Richard Addinsell

Richard Stewart Addinsell (13 January 1904 – 14 November 1977) was a British composer, best known for film music, primarily his Warsaw Concerto, composed for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight (also known under the later title Suicide Squadron).

Life

Addinsell was taught at home. After studying at Hertford College, Oxford, he made incomplete attempts at studying Law, and then Music (at the Royal College of Music, spending time in Berlin and Vienna). However, both were abandoned without him obtaining formal qualifications. His style is very much of the "English Light music" style.^[1]

In 1932, with Clemence Dane, he wrote the incidental music for the Broadway adaptation of Alice in Wonderland by Eva Le Gallienne, starring Josephine Hutchinson (produced 1933). In 1947 it was revived, starring Bambi Linn.

Addinsell was known for his Christmas parties and was part of a social circle that included many British show business and Royal celebrities of the 1930s and '40s. He collaborated from 1942 with Joyce Grenfell, for her West End revues (including Tuppence Coloured and Penny Plain) and her one-woman shows.

The Warsaw Concerto was written for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight, and continues to be a popular concert and recording piece. The film-makers wanted something in the style of Sergei Rachmaninoff, but were unable to persuade Rachmaninoff himself to write a piece. Roy Douglas orchestrated the concerto. It has been recorded over one hundred times and has sold in excess of three million copies.

Addinsell also wrote the short orchestral piece Southern Rhapsody, which was played every morning at the start of TV broadcasts by the former Southern Television company in south of England from 1958 to 1981.

Addinsell retired from public life in the 1960s, gradually becoming estranged from his close friends. He was for many years the companion of the fashion designer Victor Stiebel, who died a year before Addinsell in 1976.

As was common with film music until the 1950s, many of Addinsell's scores were destroyed by the studios as it was assumed there would be no further interest in them. However recordings of his film music have been issued since his death, reconstructed by musicologist and composer Philip Lane from the soundtracks of the films themselves.

Film Credits

• The Amateur Gentleman (1936)
• Fire Over England (1937)
• Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939)
• Gaslight (1940)
• Dangerous Moonlight (1941; containing the Warsaw Concerto)
• Blithe Spirit (1945)
• Scrooge (1951)
• Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951)
• The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
• A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
• Beau Brummell (1955)
• The Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)

References

External links

• From MyFiles.com
• Richard Addinsell at the Internet Movie Database
• Southern Rhapsody - Southern Television 1950s/60s Start-up on YouTube

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