Arnold, Malcolm
ARNOLD, Malcolm
Composer. Nationality: British. Born: Northampton, England, 21 October 1921. Education: Attended the Royal College of Music, London, 1938–41. Military Service: British Army, 1944–45. Family: Married; two sons and one daughter. Career: 1941—joined London Philharmonic Orchestra as trumpeter (principal trumpet, 1942); 1945–46—played for the BBC Orchestra; 1946–48—rejoined the LPO; 1949—score for first fiction film, Britannia Mews; also composer of works for orchestra, incidental music for plays, the ballet Homage to the Queen (for 1953 coronation). Awards: Academy Award, for The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957. Commander, Order of the British Empire, 1970. Knights Batchelor, 1993.
Films as Composer:
- 1947
Avalanche Patrol (Swain)
- 1948
Charting the Seas (Lowenstein); Gates of Power (Squire); Badgers Green (Irwin); Women in Our Time (Nolbandov—short)
- 1949
Britannia Mews (The Forbidden Street) (Negulesco); The Frazers of Cabot Cove (Swingler); Drums for a Holiday (Taylor); Terra Incognito (Verity)
- 1950
Your Witness (Eye Witness) (Montgomery)
- 1951
Home at Seven (Richardson)
- 1952
The Ringer (Hamilton); The Sound Barrier (Breaking the Sound Barrier) (Lean); Stolen Face (Fisher); The Holly and the Ivy (O'Ferrall); Curtain Up (Smart); It Started in Paradise (Compton Bennett); Four Sided Triangle (Fisher)
- 1953
Albert, R.N. (Break to Freedom) (Gilbert); The Captain's Paradise (Kimmins)
- 1954
The Night My Number Came Up (Norman); Hobson's Choice (Lean); The Sea Shall Not Have Them (Gilbert); The Sleeping Tiger (Losey); The Beautiful Stranger (Twist of Fate) (Miller); The Belles of St. Trinian's (Launder); You Know What Sailors Are (Annakin)
- 1955
1984 (Anderson); I Am a Camera (Cornelius); The Deep Blue Sea (Litvak)
- 1956
Tiger in the Smoke (Baker); Trapeze (Reed); Port Afrique (Maté)
- 1957
Island in the Sun (Rossen); The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean); Wicked as They Come (Hughes)
- 1958
The Roots of Heaven (Huston); The Key (Tully); The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (Robson); Blue Murder at St. Trinian's (Launder); Dunkirk (Norman)
- 1959
Suddenly Last Summer (Mankiewicz)
- 1960
The Angry Silence (Green); Tunes of Glory (Neame); The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (Launder)
- 1961
No Love for Johnnie (Thomas); Whistle Down the Wind (Forbes); On the Fiddle (Operation Snafu) (Frankel)
- 1962
The Lion (Cardiff); The Inspector (Lisa) (Dunne)
- 1963
Nine Hours to Rama (Nine Hours to Live) (Robson); Tamahine (Leacock)
- 1964
The Thin Red Line (Marton); The Chalk Garden (Neame)
- 1965
The Heroes of Telemark (A. Mann)
- 1966
Sky, West, and Crooked (Gypsy Girl) (Mills); The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (Launder and Gilliat)
- 1967
Africa—Texas Style! (Marton)
- 1969
Battle of Britain (Hamilton) (co); The Reckoning (Gold)
- 1970
David Copperfield (Delbert Mann)
- 1975
N.E.L. Offshore News (doc) (co)
- 1980
The Wildcats of St. Trinian's (Launder)
Publications
By ARNOLD: articles—
"I Think of Music in Terms of Sound," in Music and Musicians (London), vol. 6, no. 11, 1956.
In British Composers in Interview, by M. Schafer, London, 1963.
On ARNOLD: book—
Poulton, Alan, The Music of Malcolm Arnold: A Catalogue, London, 1987.
Cole, Hugo, Malcolm Arnold: An Introduction to His Music, London, 1989.
Craggs, Stewart R., Malcolm Arnold: A Bio-Bibliography, Westport, 1998.
On ARNOLD: articles—
Fistful of Soundtracks (London), October 1980.
Soundtrack! (Hollywood), vol. 7, no. 26, 1988.
Soundtrack! (Hollywood), vol. 7, no. 27, September 1988.
Score (Lelystad), June 1993.
On ARNOLD: film—
1991 Malcolm Arnold at 70 (Rusmanis)
* * *One of the later recruits to the distinguished group of orchestral composers who worked for British films more especially during and after World War II, Malcolm Arnold began his main contribution to films in the 1950s. His first notable score was for David Lean's The Sound Barrier. Initially a trumpeter in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Arnold had received his training at the Royal College of Music; as a composer he was outstanding for the range of his musical styles, which made him ideally adaptable as a composer for film, since he readily adjusted himself with an infectious enthusiasm to each individual film's dramatic needs, exploiting his evident skill in pastiche composition. This was demonstrated early in his notable screen career in his close collaboration with Lean on The Sound Barrier. In the opening sequence, in which a Spitfire fighter test pilot, while descending in a steep dive, inadvertently hits the sound barrier, the music blends brilliantly with the sound effects that represent the onset of the battering of the aircraft and the pilot's momentary loss of consciousness before he regains his self-control and manages to pull his aircraft out of trouble. Lean, as the former meticulous film editor-turned-director calculating every frame of every shot, required of his composer a split-second response to each nuance of the action, integrating momentary musical phrasing, or brief stretches of musical composition with the orchestration of the carefully selected sound effects. As the Spitfire lifts and soars so do the strings of Arnold's composition, and when the diving aircraft begins to batter, the music shifts into an ominous, chattering sound which ceases only when the half-swooning pilot pulls the craft out of its dangerous dive.
In another of Lean's films, Hobson's Choice—the film version of a celebrated stage comedy about an alcoholic Lancashire bootmaker and domestic tyrant, played by Charles Laughton—the opening scene again shows the inventive integration of Arnold's work. The film combines a vigorous and tuneful music hall-style pastiche with significant sound-effects—the squeaky pendant sign outside the oldfashioned bootshop, a striking city clock, slow pans accompanied by music over the variety of shoes on display, all culminating in a sudden zip-pan to the shopdoor as it crashes open and Hobson staggers back home with a monstrous, climactic belch.
For Arnold, film music only became a branch of musical creativity if it was fully integrated with the visual-aural action of the picture, an inventive component in a multiple art-form, as it is in ballet and opera. Bernard Herrmann (Hitchcock's key composer) used to claim that film is truly "melodrama"—music-drama. Otherwise, he claimed, film music becomes a mere hybrid, just background music, trying to exist alongside, not with the movie. His view was to be shared by most of the prominent British composers of the period who were also enthusiastic composers for film, including William Alwyn, Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax, and others. Though Alwyn preferred to begin composition at script stage, working closely with the director, Arnold, a very rapid worker, preferred to work only at the rough-cut stage of the picture. He also preferred to use small combinations of instruments rather than large orchestral effects—25 instruments only, for example, in the case of Hobson's Choice. He was to work with Lean again on The Bridge on the River Kwai, which earned him an Oscar; other prominent films for which he wrote the music were The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and David Copperfield.
—Roger Manvell