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Philharmonia Orchestra & William Walton
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Philharmonia Orchestra & William Walton · William Walton was an English composer who wrote the music for fourteen films between 1934 and 1969. He was helped by Hyam Greenbaum and later by Roy Douglas, who orchestrated short pieces under his supervision. Walton did not like film music being performed in the concert hall. In his view, film music was not good film music if you could use it for anything else. Even so, he made a few exceptions, above all for the music to Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III.
Music and breakthrough
The film Henry V, based on Shakespeare's play, appeared in November 1944. Walton wrote the music in 1943 and 1944, and the London Symphony Orchestra recorded it under the direction of Muir Mathieson. Two separate movements, for strings alone, were allowed to be heard in the concert hall: the passacaglia The Death of Falstaff and Touch Her Soft Lips and Part. Walton conducted them himself with the Philharmonia Orchestra for a record that appeared in 1946 on HMV. That London orchestra also played the music for the film Hamlet of 1948. Later Malcolm Sargent, Muir Mathieson and Christopher Palmer made suites of it, and in 1963 Walton himself conducted the recording of Mathieson's suite.
Influence
A passacaglia is a form in which a short bass or theme motif keeps returning. That suits a deathbed: the piece sounds measured and solemn. The examples of Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III show that film music could also live on outside the cinema. For the history of pop this is important because Walton's film music forms a tradition from which later film composers drew.
Listening
Henry V – Suite: Passacaglia: The Death of Falstaff · Philharmonia Orchestra & William Walton, 1944