Malcolm Arnold: The Bridge on the River Kwai - Classic FM Classic FM Become a VIP Malcolm Arnold: The Bridge on the River Kwai The epic World War II film won 7 Oscars including Best Actor for Alec Guinness and Best Director for David Lean. Released: 1957 Directed by: David Lean Cast: Alec Guinness, William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa The Film: After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it. Composer: British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold . (1921-2006) won an Academy Award and a Grammy for his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Other notable film works include The Sound Barrier (1952), The Roots of Heaven (1958), The Key (1958) and Whistle down the Wind (1961).

Sir Malcolm Arnold; British composer won Oscar for 'River Kwai'; 84 | The San Diego Union-Tribune Sir Malcolm Arnold; British composer won Oscar for 'River Kwai'; 84 By Anne Midgette NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE October 25, 2006 Sir Malcolm Arnold, one of the best-known British composers of the 20th century, who wrote nine symphonies, composed 132 film scores and won an Oscar for “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” died Sept. 23 in Norwich, England. He was 84 and lived in Attleborough, near Norwich. Sir Malcolm's death at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital came on the night of the premiere of “The Three Musketeers,” a new ballet based on his music, in Bradford, England. The cause was widely reported as a chest infection. He had suffered from mild dementia for several years. Although he had been one of Britain's most popular composers, Sir Malcolm was widely referred to as a neglected genius in his waning years; his works are seldom played in concert halls. His music is deliberately tonal, melodic and sometimes witty. He also wrote it at a remarkable rate.

At the height of his powers, he composed six film scores a year in addition to other instrumental works, and he was said to have written the “River Kwai” score in a matter of days – six or 10, depending on the source. He is associated with the English musical tradition of Elgar and Holst, yet his brand of melodic music already was unfashionable when he was writing it. Critical opinion remains divided as to whether his works show lasting genius or simply remarkable facility. His association with supposedly lighter forms of music also rendered him suspect in the eyes of the classical establishment. His film scores included “Hobson's Choice” (1954), “Inn of the Sixth Happiness” (1958) and “Whistle Down the Wind” (1961), and he reproved himself for turning down “Lawrence of Arabia.” He wrote humorous pieces such as “A Grand, Grand Overture,” which featured three vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher, and made gestures unconventional at the time, such as working African and West Indian percussion instruments into his Fourth Symphony in a sympathetic reaction to the 1958 race riots in the Notting Hill section of London.

In 1969, he directed rock band Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Jon Lord's Concerto for Group and Orchestra. None of this helped him gain acceptance in the classical mainstream, though as a crossover artist he was ahead of his time. Sir Malcolm also was known as a “difficult man,” words that reflected a life of extremes: a hefty man who enjoyed heavy living and heavy drinking, and who suffered mental breakdowns so devastating that he was institutionalized several times and had a range of treatments that may or may not have included a lobotomy. Malcolm Arnold was born in Northampton, England, to a prosperous family of shoemakers. He began studying composition as a child, and his first love was the trumpet, which he took up when he was 12 after hearing Louis Armstrong. He played so well that he began appearing with professional orchestras while still a student at the Royal College of Music. He volunteered for military service in 1944. When World War II ended, he shot himself in the foot to expedite his discharge. After he returned to civilian life, he rejoined the London Philharmonic, playing first trumpet.

In 1948 he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship, which allowed him to compose full time, and he wrote his first symphony in 1949. Sir Malcolm maintained a frenetic level of compositional activity for two decades – in addition to the symphonies and film scores, he wrote seven ballets, more than 20 concertos and a huge range of music for chamber ensembles, choruses, brass bands and more. He is best remembered for his brilliant counterpoint melody to the “Colonel Bogie March” in Sir David Lean's “River Kwai.” His first marriage, to Sheila Nicholson in 1941, foundered in part as a result of the death of an infant daughter. His second marriage, to Isobel Gray in the 1960s, produced an autistic son and ended with a court order forbidding the alcoholic and increasingly dangerous composer to have any contact with his wife or child. In the 1970s and '80s, there were suicide attempts, hospital stays and a range of treatments and therapies, and his musical output fell to nearly nothing.

