerto" can be found in my first compilation of British film music, taken from 78s. That collection also incudes my personal favorite of the quasi-concertos, Charles Williams' "Dream of Olwen" from While I Live.

The 78s are remastered from Internet Archive sources. The LP can be found in my collection. The download includes labels, cover scans and reviews.

Music for 1940s British Films, Plus Songs for a Change of Seasons

Muir Mathieson

This post supersedes and builds on one from the early days of the blog devoted to music from British films of the 1940s. It now is more than twice as extensive - including 16 examples drawn from the best films composers of the era - Vaughan Williams, Rosza, Addinsell, Mischa Spoliansky, Allan Gray, Bax, Alwyn, Ireland, Charles Williams and Arthur Benjamin - all in vintage performances. These come primarily from two albums, as detailed below.

Also today, to mark the transition between seasons, David F. has provided us with two of his fine compilations.

Summer Turns to Autumn

David has prepared a set of songs both for the waning of summer and for the coming of fall - "A Farewell to Summer" and "Autumn Auguries." These total 60 selections by artists known and obscure, as always well programmed and carefully considered. The downloads (links in comments) include David's thoughts on the music and the seasons.

One of our readers recently called his compilations "brilliant" - and I won't disagree!

'Music for Films' - the Columbia Entré LP

My 2009 post was mainly devoted to an early 50s Columbia Entré LP, Music for Films, which was almost entirely composed of British releases of the 1940s. The various recordings originated with EMI, and included performances by the Queen's Hall Light Orchestra as conducted by Charles Williams or Sidney Torch, and the Philharmonia conducted by Ernest Irving.

Here is what I wrote about these recordings a decade ago, much augmented.

The only well-known item on the record is the one American item, Miklos Rózsa's music from Spellbound, here in a performance led by Charles Williams.

The best-known composer represented is Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose beautiful score for the Loves of Joanna Godden was almost unknown until a more recent re-recording. Here the music is performed by the Philharmonia and Irving, the music director of Ealing Studios.

 

Ernest Irving and Ralph Vaughan Williams at a recording session

The little-known composer Allan Gray appears with two very effective items - the memorable prelude from Stairway to Heaven and the theme from This Man Is Mine. These pieces are apparently all that was ever recorded of Gray's film music. The composer left Germany after the ascension of the Nazis, as did Mischa Spoliansky, also represented in the collection.

Mischa Spoliansky

Much of the Entré LP, in fact, is devoted to three pieces by the now little-known (but very talented) Spoliansky. His "A Voice in the Night," from Wanted for Murder, is one of the most effective of the many quasi-romantic film concertos that turned up following the 1941 success of Richard Addinsell's "Warsaw Concerto." The album also contains Spoliansky's music from Idol of Paris and That Dangerous Age.

Lord Berners in repose

Finally, the Entré LP includes the Nicholas Nickleby music from the eccentric composer-novelist-painter Lord Berners (Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson), who wrote concert as well as film music and was a friend of Constant Lambert and William Walton. I don't care for Berners' music, but he cut quite a figure!

'Film Music' - the 1947 Decca-London Album

Like EMI, UK Decca was active in the film music realm during the 1940s. I have included a new transfer of a six-sided 78 album, Film Music, from the London Symphony and Muir Mathieson, the music director for a large number of British films.

Mathieson's set is largely given over to composers better known for concert than film music. It leads off with one of the most beautiful themes ever written by Vaughan Williams - the hymn-like Epilogue from the film 49th Parallel.

Arthur Benjamin

Next is what is possibly Arthur Benjamin's greatest hit - the "Jamaican Rhumba" of 1938, which doesn't seem to be film music at all [thanks Boursin for the tip!]. Benjamin's other popular favorite ishis "Storm Clouds Cantata" (not included here), featured at the climactic moments of both versions of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Sir Arnold Bax's music for the short film Malta G.C. was one of his few scores for the screen. It concludes with an Elgarian march.

