George Fenton

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2003

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the composer George Fenton, whose work includes music for Groundhog Day, Shadowlands, Cry Freedom, The Company of Wolves and The Fisher King. Born George Howe in South London in 1950, he taught himself to play the guitar at the age of eight and by the age of 14 was playing the organ - "dreadfully"! He wanted to be an actor, and got an early break in Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On. As time went on, however, he found directors were always asking him to play an instrument, so he switched to music as his main focus. He got his first job as composer and musical director for a production of Twelfth Night at the RSC in Stratford in 1974. Eight years later, and still almost entirely self-taught, he was nominated for an Oscar for his score for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. It was only his fourth attempt at film music.

Since 1982 he has been nominated for four more Oscars (for Cry Freedom, The Fisher King and Dangerous Liaisons) and three Golden Globes; he's won three BAFTAs, two Ivor Novello Awards and an EMMY and written music for more than 100 television productions including Bergerac, The Jewel in the Crown, Talking Heads and The Blue Planet. In addition he cornered the market in jingles for daily news bulletins across the BBC. George Fenton is a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London, and regularly appears on television arts shows and documentaries as an authority on music.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: On Going to Sleep from Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss Book: Short Stories by Anton Chekhov Luxury: A piano or, failing that, for comfort a tin of condensed milk & tin opener

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2003, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a composer. You don't have to like music to have heard what he's written.
0:28.5	It's all around us in movies such as Gandhi dangerous liaisons and Groundhog Day in television programs such as the
0:35.4	Blue Planet and Jewel in the Crown and it's been in between them with a myriad of catchy compositions
0:40.2	for news programs and others.
0:42.4	He never expected to end up where he did. He began
0:45.3	writing music for the theatre and progressed fluently and conscientiously to where he
0:49.7	is today. I never have inspiration, he confesses somewhat modestly I don't feel pride about the things
0:56.2	I've done I just feel gratitude he is George Fenton what gratitude for the gift
1:02.2	of being able to write George or gratitude for what?
1:05.0	No I think gratitude for really the world of music the people.
1:11.0	The gift in a way for me is always when I write something and then an
1:17.5	orchestra or a band or an instrumentalist plays it back and they give it back to you with their soul attached to it and that's
1:26.7	the that's the gift that's the bit you're grateful for. That's one great but the point about
1:30.6	the sort of music you write is it not is that it has to be a fit it has to be what the director wanted in a sense you're you know you're writing to order aren't you?
1:40.0	Yes you are and in that, there is an impure quality to film music.
1:47.0	It isn't just a statement by me in music.
1:51.0	What's it there for then? What do you think its job is, film music?
1:54.0	Well, I think its real role is to interpret for another sensibility, the sensibility of the
2:00.8	ear and the emotional sensibility of music to sort of interpret that and
2:06.3	license the audience to respond emotionally to what they're seeing on the screen.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.