In 1984, Sir Malcolm was deemed unfit to live alone and placed by court order in the care of Anthony Day, who remained his caregiver and personal assistant for the rest of his life. His Ninth Symphony, finished in 1986, is dedicated to Day. He was knighted in 1993. Sir Malcolm is survived by his children, Katherine, Robert and Edward. A Malcolm Arnold Festival already had been scheduled in Northampton for the weekend of Oct. 21, his 85th birthday. ARNOLD, M.: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 (Ireland National Symphony, A. Penny) Malcolm Arnold (b. 1921): Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 Born, like Alwyn and Rubbra, in Northampton, Malcolm Arnold studied at the Royal College of Music, London.

Here his teachers included the "wonderful" Ernest Hall, principal trumpet of Sir Adrian Boult's BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Gordon Jacob, an "inspiring" non-academic traditionalist from whom, he claims, he learnt not only all he knew but also how "to talk about my music without embarrassment." Apart from a spell of voluntary military service from autumn 1944 to early 1945, Arnold's youth was spent as a professional orchestral player, mainly with the London Philharmonic (second trumpet 1942, principal trumpet 1943-44, 1946-48), but also for a brief post-war period with the BBC Symphony, second trumpet to his teacher, on contract from 23rd September 1945 to 16th January 1946. Comparatively glossed over by his biographer, Piers Burton-Page (Philharmonic Concerto, 1994), Arnold's time as a player in his mid-twenties on either side of the 1945 divide coincided with several of the greatest conducting legends of the century.

He played Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony under Fistoulari and Bernstein, and recorded it with Celibidache. He appeared in Furtwängler's ten historic British come-back concerts, in February and March 1948, including a complete Brahms cycle, a Beethoven Choral Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall, and a recording of the Second Symphony of Brahms. He recorded Beethoven's Eroïca Symphony under de Sabata. He played not only for his friends Basil Cameron and Constant Lambert, but also under Erich Kleiber, Clemens Krauss, Bruno Walter, Richard Tauber (a Beethoven Pastoral Symphony in January 1944), Galliera, Martinon, Enescu, Coates, Beecham and Boult. He accompanied Casals in the Dvořák Cello Concerto and Menuhin in the London première of Bartók's Second Violin Concerto (BBC), as well as Heifetz in the British premiere of Walton's Violin Concerto.

He took part in the first performance of Tippett's A Child of Our Time, conducted by Walter Goehr, of 19th March 1944, and under the Dutch conductor Eduard van Beinum, he both got to know the Mahler Wunderhorn symphonies, and lead the trumpets in the first "demonstration standard" recording of his own precocious Beckus the Dandipratt Overture. Much as William Schuman had used the Broadway musical, so he used the first trumpet desk to learn about the modern interactive orchestra in all its periods and styles, simplicity and virtuosity to "intensely dislike" Wagner and "detest" playing Elgar symphonies but not the Enigma Variations, "his masterpiece", and to acquire the skills of conducting. "if you don't pick up a few things from being principal trumpet of a great symphony orchestra, you're no use".

His memories today are of having played in "a very good performance in Brighton of Beethoven's Ninth conducted by Carl Schuricht" (then in his late sixties); of a very "nervous" Furtwängler who "used to take his injections in the artist's room" and "was never rude to the orchestra"; of the bicycling van Beinum; of conducting Brahms's Third Symphony and Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet together with the original version of the Symphonie Fantastique.

His regret is never to have directed a complete Beethoven symphony cycle "the one thing I always wanted to do." Confirming his belief that one should "always think in terms of sound ...not only of notes on paper," the greatest musical influence of his life, Arnold claimed in an article for Music & Musicians in July 1956, "has been, and still is, the music of Berlioz." Interviewed by Murray Schafer (1963), he re-nailed his colours to the mast as a diatonic, tonal romantic, criticizing the incomprensibility of modern "insulated" composers with their concern for truth above beauty, adding the influences of Sibelius, formally the tritonic Fourth Symphony in particular, and his friend Walton "outwardly". Having stopped composing in 1990, after a lifetime of the most extraordinary application and variety ("I gave up... I have no urge to write...

