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Barrington Pheloung, 1954-2019
Composer and conductor Barrington Pheloung died in Australia on July 31, 2019, at the age of 65, from respiratory failure.
An Australian who spent most of his professional life in Britain, Pheloung was best known for his haunting music for Inspector Morse, and subsequently Lewis and Endeavour. He also enjoyed a distinguished career in film, theatre and dance, receiving an Academy Award nomination for his score for Hilary and Jackie.
Barrington Somers James Pheloung was born in Manly, New South Wales, on May 10, 1954. He began playing guitar as a child and performed in blues and R&B groups with his brother before discovering Bach in his late teens and becoming increasingly interested in classical music. At 18 he moved to London, initially studying guitar and double bass at Chiswick Music Centre before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. There he studied composition with John Lambert and guitar with John Williams and Julian Bream.
Pheloung’s earliest professional commissions were for dance. While still a student he became involved with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and was appointed its musical director in 1979, remaining with the company until 1995. He ultimately composed more than 50 works for dance, initially influenced by avant-garde figures including Schoenberg, Stockhausen and Boulez while also incorporating jazz, blues, electronics and unusual percussion.
Television brought him to a much wider audience. After writing music for the first series of Boon in 1985, Pheloung was commissioned to score Inspector Morse in 1987. His melancholy orchestral theme became one of the most recognizable pieces of British television music. Ingeniously, its rhythm incorporated Morse code spelling out M-O-R-S-E, while Pheloung occasionally embedded the identity of a murderer—or a deliberate red herring—into individual episodes using the same technique. Read more…
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