English composer (1889?1975)
John Danforth Herman Greenwood
(26 June 1889 ? 15 April 1975), an English composer best known for his film scores, was the son of New Zealander Alfred Greenwood (1842?1912) and his English-born wife Ottilie Rose Minna (1855?1932) nee Schweitzer. He was named after his grandfathers: Herman Schweitzer, a Prussian born analytical chemist; and Dr.
John Danforth Greenwood
(1803?1890) from Sussex, England, a pioneering New Zealand physician and educationist, who had emigrated to New Zealand in 1842 after retiring from medicine due to ill health.
[1]
Education and early career
[
edit
]
Greenwood was born in
London
. He learned
piano
and
viola
from his parents and at 18 entered the
Royal College of Music
to study viola and
horn
, as well as composition with
Charles Villiers Stanford
.
[2]
While there he won the Grove scholarship and
Arthur Sullivan
composition awards.
[3]
For a short period he taught at
Brighton and Hove Grammar School
, and then made his living as a pianist, horn and viola player in various orchestras as well as conducting at the
Queen's Hall
and in the provinces.
[4]
During the
First World War
Greenwood was a conscientious objector. At that time he was living at 39, Hillcrest Road, Acton Hill.
[5]
Greenwood married Winifred Margaret Hicks in 1917 and a son, Alfred Michael Greenwood, was born a year later.
[3]
Composer
[
edit
]
Greenwood's early concert works had their first performances from the Queen's Hall Orchestra under
Henry Wood
in the early 1920s. But he quickly became involved with writing music for the cinema, composing and editing music for silent films from the 1920s onwards. In 1929 he wrote a new score for the part-talkie film
To What Red Hell
.
[4]
From the 1930s until the mid-1950s he worked on around 50 films, from
Man of Aran
(1934) to
Grand National Night
(1953).
[2]
While he no doubt gained considerable satisfaction from these compositions ? and access to a large audience ? there were also frustrations as the film editing process frequently required the removal or addition of passages of music quite regardless of the overall form and themes of the piece.
Whether his compositions of incidental theatre music for
Shakespeare
's
Merchant of Venice
and
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(as staged by
J.B. Fagan
) were intrinsically more satisfying is not known. A
Fantasy
was extracted from
A Midsummer Night's Dream
and performed separately.
[6]
His film credits also include scores for documentaries such as
Berth 24
(1950), portraying the life of the Hull docks, and
The Lake District
(1954), with narration by
Michael Redgrave
.
[7]
His march
The Eighth Army
(from the film
The Nine Men
) written with
Eric Coates
, was recorded on 78.
[8]
The concert works, composed in parallel with his work for film and theatre, are now entirely forgotten.
Salute to
Gustav Holst
was premiered at the
Sir Henry Wood
Promenade Concerts
in 1936, conducted by the composer.
[9]
His setting of
Psalm 150
for chorus and orchestra was broadcast in May 1936, conducted by Adrian Boult.
[10]
On 24 January 1938
Constant Lambert
conducted the BBC Orchestra in the first performance and broadcast of Greenwood's
Symphonic Movement
.
[11]
The Piano Quintet, composed around 1940, was performed by the
Aeolian String Quartet
and
Kyla Greenbaum
on 15 October 1953 at Queen Mary Hall,
Great Russell Street
, as part of a chamber concert that also included the String Quartet No 2 (1928) and the Flute Sonata (1943).
[12]
On 14 September 1956 his Viola Concerto received its world premiere at the Proms, with
Watson Forbes
as the soloist, conducted by
John Hollingsworth
.
[13]
The composer's archives, held at
McMaster University
,
[14]
contain documentation (including some manuscripts) of two symphonies, three piano sonatas and two orchestral ballet suites (
The Silver Harlequin
, 1917 and
Piccadilly
, 1953).
[15]
Later life
[
edit
]
By the 1930s he was living at
Roedean
, Brighton. During the Second World War he worked on the staff of the BBC European Service as Assistant Music Supervisor. By the early 1950s, as his work on films drew to a close, he was living at Greenwoods, North End,
Ditchling
in Sussex.
[16]
In 1969 his address was Guntsfield, 32 Beacon Road, Ditchling.
[15]
He died at Ditchling, aged 85.
[17]
Filmography
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu.
"Greenwood, Sarah"
.
Teara.govt.nz
. Retrieved
26 August
2017
.
- ^
a
b
Huntley, John.
British Film Music
(1947)
- ^
a
b
Sir Landon Ronald.
Who's Who in Music
(1935 edition), p. 123
- ^
a
b
Musiker, R and Musiker, N.
Conductors and Composers of Popular Orchestral Music
(1998)
- ^
National archives record
- ^
'
'Radio Times
Issue 726, 29 August 1937, p 62
- ^
Barnett, Rob. 'British Film Music Composers' at
MusicWeb International
- ^
HM Grenadier Guards Band/Lieut F Harris. Columbia DB2140
- ^
Radio Times
Issue 647, 23 February 1936, p 56
- ^
Radio Times
Issue 660, 24 May 1936, p 58
- ^
Radio Times
Issue 747, 23 January 1938, p 28
- ^
The Times
, 16 October 1953, p 2
- ^
BBC Proms archive
- ^
Goupinets, Nick.
"John Danforth Herman Greenwood, McMaster Libraries"
.
Library.mcmaster.ca
. Retrieved
26 August
2017
.
- ^
a
b
Who's Who in Music
, Fifth Edition (1969), p.123 (includes list of concert works)
- ^
Who's Who in Music
(1950 edition)
- ^
Leach, Gerald.
British Composer Profiles
(3rd edition, 2012), p. 99
- ^
British Film Institute
- ^
British Council film archive
Bibliography
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
John Greenwood
at
IMDb
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Artists
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|