I've done enough"), Sibelius still inspires: he recollects Basil Cameron showing him the sketches of the rumoured Eighth Symphony before, "I suppose, they were just thrown away as rubbish - If I'd had any sense I should have copied them out." As a symphonist he believes himself Germanically rooted. "I don't see the symphony like Mahler, who said the whole world should be in it. A symphony should be classical in form, like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms." He claims never to have been influenced by anyone. Yet equally confesses that "everything influences every composer who has ever lived" - events, writers, poets, artists: "all of them influenced me, oh yes." He is justifiably proud of the fact that, like Gordon Jacob, he was always a musician of rapid facility, who never outstayed his welcome and knew when to stop.

("It was Alan Rawsthorne who said Malcolm Arnold writes music quicker than it takes the ink to dry.") Just how quick, inventive and professionally accommodating he was, a man of alert ear and "quicksilver imagination" without need for keyboard ("if you compose at the piano you'll compose things like Liszt"), can be gathered from the fifteen film scores, sketches for an opera Henri Christophe (about the first black ruler of Haiti), First Symphony and First Quartet completed during the year after leaving the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Positively charged hyper-energy similarly resourced the ten pressurising days it took to write the Oscar-winning score for David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) - "the worst job I ever had in my life." To see Arnold more as ephemeral journalist than enduring philosopher has always been a temptation: he remains one of the most critically crucified composers of the past fifty years.

Yet, as his output shows, from nine symphonies (1949-86) to close on 120 feature and documentary film scores (1947-69), there is a darker, deeper, more intricately complex dimension to the man, counterpointing the jolly and the uproarious: behind the laughter lurks a disquietened, lonely spirit. Celebrant of "innocent lyricism" and emotional cliché, resistant to compromise, an entertainer responsive to the predicaments, joys and stresses of the human condition, he has been interestingly compared with Dickens, by Donald Mitchell, and with Betjernan by Adrian Williams. The Third Symphony (1954-57), commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society "to take the place of one Sir William Walton couldn't finish," was first performed in the Royal Festival Hall, London, by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under John Pritchard on 2nd December 1957. In three movements, the score calls for piccolo, double woodwind, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.

According to the composer's own original programme note, "the first movement has two main subjects, the first of which is played by the violins, violas, flutes and bassoon at the very outset of the piece. Later on the second subject is first stated by the oboe accompanied by violins. Towards the end of the movement the tempo abruptly changes [from Allegro to Vivace] and the same material is developed as a scherzo. The [passacaglia] second movement, elegiac in character, is a set of [twenty] variations based on a series of chords more than a melodic theme. The [Haydnesque] last movement is based on three main themes and could be loosely described as a rondo." The Sibelian sub-plot of the work Arnold attributes to the telescoped structure of the first movement, and the presence of "a recurrent leitmotif" redolent of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony, likewise the Franck D minor Symphony (both of which, within a fortnight, he played with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in February 1944).

Commissioned by William Glock and the BBC, the populist Fourth Symphony, completed in Thursley, a Surrey village between Godalming and the Devil's Punch Bowl on 13th July 1960, was first performed in the Royal Festival Hall by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the composer on 2nd November 1960. In four movements, with the scherzo placed second, the score calls for piccolo, double woodwind, contra-bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, harp and strings "This symphony," wrote the Arnold in his programme note for the first performance, "is composed for a normal symphony orchestra [but with] extra percussion instruments which have been used for years in West Indian and South American popular music [including bongos, marimbaphones and tom-toms]. The first movement is based on three main ideas; the first one is the very simple idea of an ascending and descending scale in contrary motion, first heard as the accompaniment to the first subject, which is in the Lydian mode.

