Scotland has a rich history of music composers

The National

5 days ago

Back in the 1940s and 50s, Muir Mathieson (1911-73) won the Boult and Leverhulme scholarships, was music director to the government Army, Navy and Air Force film units in the Second World War, and was later music director to J Arthur Rank Organisation and responsible for music for Odd Man Out and The Woman in the Hall. Mathieson often returned to Scotland and in 1961 became director of Grampian TV.
Marcus Dods (1918-84) was assistant to Mathieson, working on Laurence Olivier's seminal film versions of Henry V and Hamlet and moving on to Far From the Madding Crowd and Death on the Nile. More recently, Kathleen Wallfisch supervised music for Napoleon and Gladiator 2.
As a composer, Craig Armstrong's many awards include a Bafta for Romeo + Juliet; a Golden Globe for Moulin Rouge, which also won a Bafta; a Grammy for Love Actually; and an Ivor Novello Award for The Quiet American. His atmospheric track Escape has been widely used as entrance music for a variety of teams and sports.
Craig Armstrong Patrick Doyle is another leading Scottish composer of film music. He has worked with Kenneth Branagh on many occasions, notably for Henry V and Hamlet, as well as for the outstanding 1995 film of Sense and Sensibility for which Doyle received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.
Patrick Doyle His music for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is impressive for its variety, ranging from the sombre Black Lake to the almost ridiculous but absolutely disarming Hogwarts March.
Scottish idiom influenced Doyle's music for Brave, the first Disney film to feature music lyrics in Gaelic, including Doyle's setting of A' Mhadainn Bhan Uasal.
Lorne Balfe has made a name for himself as a film composer, with Mission: Impossible – Fallout and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Much of Balfe's work has been in collaboration with other composers and includes a number of scores for short films and video games. Balfe also composes under the name Oswin Mackintosh.
Not being a film music composer, all I can add to this hall of fame are a few anecdotes from behind the recording scenes.
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The nearest I got to composing a complete original score for a film was for a 'permanent' exhibition at Bannockburn, commemorating the victorious battle of 1314 during Scotland's Wars of Independence.
I was commissioned by the National Trust for Scotland to compose an orchestral evocation for an exhibition which opened on the site in 1972. For the exhibition itself, there was commentary to which the music was timed, read by the splendid Tom Fleming with whom I was to work many years later.
The room had at its centre a circular relief plan of the battle site highlighting the various actions with red and blue lights representing the opposing armies, plus images projected onto the walls. It was designed by Paterson Associates and they did a fine job. Of course, it has all long since been superseded.
The recording itself was a historic one. It was made in Abbey Road Studio One with Geoff Emerick of Beatles fame as producer/sound engineer, with
The London Session Orchestra – a gathering of the top session players, many of them soloists in their own right, all under the eagle eye of the fixer, the redoubtable Sidney Sax, who led.
The leader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hugh Bean, was on the second desk – that's how high the standard was. My brother-in-law, Peter Lloyd, principal flute in the LSO, was principal flute for the recording and had helped me get in contact with Sid. I had had very little time in which to write the music – less than a month to compose and record 18 minutes of orchestral music, so I came into the studio with full score and parts, not having slept for three days.
Geoff Emerick introduced himself, explained the microphone layout in the studio and the sound desk with more faders than you could count and, while the orchestra was trying out sections, asked was the balance alright? I remember tentatively wondering, 'Might we have a bit more ...'But I never finished the sentence because he turned on me and said: 'You don't ask me can I do something.'
I had never been in a situation like this before and I was dismayed – that is until he chose to break his artfully timed pause with: 'You tell me what you want and I do it.'
And so he did. Brilliantly. That same recording, though derived from a 7.5ips copy of the master is still of outstanding quality. The orchestra played out of its skins, the brass risking all, and it was all rehearsed and recorded in six hours, under the energetic and efficient baton of 'the bionic carrot', as he was affectionately known, the red-headed Christopher Seaman.
Many taunting comments about the Scots came my way from the mostly English and almost entirely male musicians. I can't remember whether Chris Seaman explained what Bannockburn was about but they got the message.
They also came back to me with a lot of appreciation, outstanding musicianship, and encouragement to write more. The orchestra was so good that all my top trumpet Cs and orchestral imaginings were brought vibrantly to life.
When it came to the actual exhibition, the music did its job but was soon forgotten. However, 2014 was the 700th anniversary of the battle and also the year of the Scottish independence referendum. I issued the piece on CD and one reviewer wrote that I'd 'bnockburne bloody good at writing film music'.
