MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer Geoffrey Burgon died on September 21, 2010, following a short illness. He was 69.

One of the most distinctive voices in British television music, Burgon was responsible for the celebrated scores for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Brideshead Revisited, as well as The Chronicles of Narnia, Longitude and The Forsyte Saga. His film work included Monty Python’s Life of Brian, The Dogs of War and Robin Hood, while alongside his screen career he maintained a substantial body of concert, choral and operatic music.

Geoffrey Alan Burgon was born in Hambledon, Hampshire, on July 15, 1941. As a teenager he became fascinated by jazz and taught himself the trumpet, eventually studying the instrument at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. There he also studied composition with Peter Wishart, and later received encouragement from Lennox Berkeley. Burgon initially supported himself as a professional trumpeter, performing with orchestras and jazz ensembles, but by the early 1970s had abandoned performing to concentrate entirely on composition.

His first significant recognition came outside film and television. Burgon’s Requiem, premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 1976, established him as a serious concert composer and demonstrated the affinity for voices that would remain central to his work. Around the same period television commissions began to arrive, including two memorable Doctor Who serials, Terror of the Zygons (1975) and The Seeds of Doom (1976), for which his atmospheric music combined small instrumental ensembles with electronic treatments.

Burgon’s major breakthrough came with the BBC’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. His austere, melancholy score culminated in a haunting setting of the Nunc Dimittis, sung by countertenor Paul Phoenix, which became sufficiently popular to enter the British charts. Burgon received an Ivor Novello Award for the score.

The same year Terry Jones asked Burgon to compose the music for Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Rather than treating the film as a comedy, Burgon wrote a deliberately sincere biblical epic score, providing grand orchestral and choral music against which the absurdity of the Pythons’ humor could play. He subsequently scored the mercenary thriller The Dogs of War (1980), starring Christopher Walken.

His greatest popular success followed with Granada Television’s Brideshead Revisited (1981). Burgon’s stately, bittersweet main theme perfectly captured the elegance, nostalgia and underlying sadness of Evelyn Waugh’s story. The soundtrack album sold more than 100,000 copies and earned him a second Ivor Novello Award, while the theme became one of the defining pieces of British television music of its era.

Further screen work included Turtle Diary (1985), The Chronicles of Narnia (1988-1990), the Patrick Bergin adventure Robin Hood (1991), Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and numerous television dramas. Late in his career he enjoyed renewed acclaim, winning BAFTA Awards for Longitude (2000), starring Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons, and the lavish 2002 adaptation of The Forsyte Saga.

Despite the popularity of his screen music, Burgon always regarded concert composition as central to his musical identity. His works included the opera Hard Times, based on Dickens; City Adventures, a percussion concerto written for Evelyn Glennie; a piano concerto for Joanna MacGregor; several concertos for other instruments; and an extensive catalogue of choral and vocal music. His elegant writing for the human voice, influenced by medieval music and Benjamin Britten, became especially admired among British choirs.

Burgon married Janice Garwood in 1963, with whom he had a son, Matthew, and daughter, Hannah; the marriage was later dissolved. In 1992 he married pianist and singer Jacqueline Kroft, with whom he had another son, Daniel. He is survived by Jacqueline and his three children.