The conflict between the Lydian mode, with its sharpened sub-dominant [fourth], and a scale which has no name, but has a sharpened sub-dominant [Lydian lower tetrachord] and a flattened leading-note [Phrygian upper tetrachord - coincidentally the combined tempered pitches of the 64th Carnatic mela, "Vachaspati"], plays an important part in the development of the movement, The second subject is in the major (Ionian) scale, and is accompanied by a rhythmic figure in 8/8 time where the quavers are divided into 3+2+3 (1--2-123, he now emphasizes). It should not be necessary to describe the design of this movement, which is in normal sonata form [and] tries to be as direct as possible at first hearing. The second movement is a scherzo which is more chromatic than is usual in my music, believing, as I do, that excessive chromaticism is the most devitalizing dead-end in the music of the last sixty years. This movement is not intended to arouse emotions that are necessarily pleasant. The third movement is... lyrical...

based on two themes. The last... a rondo, the rondo subject being in the form of a fugal exposition in the Lydian mode, alternating with the nameless scale used in the first movement." In one of his rare writings (The Listener, 14th October 1971), Arnold drew attention to the fact that the year of the Fourth Symphony, 1960, "was also the year of the [London] Notting Hill race riots... I was appalled that such a thing could happen in this country that racial ideas have become increasingly strong in this country dismays me even more. In my Fourth Symphony I have used very obvious West Indian and African percussion instruments and rhythms, in the hope, first, that its sounds well, and second, that it might help to spread the idea of racial integration. This of course is only a small part of the work, and is only useful for me to know as a composer." Lest anyone thinks it descriptively programmatic, however, he firmly insists otherwise.

none of his symphonies is, he says, "there are no hidden messages," "there is nothing to give away ." Even the meeting of "brown and coffee-coloured musics" in the "culturally dissonant" finale was a matter of "musical and dramatic contrast, not social." Maybe, in Sir Malcolm's most recent words, there is indeed "no underlying intention" behind the paced B flat "big tune" of the first movement "It's just a bloody good second subject! If I'd been Elgar I'd have snapped it out of the air, but unfortunately I'm not." Yet, paradoxically, the eruptive alla marcia interlude just before the end of the finale he now reveals to be "the frustration of the artist. It's meant to be completely crazy - I hope it sounds crazy." Contemplating the scherzo, floating "insubstantially and horror-struck through a procession of nightmares" (The Times), Hugo Cole (1989) believed it to descend from Berlioz's Queen Mab or Hoist's Mercury.

Arnold himself points to the Prelude from Lambert's ballet Tiresias (Covent Garden 1951) as the inspiration of its palindromic procedure -"the most wonderful sound I've ever heard." "The pursuit of happiness is not my aim. I just wanted to lead a useful life and occasionally write a piece of music. I'd have been quite happy to always remain a trumpet player." These music notes incorporate an interview with Sir Malcolm Arnold on 25th September, 1997 With the author's grateful thanks to the composer, Anthony Day, and Fiona Southey, Novello & Co Ltd. IMDb: Most Popular People With Biographies Matching "Bridge on the River Kwai, The" Most Popular People With Biographies Matching "Bridge on the River Kwai, The" 6 names. Ron Goodwin Ron Goodwin was born on 17th February 1925 in Plymouth. He was the son of a London policeman who was detached to the harbour-town. His mother felt that piano lessons would be a good pastime, so in his fifth year, the little Ron was hoisted onto a piano-stool and his education on this instrument began.

Ron himself was at that time not really convinced about that parental ambition. In 1934 his father's detachment ended and the family moved back to London. Ron went for his elementary education to the Willesden County Grammar school, situated in the North-West of London. In the school an orchestra was set-up and Ron got slowly attracted by music. It fascinated him, that all these young people were playing different instruments but that the result was very harmonious. When he was 11, he went to his teacher and asked for a place in the orchestra. His teacher replied: "We don't have enough trumpet players. Learn how to play the trumpet and we'll see". That's what they call "Hobson's Choice". And so he learned to play the trumpet. Ready after just a few lessons, Ron joined the school orchestra. He kept continuing with his trumpet lessons because he felt that there was more prosperity in a career as a trumpet player than as a pianist. Moreover he had more fun in playing the trumpet. Nevertheless he also continued his piano lessons. The piano has always been a very useful instrument for him, when writing music. But frankly, he never became a virtuoso pianist. He was a much better trumpet player.

