Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Composer best known for lyrical film and TV scores including Land Girls and Judge John Deede; also a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music.
On the island
Eight records
Country Dance (Gig) from Water Music
This piece was written for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee pageant in 2012. I conducted it on a barge in pouring rain, but the feeling of goodwill from millions of people lining the riverbanks was overwhelming.
When I was about eight, a friend of my mother's gave me a book of Beatles tunes arranged for small hands. Eleanor Rigby was the first piece I learned, and it fired my imagination and made me realize how much fun it was to make music.
When I auditioned for Guildhall, I prepared this piece. I would listen over and over again to Horowitz's performance, and I think I began to believe I'd actually written the music myself – completely delusional wishful thinking.
Turangalîla-SymphonieFavourite
Berlin Philharmonic, Kent Nagano
My brother brought me home a recording of this piece when I was struggling with avant-garde music at college. It opened up a new world – modern, exciting, vivid, and it paints pictures. Messiaen calls it a hymn to joy.
Allegro Legero from the third movement of the Caledonian Suite
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Wind Orchestra and Academy Brass
This piece reminds me of Buxton Orr's Scottish roots, the twinkle in his eye, and his sense of humour that I only discovered two years into knowing him. I wish his music were played more.
I saw On Golden Pond as a teenager. The opening titles with this gorgeous Dave Grusin piano piece completely drew me into the mood of the film, and I thought, 'Writing music for pictures – this has got to be the best job in the world.'
La Mer: II. Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim
I love the sea, and Debussy's La Mer is a masterpiece of conjuring images of the ocean. My parents loved Eastbourne, and we used to go there together. This piece reminds me of lovely times with them.
One of my favourite film composers is John Barry. This is him writing pure John Barry, away from film, and it conjures images of glorious sunsets, wide open spaces, an expanse of ocean. It's hauntingly beautiful and introspective.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:34How would you encapsulate the importance of a good film score from the viewer's point of view?
For me, it's everything that you can't actually see on screen. So we can see the gorgeous cinematography, we can see the actors. What we can't see is the subtext, what's going on underneath, what the actors are perhaps feeling. And often a director will say to me, Look, I've shot this scene and you know what? It hasn't got quite enough passion in it. You know, it's a love scene and there isn't enough passion there. Can the music add passion? Can it add what isn't there necessarily on the screen?
Presenter asks
2:53When you're working, where does the score begin?
Yeah. The thing is, what I love about this job is that there's a film to inspire me. So I'm sitting at the piano and I'm watching images, and my job is to write music that helps that storytelling and somehow feel so seamless with it that that music was always intended to be with those pictures. They could never be apart. It's so intriguing.
Presenter asks
3:23Are you ever in a situation where a director asks you to add passion or emotion that wasn't captured on screen, and you think 'I'm good, but I'm not that good'?
The keepsakes
The book
The Penguin Book of English Verse
I'm going to take, if I may, the Penguin Book of English Verse because it covers over 600 years of English poetry. There's Chaucer and Wordsworth and Keats and Dylan Thomas. And I love setting words to music so I could think of little tunes to suit the poetry. I could sing them to myself. And the wonderful thing about being on a desert island is that because there's nobody else around, I could sing these wonderful songs that I'm going to be writing on the island. And nobody would be around to listen to my dreadful singing voice and tell me to shut up. So it's a win-win.
The luxury
a grand piano with manuscript paper and an everlasting pencil
Could I have a grand piano and could I also have some manuscript paper and an everlasting pencil? ... I think I've got my pictures on the island because I can look out and there's the fantastic landscape and the sea and the wildlife and the insects and the birds to inspire me. And I would be able to write music just looking at what's in front of me. And then at the end of the day, when it started to get dark and a bit colder, because I'm saying practical, I think I'd find it very difficult to ... make a shelter, or look for wood, or tie a knot, or start a fire, so I could shut the lid of the piano. And then I could wriggle underneath it and it would double as a shelter.
Not that good. Well, the music can't save a bad film. You know, if a film isn't working, it's not working, and the music won't be able to save it. But a bad score can ruin a film, that's for sure.
Presenter asks
5:41Just take me through your working day. When does it begin and end, and what happens in it?
It very much depends on what I'm working on at the time. But if I've got a deadline, I will start very, very early. I love first thing in the morning. So I'll get up really, really early, um quarter to six at the piano, you know, writing early. That's the piano at quarter to six. … The best time of the day, girls, it really is. Because there's nobody around, it's quiet, it's such a beautiful part of the day, and I love it. I love between about six and nine.
Presenter asks
6:20What's the most ludicrous deadline you've ever written to?
Well, there've there've been many, many ludicrous. … The score for Wild I had to compose in three and a half weeks. It was about 70 minutes of orchestral music because there was a problem with the production. I was brought in very, very late in the day. … Sometimes on films I've written about two hours of music in about six weeks.
Presenter asks
6:41One of your most commercially popular pieces was written in the shortest time. Did that tell you anything about your own creative process?
But there is something about having to focus. I don't like not having a deadline. If I didn't have a deadline, I think I would waffle and I'd sit at the piano and procrastinate. But having that deadline, knowing that you're going to be in the studio on Friday with an 80-piece orchestra, is a fantastic way of getting the compositional juices flowing. So you must be highly disciplined as an individual. Yes, you absolutely have to be highly disciplined. But most musicians are, because when you're learning a musical instrument, you have to practice in order to get better. So that discipline is very well ingrained from a very young age.
“For me, it's everything that you can't actually see on screen.”
“The music can't save a bad film. You know, if a film isn't working, it's not working, and the music won't be able to save it. But a bad score can ruin a film, that's for sure.”
“My knicker drawer is a disaster area. My sweater drawer, my everywhere else in my life is not structured as well as it is with music.”
“Music is a great escape. I mean, all through my life, whenever I've had to face anything that's been difficult, music has been there as the answer to it.”
“I love about it, actually the danger of the job. Because the minute you finish one job, you're kind of out of work and then you've got to wait for the next one.”
“I could shut the lid of the piano. And then I could wriggle underneath it and it would double as a shelter.”