Richard Addinsell

Richard Stewart Addinsell (13 January 1904 – 14 November 1977) was an English composer and Broadway book writer, born in Woburn Square, London, to William Arthur Addinsell, a chartered accountant, and his wife, Annie Beatrice Richards. The younger of two brothers, Addinsell received his early education at home before enrolling at Hertford College, Oxford, to study Law, which he left after eighteen months. His attention turned to music, and in 1925 he entered the Royal College of Music, though he departed after two terms without a formal qualification.

Despite his abbreviated formal training, Addinsell began building a professional career in the mid-1920s. He collaborated with Noel Gay and others on an André Charlot Revue, and further work for Charlot followed in 1927. The following year he partnered with Clemence Dane on Adam's Opera at The Old Vic. In 1929, Addinsell traveled through major theatrical and musical centers in Europe, including Berlin and Vienna, completing what amounted to an informal professional education. He and Dane collaborated again in 1932, writing incidental music for the Broadway adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, combining Lewis Carroll's two works in a production staged by Eva Le Gallienne and starring Josephine Hutchinson; the production opened in 1933 and was revived in 1947 with Bambi Linn.

Addinsell's Broadway credits include the play Come of Age, Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure..., and Joyce Grenfell (Monologues and Songs). His stage work with Joyce Grenfell extended across a long collaboration that began in 1942, encompassing her West End revues — among them Tuppence Coloured and Penny Plain — as well as her one-woman shows. He also contributed music to West End revues directed by Laurier Lister, including Airs on a Shoestring.

His most celebrated composition is the Warsaw Concerto, written for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight, also released under the title Suicide Squadron. The film's producers sought a piece in the manner of Sergei Rachmaninoff, having been unable to secure Rachmaninoff himself; Roy Douglas provided the orchestration. The concerto has been recorded more than one hundred times and has sold in excess of three million copies, remaining a popular concert and recording piece. Among his other film work, Addinsell scored Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn in 1949, incorporating Irish folk melody into the score to reflect the Irish characters and their backgrounds. As was standard practice in the industry through the 1950s, many of his film scores were destroyed by studios. Recordings of his film music have since been issued posthumously, frequently reconstructed by musicologist and composer Philip Lane from the films' soundtracks and conducted by Kenneth Alwyn or Rumon Gamba.

Addinsell also composed the short orchestral piece Southern Rhapsody, which served as the opening broadcast music for Southern Television in southern England from 1958 to 1981. His orchestral output for the concert hall includes The Invitation Waltz (1950), the Smokey Mountains Concerto (1950), and The Isle of Apples (1965). His compositional style falls within the English light music tradition. He typically worked at the piano, supplying broad indications to collaborators such as Roy Douglas, Leonard Isaacs, and Douglas Gamley, who carried out the full orchestrations.

In his personal life, Addinsell was for many years the companion of fashion designer Victor Stiebel, who died in 1976. Addinsell withdrew from public life during the 1960s, gradually losing contact with close friends. He died in Brighton on 14 November 1977 at the age of 73, and his cremation took place at Golders Green Crematorium on 18 November 1977, where his ashes are interred in a communal section of the crocus lawn.