The end of the '30s was the era of swing with the great big bands of Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Woody Herman. In 1939, at the age of just 14, he formed his own dance band called "The Woodchoppers". Very soon the orchestra got some engagements here and there. The signature tune for their performances was "At the Woodchoppers Ball", a swinging Woody Herman composition. That explains the name "The Woodchoppers". The band was very soon semi-professional and very regularly entered competitions for dance bands. After he had studied harmony and counterpoint, he left school in 1942. In deference to his mother's doubts about the security status and prospects of music as a career, he took a job as junior clerk in an insurance office. He held the job for three months. After repeatedly catching him fixing gigs for "The Woodchoppers" over the office 'phone, Ron's boss advised him to forget insurance and take his chances in music. He still thinks that this is the best advice ever given to him. He started as a copyist for the music publisher Campbell Connelly. There he got the opportunity to work with and learn from Harry G.

Stafford. This was an elderly thoroughly experienced arranger, who had arranged the music of Hubert Bath for Hitchcock's first English sound film Blackmail in 1929. Stafford taught him all the methods for producing arrangements and how to lay out a score. In that period he also studied a private course on how to conduct an orchestra with Siegfried de Chabot, a teacher at the Royal Music College. After a few months working for Campbell Connelly, he applied for a job as an arranger for Norrie Paramor and Harry Gold. They were joint-proprietors of "The Paramor-Gold Orchestral Services" and they also had a jazz orchestra called "The Pieces of Eight". He was hired, although he thinks that it was not only because of his skills as an arranger. In that jazz orchestra there used to be an excellent trumpet player called Cyril Ellis. He was drafted for the Navy and so Paramor and Gold lacked a musician. Goodwin, being a trumpet player, replaced Cyril in the orchestra and was also the arranger of the "Paramor-Gold Orchestral Services". As an arranger he was particularly working for a BBC program called "Composers Cavalcade".

Every week a different well-known composer of light music, like Albert Ketelby, Noël Coward or Ivor Novello was chosen. Goodwin provided all the arrangements for these weekly broadcasts and he got a lot of experience through it. In the meantime his band, "The Woodchoppers", won several Dance Band competitions and in 1945 came fifth in the All Britain Dance Band Championship. After the contract with Norrie Paramor ended, he started working for the music-publisher Edward Kassner. Here he arranged the music for various types of orchestras. One day a pub or dance orchestra, the other day for BBC radio orchestras. In the meantime he also did the orchestrations for well-know orchestra leaders like Stanley Black , Ted Heath , Geraldo , Peter Yorke and Ambrose . In 1949 he started working for Polygon. In those days the record market was dominated by two giants: Decca and EMI. Polygon was the brainchild of Alan Freeman (not to be confused with the D.J. of the same name). He also continued working or the Kassner Music Company as a manager/publisher and he was determined to fulfil his greatest wish - making records.

He already had some contacts in Australia who wanted pop records and he decided to have these sung by Petula Clark . Petula was born on 15 November 1932 as Sally Clark. From her seventh year she had been singing regularly and had become a popular child-star through her radio performances during World War II. In 1944, when she was 11, she signed a film contract for the Rank Organisation. Despite her popularity neither Decca nor EMI were willing to give her a contract. Alan Freeman approached Leslie Clark, Petula's father who was also her manager. Leslie Clark took up the opportunity, invested also some money and Polygon was born. At the end of 1949 the first recording session took place. That day four titles were recorded: "You go to My Head", "Out of a Clear Blue Sky", "Music! Music! Music!" ("Put Another Nickel in...") and "Blossoms on the Bough", featuring Petula Clark and the Stargazers with accompaniment conducted by Ron Goodwin. He was then just 24 years old. The 2 records were released in Australia and became a big success there.

In 1950 "Too Young" was recorded, a cover version of Nat King Cole's USA no. 1 hit, sung by the then completely unknown singer/pianist, Jimmy Young , with accompaniment conducted by Ron Goodwin. The record became a big hit and gave a huge impulse to the careers of both Jimmy Young and Ron Goodwin. After that, Ron also recorded his first two instrumental records. Polygon was not able to handle the enormous success of Jimmy Young and by the end of 1952 he moved to Decca. Ron Goodwin already had his contract with Parlophone, but on the Decca label he conducted fifteen Jimmy Young records. Ron Goodwin was still very young and the producer Dickie Rowe called him Ronnie Goodwin on the first of those Decca records. It did not go so well with Polygon after that. The company was not able to make up for the loss of Jimmy Young. Petula proved to be their only continuing asset and in 1955 Polygon was amalgamated with (Pye) Nixa.