William Alwyn

We return to Jamaica for another well-known use of its music, as captured in William Alwyn's score for The Notorious Gentleman. Neither the Alwyn nor Benjamin pieces were what you would call authentic, but are enjoyable nonetheless. Alwyn was equally renowned for his film and concert scores.

The final composer in this set - John Ireland - only composed for one film, The Overlanders, which involved a cattle drive in Australia. (One wonders how they attracted people into the theaters for that scenario.) Ireland was an uneven composer, and this is not among his best work, although it has enjoyed several recordings, all of which I seem to own.

Bonus Items

Richard Addinsell

The talented Richard Addinsell was not represented on either album above, but I have added two of his finest themes as a bonus. First is the original recording of music from Passionate Friends by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Muir Mathieson, which comes from another Entré album that otherwise does not contain film music. (Parenthetically, I saw David Lean's Passionate Friends a long time ago, and remember it as excellent.)

I also wanted to include perhaps the most popular and influential piece of film scoring from that period - Addinsell's "Warsaw Concerto" from Dangerous Moonlight. Here from the original 78, Muir Mathieson conducts the London Symphony with uncredited pianist Louis Kentner.

As a final bonus, I have included the "Dream of Olwen" music from While I Live, another notable quasi-concerto of the period. The composer was Charles Williams, who conducted several of the works on the Entré LP above. In this recording William Hill-Bowen was the pianist, with George Melachrino leading his orchestra on an HMV 78.

All transfers are from my collection, except for the bonus items, which are remastered from lossless needle-drops from CHARM and the Internet Archive. The sound is good in all cases.

Constant Lambert and Brian Easdale

I'm planning to present a series of posts devoted to the 20th century English composer-conductor Constant Lambert, starting with this 10-inch LP that couples scenes from his Horoscope ballet with music from The Red Shoes composed by Brian Easdale.

Lambert was a talented man, skilled at both writing and performing music. He wrote the music for Horoscope in 1937 for a production at the Vic-Wells Ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton. It is thought that the scenario in some ways paralleled his relationship with dancer Margot Fonteyn, who assumed one of the leading roles.

Michael Somes and Margot
Fonteyn in Horoscope

Lambert was then only 32, but he had already written most of the music he would finish in his brief life, which ended in 1951, two years after these recording sessions.

This LP contains just two of the nine surviving sections of the ballet music: the gorgeous, Ravelian "Saraband for the Followers of Virgo" and a Bacchanale slightly reminiscent of another astrological work, Holst's The Planets.

Lambert actually recorded five of the ballet's scenes - three with the Liverpool Philharmonic in 1945 and these two with the Philharmonia in 1949. The Liverpool sessions are not represented on this LP, but I have included them in the download as a bonus. (Not my transfer, although I did clean up the sound.)

Constant Lambert

Lambert was also a witty critic, notably in his 1934 book Music, Ho!, which contains the oft-cited assessment, "The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder." I've included the book in the download, courtesy of Project Gutenberg Canada.

Brian Easdale

I don't mean to slight the other work on this record, which combines Brian Easdale's prelude and ballet music from the remarkable 1948 Powell-Pressburger film, The Red Shoes. This is far and away the composer's best known work, although it does not match the quality of Lambert's score. Easdale had a long and fruitful working arrangement with Powell and Pressburger, scoring seven of their films. He won an Academy Award for this music.

This record is not the original soundtrack, which was conducted by Easdale and, in the ballet, Sir Thomas Beecham. It is a version done in 1949 by film music specialist Muir Mathieson and the Philharmonia.

Both recording sessions were held in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, and both resulted in superb sound. The English Columbia ad below suggests that the company thought that both the Lambert and Easdale 78 sets would make dandy Christmas presents in 1949, and I might have liked to receive them myself, had I not been nine months old and more inclined to the likes of "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo."

Click to enlarge