Addinsell

Started by Sean, August 20, 2007, 12:42:50 PM

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Sean

Presenly listening to a few of his works beyond Warsaw concerto, harmless pre-war English light music occasionally graced with a good melody. The Smokey mountains, The Isle of apples, Tom Brown's schooldays, Journey to romance, Fires over England etc, some of these piano concertante works: it fills in the picture of the period.

vandermolen

Quote from: Sean on August 20, 2007, 12:42:50 PM
Presenly listening to a few of his works beyond Warsaw concerto, harmless pre-war English light music occasionally graced with a good melody. The Smokey mountains, The Isle of apples, Tom Brown's schooldays, Journey to romance, Fires over England etc, some of these piano concertante works: it fills in the picture of the period.

There's a good Chandos CD of his film music. His score for "Goodbye Mr Chips" (original 1939 Robert Donat version..not ghastly musical version with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clarke) was  excellent. He composed a very authentic sounding school song for the movie.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

sound67

When asked about English film composers of the 1930s, Miklós Rózsa (who was then working in England) said that they all orchestrated their own scores, "except for Richard Addinsell, who was a dilettante".

Although hiring orchestrators for film scores became standard practice (in the US, Rózsa had to hire an orchestrator, Eugene Zador, because he wasn't allowed under union rules to orchestrate his own scores), some composers did so because they were simply incapable of putting pen to paper. Addinsell was such a man, basically a vaudeville-trained tunesmith who could play the piano but not write scores. Even his most famous piece, the "Warsaw Concerto", was arranged and orchestrated by someone else, in that case Roy Douglas.

The modern equivalent are men like Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer.

Still, some of "Addinesell's" scores are highly enjoyable for their well-crafted melodies, such as Goodbye Mr. Chips, Tom Brown's Schooldays, and Scrooge. But the incidental music is always rather crude.

Thomas
"Vivaldi didn't compose 500 concertos. He composed the same concerto 500 times" - Igor Stravinsky

"Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours." - Norman Lebrecht

vandermolen

Quote from: sound67 on September 12, 2007, 08:25:03 AM
When asked about English film composers of the 1930s, Miklós Rózsa (who was then working in England) said that they all orchestrated their own scores, "except for Richard Addinsell, who was a dilettante".

Although hiring orchestrators for film scores became standard practice (in the US, Rózsa had to hire an orchestrator, Eugene Zador, because he wasn't allowed under union rules to orchestrate his own scores), some composers did so because they were simply incapable of putting pen to paper. Addinsell was such a man, basically a vaudeville-trained tunesmith who could play the piano but not write scores. Even his most famous piece, the "Warsaw Concerto", was arranged and orchestrated by someone else, in that case Roy Douglas.

The modern equivalent are men like Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer.

Still, some of "Addinesell's" scores are highly enjoyable for their well-crafted melodies, such as Goodbye Mr. Chips, Tom Brown's Schooldays, and Scrooge. But the incidental music is always rather crude.

Thomas

Interesting!

Thanks Thomas
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

BachQ

Quote from: Sean on August 20, 2007, 12:42:50 PM
Presenly listening to a few of his works beyond Warsaw concerto, harmless pre-war English light music occasionally graced with a good melody. The Smokey mountains, The Isle of apples, Tom Brown's schooldays, Journey to romance, Fires over England etc, some of these piano concertante works: it fills in the picture of the period.

So what's your conclusion, Sean?  Give us Addinsell in a nutshell .........

karlhenning

Quote from: The departed SeanPresenly listening to a few of his works beyond Warsaw concerto.

Hard to believe that Sean felt that this justified creating an Addinsell thread.  I've never listened to anything of his other than the Warsaw Concerto; and I am reminded why, every time WCRB trots out this old rickety chestnut.

karlhenning

Quote from: sound67 on September 12, 2007, 08:25:03 AM
(in the US, Rózsa had to hire an orchestrator, Eugene Zador, because he wasn't allowed under union rules to orchestrate his own scores)

Sometimes I think, What a strange country I do live in . . . .

BachQ

Quote from: karlhenning on December 31, 2007, 01:14:07 PM
Hard to believe that Sean felt that this justified creating an Addinsell thread.  I've never listened to anything of his other than the Warsaw Concerto; and I am reminded why, every time WCRB trots out this old rickety chestnut.

Karl,

Your mistake is that you're assuming that Sean uses a "filtering mechanism" to distinguish valid threads from those unworthy of publication .......

karlhenning

Well observed! Would Mr Here's-My-Top-1,527-Composers have a 'filtration mechanism'?

Not in this life-cycle . . . .