In the slipstream of the success of "Too Young" Ron Goodwin was from then on an established name in the British musical world, performing under the name: "Ron Goodwin and his Orchestra" or depending on the mood of the person in charge of the marketing: "Ron Goodwin and his Concert Orchestra". The orchestra he formed consisted at first of 36 persons but later it grew to 42. All of them were session musicians personally selected by him. These musicians worked for him only during the record sessions. A day later they could be working for, for instance, Mantovani or Geraldo . Indeed, the Mantovani orchestra was also comprised entirely of session musicians. In 1951 Ron Goodwin met George Martin , who was at that time a young assistant recording manager at Parlophone. George offered him a contract of backings for 12 vocal singles and 6 singles with his own orchestra every year. His first instrumental record on Parlophone was released in 1953. In that same year he recorded his version of Charles Chaplin 's "Limelight" and reached third place in the English hit parade with it.

In the following years he made numerous records with his orchestra and did the vocal backings of, amongst others: Eamonn Andrews, Joan Baxter, Christine Campbell, Petula Clark, Jim Dale, Bruce Forsyth, Nadia Gray, The Headliners, Edmund Hockridge, Dick James, Cynthia Lanagan, Zack Laurence, Lorne Lesley, Larry Marschall, Glen Mason, Spike Milligan, Morecambe & Wise, Parlophone Pops Orchestra, Rostal & Schaefer, Edna Savage, Peter Sellers, Joan Small, Ian Wallace, Alma Warren and Jimmy Young. Nowadays, many of those names are not familiar any more to us, but in those days you could find them regularly in the hit parades. Jim Dale started as a rock-singer, but became later a comedian and a member of the cast of the "Carry on..." films. Dick James started his own publishing company and became later the publisher of all the Beatles hits. And Edmund Hockridge ? He still has his own fan club. In 1954 Ron Goodwin recorded his first album in his own right: "Film Favourites".

After that followed many more LPs, also 2 oriental: "Music for an Arabian Night" and "Holiday in Beirut". Long before he recorded "Sergeant Pepper ....." with The Beatles, George Martin was the producer of many concept-albums. A perfect example is the Goodwin album "Out of this World". On this LP the galaxy is traversed in an orchestral way (without the use of synthesisers!). Released in 1958, a few months after the first satellite "Sputnik" was put into orbit. Photos of launched rockets were not available yet, so the rocket on the front cover is a drawn one. In 1958 the skiffle-rhythm was a rage and Goodwin wrote "Skiffling Strings". The song entered the hit parade and the American label "Capitol" was interested to release it in the USA. But the Americans were wondering what "Skiffling" really meant. In America the skiffle-rage was completely unknown. So, the song was re-titled "Swingin' Sweethearts". Ron Goodwin and George Martin went to the States to promote the single in several television-broadcasts.

Within 14 days the song entered the American hit parades and was later followed by "Lingering Lovers". Quite a number of his albums were released after that in the USA. In that year he received the Ivor Novello Award" for "Lingering Lovers" as the year's best English song. Peter Sellers was already a well-known actor in Britain, especially because of his performances in the BBC broadcasting series "The Goon Show". In 1958, 1959 and 1960 he recorded three LPs. These albums are still considered as the standard for British comedy. The production of those albums was again in the hands of George Martin. Ron Goodwin did all the conducting of the accompanying music. The third album in the series was called: "Peter and Sophia". In 1960, Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren had just finished the shooting of the film The Millionairess . In this film Sellers played an Indian doctor, who was waylaid by an enamoured Sophia Loren. The co-operation of both led to this album, on which they both did the song "Goodness Gracious Me!". The song became a massive hit and remained in the top 5 for weeks.