I'm glad I didn't go down that road. I've seen just enough of the Hollywood musical sausage machine, hugely impressive as it is, to realise that innovation and personality are liable to be subsumed by commercial imperatives and technology.
The composer has a dedicated studio, sound desk, sound library, assistant with adjacent studio, and both studios furnished with grand pianos and anything relevant you might think of – but of the real world, a bunch of flowers might be the only evidence.
Real? What has reality got to do with it? When I was paid £300 for musical advice for Braveheart all – yes, all – of my recommendations were ignored. I was told, 'The Japanese expect bagpipes', despite there being no evidence of their use in Scotland in the days of Wallace.
Mel Gibson in Braveheart Braveheart Braveheart's wife is buried to the sound of 19th-century Irish uilleann pipes, the equivalent of bringing on Wallace in a tuxedo. Jesus wept. I hope I was not credited. I asked not to be.
It was a different matter with The Eagle. The composer was the delightful Atli Örvasson and he took all my recommendations seriously, attended the recording sessions in Edinburgh and made good use of some remarkable work by Allan MacDonald (voice and pipes), Simon O'Dwyer (voice and Bronze Age horns), and Bill Taylor (clàrsach).
I added my two bits worth of throat singing and Bronze Age horn playing and Atli integrated our disparate efforts into his score with both skill and respect. We all attended the pre-release cast showing in London at which we realised the truth of cinema credits – namely that the musicians are kept to the last.
Simon's wife, Maria, leant over to me after some 10 minutes of credits including drivers, tea ladies and runners, to bet that they would credit the rat eaten halfway through the film, before they got to us.
The music was excellent, and we thought well of the film, though it never hit the big time. My son-in-law, Tommy Gormley, was first assistant director and was never more impressive than when in the depths of a red sandstone gorge, the sides of which were draped with natural mosses and overhung by mature trees.
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The river was flowing fast and the Seal People, mostly stuntmen from Hungary and wonderfully made up in blue woad, assaulted the Scots Highland stuntmen, all dressed as beleaguered Romans, in mid-stream.
Both sides, after some initial thrusts and parries, ended up with great respect for each other, and some hair-raising feats were performed – men leaping over shield walls, and swords and spears flashing and stabbing in a thoroughly confined and very slippy rocky river bed, as the rain filtered down through the leaves in a fine mist, and the light from a vast overhead lantern, strung across the gorge some 50ft up, cast a surreal glow over what was already a wildly surreal scene.
Actors lay dead in cold water for another take, cables were concealed under damp leaves, and Tommy stood in the middle of it all as people spent an endless amount of time getting everything ready. 'Does anybody here want to make a film?' he shouted, and somehow the preparations were complete and shooting could begin.
My contribution as music adviser to Outlander was brief but significant. They were looking for a Gaelic song for the start of the 1745 Rising, a song brimming with confidence, even militaristic.
Still from Outlander I suggested Moch Sa Mhadainn and An Fhideag Airgid. They chose the former, having already used the latter.
The background was perfect historically, especially in a Highland setting. I sent them a transcription and an old recording of James Campbell of Kintail, native Gaelic singer but classically trained as well. Campbell sings Moch Sa Mhadainn quite slowly, but the song can certainly be delivered faster.
'Early in the morning as I awaken
Great is my joy and hearty laughter
Since I've heard of the Prince's coming
To the land of Clanranald.'
There are chorus and solo sections and it would have been natural for mounted or marching Highlanders to join in the chorus at the very least. Griogair Labhruidh recorded it for the film, with a group of male Gaelic singers picked by my colleague at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Decker Forrest.
Griogair LabhruidhGriogair was powerful and, being also profoundly engaged with the tradition, helped the other singers with niceties of regional Gaelic pronunciation. Bear McCreary produced down the line from LA, with myself as intermediary with the performers at Nick Turner and Mary Ann Kennedy's Watercolour studios in Ardgour, where you only had to look out of the window and you were in the set for real.
David Cameron asked for, and was granted, the postponement of the screening of Outlander until after the 2014 referendum, fearful of a Braveheart effect. Jesus wept again.
Bear's music based on Moch Sa Mhadainn features in season two and he has built it up imaginatively; Griogair's singing is spine-chilling, and the male voices were excellent.
As with The Eagle, I'm proud to be in the credits and don't resent the mission creep for which Bear graciously upped my fee.
Nor do I resent the long, long drive home to Skye in the dark, having missed the last ferry at Corran. This is the Highlands: real enough, but they were never meant to come easy.