Sir Malcom Arnold dies
Category: News
Film composer Arnold dies at 84
David Smith
Sunday September 24 2006
The Observer
The tormented but irrepressible career of Sir Malcolm Arnold, the most recorded British composer of all time and the first to win an Oscar, ended last night with his death at the age of 84.
Arnold, who won an Academy Award for his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai, passed away in hospital in Norfolk after suffering a chest infection.
Hours later, his newest work, a ballet version of The Three Musketeers, premiered at the Alhambra in Bradford, West Yorkshire. A special dedication to Arnold’s memory was made before the performance.
Arnold was prodigiously talented but had a tumultuous private life, plagued by severe depression, chronic alcoholism and attempts at suicide. He repeatedly ended up in hospital for insulin treatments and electric shock therapy. Yet he found sufficient peace to compose 132 film scores, including those for Whistle Down the Wind, Hobson’s Choice and The Belles of St Trinian’s. His prolific output also included nine symphonies, seven ballets, two operas, one musical and more than 20 concertos.
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber insisted that Arnold never received the credit he deserved. ‘I think he was a very, very great composer but uneven in his output,’ he said. ‘Because he had humour in his music he was never fully appreciated by the classical establishment. He was a total genius but a very badly behaved genius - but then so was Mozart.’
Arnold, the youngest of five children from a prosperous family of shoemakers in Northampton, was a rebellious teenager attracted to the creative freedom of jazz. He took up the trumpet after seeing Louis Armstrong play in Bournemouth and, at 17, won a scholarship at the Royal College of Music. By 1943, he was a principal trumpeter with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
His first symphony was performed in 1950 and three years later he wrote a coronation ballet, Homage to the Queen, which was premiered at Covent Garden. His growing reputation brought comparisons with Benjamin Britten and many commissions, including the film scores. He had to write the music for The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness and William Holden, in just 10 days but it won the Oscar in 1958, partly for its counterpoint melody to the ‘Colonel Bogie’ march.
In the Sixties, following the breakdown of his marriage, Arnold moved to Cornwall with his second wife, but he descended into alcoholism, causing another marital split.
Arnold, who was knighted in 1993, leaves behind two sons and one daughter. His 85th birthday next month was due to be celebrated by concerts around the world.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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There was a documentary about Malcolm Arnold on the TV a few years ago. I remember one bit where someone said he was so damaged they thought he might have had a lobotomy, but then it said ECT and drugs had probably been enough to do the damage! There is an article about the documentary here:
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/features/article53010.ece
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the author that Arnold came from a “disadvantaged” background. In fact he came from a family of wealthy shoemakers in Northampton which is a town that is famous for shoemaking. But there again, perhaps in the world of music it is a disadvantage to come from a family that made its money from making shoes. There was certainly tragedy in the family: his sister also had breakdowns and ECT; one of his three brothers was killed in the second world war; one committed suicide; and one of his sons is autistic.
I don’t know about the lobotomy (I tend to agree with the bit about drugs and ECT being capable of the damage), but one of the films he was commissioned to write the music for was “Suddenly last summer”. Apparently when he saw the mental hospital scenes, including one of a lobotomy, he had a breakdown and was given ECT and someone else completed the score for the film.
Interestingly, the man who looked after Arnold for the last twenty years said that he was suffering from frontal lobe dementia.
Here is what Arnold’s son Robert thinks about ECT:
“ECT has similarities to John Cleese thrashing his car with a branch, a fixing a TV by bashing the cabinet with a fist. Both methods sometimes work! Violence can be effective on a mechanical device. But a human being is not a mechanical device and the violence of ECT is an assault on a person by another person. Any therapeutic effect has to be measured against the patient’s reaction to the assault, which may either provoke violent outrage or else break the spirit, so the patient will do exactly as the doctors or family want in order to avoid more ECT. In my father’s case I think both reactions have occurred, violent indignation as well as fear and acquiescence. It is not very effective therapy, in my opinion.”
Thanks for the great follow-up, Sue.