For the recording of the album Sophia Loren was flown to London with her husband Carlo Ponti , where he met Ron Goodwin. In 1965 they renewed their acquaintance when Carlo Ponti produced the film Operation Crossbow and Ron Goodwin wrote the music. Back in 1955, Ron Goodwin was involved for the first time in composing film music. Malcolm Arnold (of "Bridge on the River Kwai" fame) had written the score for the film The Night My Number Came Up . The producer wanted several sequences with dance music in night club style. Arnold refused to write this music and so Ron Goodwin was asked to write these sequences. In the following years he wrote the music for several documentaries. 1956: "The Corrington Achievement" and in 1957 "Atlantic Line". They appear to be the exercises for the larger jobs. In 1958 he met Lawrence P. Bachmann, at that time manager for Columbia Pictures in London. Bachmann had written a book and this was going to be filmed with the title Whirlpool . He commissioned Ron Goodwin to write the music for this film. That was Goodwin's first contact with a feature film.

A year later Bachmann became head of production of MGM-Europe. He liked the music Goodwin wrote for his film "Whirlpool" very much and he asked him to write the music for 4 or 5 films every year. The first of those was Village of the Damned , still one of the best British science fiction films. This was followed by the very successful Miss Marple film-series featuring Margaret Rutherford . Because he was so busy writing film music, there was no more time left for vocal backings and his contract as musical-director for Parlophone was not prolonged. For the time being, the last album he recorded was "Serenade", which contained his well-known version of "Elizabethan Serenade". Malcolm Arnold Born in Northampton on 21st October 1921, Malcolm Arnold studied composition with Gordon Jacob and trumpet with Ernest Hall at the Royal College of Music. In 1941 he joined the trumpet section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming principal by 1943.

After two years of war service and one season with the BBC Symphony Orchestra he returned to the LPO in 1946; but composition was already becoming his priority and he had already produced a catalogue of attractive works, an early example being the comedy overture Beckus the Dandipratt, Op.5 (1943), recorded in 1948 by the LPO under their principal conductor Eduard van Beinum. That same year Arnold won the Mendelssohn Scholarship which enabled him to spend a year in Italy; on his return he decided to concentrate entirely upon composition. His experience as an orchestral player stood him in good stead as a composer. He quickly built up a reputation as a fluent and versatile composer and a brilliant orchestrator, many commissions were to come his way. Arnold has written works in almost every genre for amateur and professional alike, including nine symphonies, five ballets, two operas, 20 concertos, overtures and orchestral dances, two string quartets and other chamber music, choral music, song cycles and works for wind and brass band.

Somehow, in the midst of this prolific creativity, Arnold found time to score over 80 films including the Academy Award-winning score for Bridge on the River Kwai, written in only ten days and Inn of the Sixth Happiness which brought an Ivor Novello Award. Arnold's music springs directly from roots in dance and song. Typically it is lucid in texture, clear in draftsmanship. His lighter entertainment pieces are easy to listen to and rewarding to perform. As an inventor of tunes, his powers seem to be inexaustible, and he is prodigal with his gifts; the 'big tune' in the modest little Toy Symphony, for example, is just as much a winner as the many memorable themes in many concert works. Many of these are firmly established in the concert repertory. Yet for those who have ears to hear, his works frequently give more than a hint of a complex musical personality and of dramatic tensions not far below the surface.

In fact there is scope in Arnold's music which reflects his profound concern with the human predicament and also in his belief that music is "a social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is." In 1969 Malcolm Arnold was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth, he was awarded the C.B.E. in 1970 and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Exeter (1969), Durham (1982) and Leicester (1984). He was made a fellow of the Royal College of Music in 1983 and is an Honorary R.A.M. In 1986 he received the Ivor Novello Award for outstanding services to British music. He was Knighted in 1993. He died in September 2006 after a brief illness. Chandran Rutnam Chandran Rutnam was born to a Sri Lankan Tamil father Dr. James T. Rutnam and a Sinhala mother Evelyn Wijeratne, who gave him all his yearning for freedom and adventure.

Rutnam was 16-year-old school boy when David Lean arrived in Sri Lanka to shoot his Second World War epic, The Bridge on the River Kwai. The film crew hired a house that belonged to his parents for the shooting, and Rutnam hung out at the sets volunteering odd jobs until finally, he got hired as a stand-by props assistant and gofer. His big moment, Rutnam recalls, came when it was time to shoot the blowing up of the bridge - the film's finale - on location at the scenic Kitulgala river in central Sri Lanka. The crew had laid out only a couple of yards of rail track on either side of the bridge, not enough to show an approaching train. Rutnam's job was to run through a stretch of the jungle on one side working up smoke with a pair of smoke bellows. Of course, those who saw the film only saw the smoke, synchronized with the chugging sounds of a rapidly approaching train. Due to this exposure, to the consternation of his parents, he dropped out of school and went to London to pursue his dream of a career in films.

