#malcolm arnold

Sir Malcolm Arnold’s A Grand, Grand Overture

This was on the programme for my first ever youth orchestra concert. What did I play? A vacuum cleaner.

The Overture is scored for full symphony orchestra and organ, plus three vacuum cleaners, a floor polisher and four rifles, the latter of which viciously silence the former at the climax of the piece.

Composers have a huge responsibility when they're hired to write music for movies. They need to set the right tone for not only the scene itself, but for the whole arc of the movie's storyline. Submitters sent in their favorite choices for movie music that set the tone in this way, and now you get to vote for the best one!

Dinosaur is a 2000 live-action animated adventure movie. Wikipedia summarizes the storyline thusly: "The film follows a young Iguanodon who was adopted and raised by a family of lemurs on a tropical island. They are forced to the mainland by a catastrophic meteorite impact; setting out to find a new home, they join a herd of dinosaurs heading for the "Nesting Grounds", but must contend with the group's harsh leader, as well as external dangers such as predatory Carnotaurus." The music for this film was composed by James Newton Howard.

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 film about a contingent of British prisoners of war during World War II who are held at a Japanese prison camp in Thailand. The prisoners are made to build a bridge over the nearby river, despite the objections of the troops' British commander, who protests that the prisoners cannot be made to do manual labor under the Geneva Convention. The British soldiers react to their commander being punished for his objections by deliberately doing shoddy work.

The music for this film was written by Malcolm Arnold. March is the most famous track from the soundtrack and is often heard in other films and shows.

Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) - String Quartet Phantasy, "Vita Abundans" ·

The Bridge on the River Kwai was released in the UK on 2 October 1957 (it would not be released in the US until 14 December).

Pierre Boulle was given official screenwriting credit for adapting his novel, but the actual script was written by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, but both had been blacklisted as suspected communists. The film received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Boulle (who spoke and wrote no English) accepted the Oscar. Foreman and Wilson were not recognized until 1984.