He later moved to the United States and attended the film school at the University of Southern California and the San Fernando Valley College of Law. While working in Hollywood studios, Rutnam's break in selling Sri Lankan locations to international film-makers came when he managed to convince John Derek, director of "Tarzan the Apeman", to shoot the film starring his wife Bo Derek, in Sri Lanka rather than Africa. Vic Bagratuni From handsome leading man to stone cold killer, Vic Bagratuni has appeared in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Boardwalk Empire," and the documentary series "Inside the American Mob." He was recently cast as a lead in the feature film "Men of Granite," alongside William Hurt and Shirley MacLaine. He is a descendant of the Bagratuni royal dynasty of Armenia that ruled up until the 8th century. He comes from a highly artistic family, following the footsteps of his grandfather and great-grandfather who where both highly respected actors in Armenia and the former Soviet Union. Born in Armenia and raised in Germany, he always dreamt of being an actor. At age five, he started acting and singing in the children's choir of the Stuttgart State Opera.

For 13 years, he appeared in numerous productions with the Stuttgart State Conservatory of Music and the Stuttgart Young Opera Theater, and several local television shows. At age 18, Bagratuni moved to New York and studied at the renowned Lee Strasberg Film and Theater Institute, where he attended Master Classes with Anna and David Strasberg and Vincent D'Onofrio. At The Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute in New York he was the lead actor in "Carnal Knowledge," and "Long Days Journey Into Night." In 2011 he became a professional observer at the legendary Actors Studio and appeared in off-off Broadway plays such as "A Hatful of Rain" and "Killers and other Family." Bagratuni studied under: Lola Cohen a teacher at the Strasberg Institute in NY and publisher of "The Lee Strasberg Notes," a bestselling book on acting; actor Paul Calderon ("Pulp Fiction," "Bad Lieutenant"); and Geoffrey Horne, earliest member of The Actors Studio ("The Bridges of the River Kwai"). The film that most influenced him to become an actor is "On The Waterfront"; Marlon Brando's raw performance triggered his love for acting.

His preferred actors: Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Robert Mitchum. His favorite films: "The Godfather," "Goodfellas," and "Two for the Seesaw." An athlete, Bagratuni played tennis and soccer at the semi-pro level. He's an advanced ballroom dancer, talented pianist, and singer (he studied with well-known singer Lana Reign in NY). He speaks English, German, Russian and Armenian fluently. He is based in Los Angeles. Julie Summers The author of ten books, Julie's first biography Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine appeared to great critical acclaim in November 2000. The Colonel of Tamarkan, Philip Toosey and the Bridge on the River Kwai (2005), in which Julie explores the true story of the man behind the legend has been described by one former prisoner of war as the best book ever written on the Thailand Burma railway. Stranger in the House (2008), When the Children Came Home (2010) and Jambusters: Stories from the Women's Institute in the Second World War (2013), all deal with women's stories and the fallout from the war.

Julie has also written a history of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and a short history of rowing. Julie has made appearances on radio, film and television, including After The War Was Won Yesterday / UKTV, A Century Of Fatherhood BBC4 and she had a role in National Geographic's film about George Mallory The Wildest Dream. She contributes regularly to Woman's Hour and has appeared on Making History, Excess Baggage and the Jeremy Vine show. She is the current chairman of the Mountain Heritage Trust and appears every year at the Kendal Mountain Festival, interviewing climbers and mountaineers. Recently she has worked on The Woman In Black: Angel Of Death (release 2015) as an historical advisor for Angelfish Films and is now working on a book to appear in conjunction with an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in March 2015 entitled Fashion on the Ration about clothing in the Second World War.

Question: Which knighted British composer wrote the musical score for the 1957 film, "Bridge on the River Kwai"?
Answer: MALCOLM ARNOLD