Robert Farnon (1917-2005)

Robert Farnon's scoring can be heard on the following British musical films, and for 'Gentlemen Marry Brunettes' he even sings! (supplying the singing voice of Scott Brady).

The Road to Hong Kong (1962)

Expresso Bongo (1960) (also song)

It's a Wonderful World (1956)

King's Rhapsody (1955) (musical director)

Lilacs in the Spring (1955) (music scorer)

Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955)

Maytime in Mayfair (1949)

Spring in Park Lane (1948) (musical director)

The Dancing Years (1948) (orchestrator) (score adaptation)

London Town (1946) (music arranger: choir, "If Spring Were Only Here to Stay") (uncredited)

Robert Farnon

'The Times' obituary April 27, 2005

Robert Farnon July 24, 1917 - April 23, 2005 Prolific composer talented in both jazz and classical with a gift for arranging orchestras in his head

ALTHOUGH he could have become a great figure in either jazz or the classics, Robert Farnon became the world’s greatest arranger and composer of light orchestral music. If his name was not immediately familiar to audiences across the world, then his television theme music for Panorama, The Secret Army and Colditz were widely known, as were his tunes Jumping Bean, A Star is Born and the Westminster Waltz. In the 1940s and 1950s, his scores for such movies as Captain Hornblower R.N. and Spring in Park Lane were among his most familiar pieces. He continued to work at the highest level for more than half a century after that, winning his most recent Grammy award with his instrumental arrangement of 'Lament' for the trombonist J. J. Johnson in 1995. Once described by André Previn as “the greatest living writer for strings”, Farnon had the ability to create sumptuous orchestral backdrops for singers and instrumental soloists alike. Yet he did not need to work at the piano, having the rare ability to hear an entire arrangement in his head. George Shearing recalled Farnon visiting him at his Cotswold house before to making the 1993 album How Beautiful is Night, and jotting down notes as they discussed the repertoire in the living room. Then Farnon went back to his own home in Guernsey, where he wrote out all the arrangements, sitting in his favourite armchair. It was a skill Farnon had perfected as a trumpeter in Percy Faith’s CBC Orchestra in the early 40s. During his bars of rest, he taught himself to shut out the sounds around him, in order to write out completely new arrangements.

Robert Joseph Farnon was born in Toronto, where he played several instruments, before settling on the trumpet and studying composition with the expatriate Louis Waizman. As a teenager, Farnon became a trumpeter in Faith’s broadcasting orchestra in Toronto, where he played and arranged for the Happy Gang show. When jazz musicians such as Oscar Peterson or Dizzy Gillespie came to town, Farnon would jam with them, and Gillespie in particular was impressed with the Canadian’s faultless knowledge of harmony, nicknaming him “Beethoven”. They resolved to work together while Gillespie was still in Cab Calloway’s Orchestra in 1941, but did not manage to do so until many years later, first in an arrangement of the folksong Blow The Wind Southerly in 1978, and finally in Farnon’s arrangement of Con Alma in 1989. Farnon took over as conductor of Faith’s band in 1940 and at the same time he produced his first full-length classical compositions, including two symphonies, the first of which was premiered in 1941 by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He might well have continued in a classical vein had the war not intervened. He was appointed conductor of the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, which sailed for London in September 1944. There he gave concerts and broadcast alongside the American band of Glenn Miller, and his British counterpart George Melachrino.

London became Farnon’s spiritual home, and he stayed on after the war, joining Geraldo’s Orchestra as an arranger, where his skills at transcribing the latest American hits via a shortwave radio were particularly highly valued. Before long he was fronting his own band, and supporting Britain’s major singing stars such as Gracie Fields, Donald Peers and Vera Lynn, both on air and on disc. His arrangements combined a flawless string-writing technique with the jazzy freshness of the New World, and his output was prolific. Often, when arranging, he adorned other composers’ melodies with dazzlingly original countermelodies of his own, weaving the end product into a seamless whole that greatly enhanced the material he had started with. He wrote for his own Decca recording orchestra, for Chappell’s music library of stock arrangements, and for the BBC. His range of activities broadened ever further, as he composed and arranged for the screen, ranging from movies such as The Road to Hong Kong with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, down to domestic television series in the UK. He settled in Guernsey during the 1960s, a decade when he conducted and arranged Frank Sinatra’s first London album, as well as working with the jazz singers Sarah Vaughan and Tony Bennett. Farnon’s four Ivor Novello awards stretch from the 1950s to the 1990s, and his Grammies from the 1970s to the 1990s. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1998. His arranging has influenced composers as different as Quincy Jones and John Williams, and thanks to the diligent efforts of the Robert Farnon Society, the majority of his most original recordings from the 1950s onwards have recently been reissued on CD. His wife and four children survive him.

Robert Farnon, composer and arranger, was born on July 24, 1917. He died on April 23, 2005, aged 87.

Prolific light music composer famed for film and radio themes

Tim McDonald

Tuesday April 26, 2005

The Canadian-born composer, arranger and conductor Robert Farnon, who has died aged 87 after a career spanning 70 years, was nicknamed "the guv'nor" by Frank Sinatra in 1962, when the two men first came together in London to work on an album. It summed up the fact that Farnon's name was synonymous with the highest standards of craftsmanship. Farnon was born into an unusually musical family in Toronto. His father, a clothier by trade, also played the violin; his mother and sister were pianists; his elder brother, Brian, played in a jazz band, and his younger brother, Dennis, also a fine musician, later wrote scores for the Mr Magoo cartoon character. Farnon himself learned the violin and the piano, but it was percussion that really took his fancy, and he made such progress that he was able to perform with the Toronto Juvenile Symphony Orchestra when only 12. Thereafter, he spent three years as a drummer in his brother's band, and learned to play the cornet. In 1936, he joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as first trumpet for the Percy Faith Orchestra, writing arrangements and producing scores for Paul Whiteman and André Kostelanetz. When Faith went to the US, Farnon took charge of musical matters at CBC, and conducting began to take up more of his time. So did composing, practically all of which consisted, not of light, popular pieces - as might have been expected from a man looking after Canada's most famous variety radio show, Happy Gang, in which he not only conducted and played trumpet but also took part in comedy sketches - but of serious concert works. In 1941, his first symphony, Symphonic Suite (1938), was first performed, by Sir Ernest MacMillan and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, the score and parts of this work were subsequently lost at sea. Symphony No 2 in B, known as the Ottawa Symphony, followed in 1942, and was premiered, also under the direction of MacMillan, the following year. Additional orchestral works included a symphonette, Cascades To The Sea (which suffered the same fate as the First Symphony) and an Etude for Trumpet. By 1943, having enlisted in the Canadian army when war broke out, Farnon was conductor of the Allied Expeditionary Forces Canadian band. In 1944, he brought the band to England, and from then on, light music was to play the dominant role in his creative life. He was regularly heard on the BBC's AEF programme, especially in the Canada Show, for which he wrote the signature tune, March Along, Joe Soldier. Other shows - and more signature tunes, as well as hundreds of arrangements - followed. He was soon working as an arranger with Geraldo and Ted Heath, and had formed his own orchestra. Each new radio show brought its own signature tune - Journey Into Melody, for the series Melody Hour, which began in 1946, and Melody Fair, which was used for a 1950s programme, as well as Contrasts for his television show.

The cinema elicited many fine scores from Farnon, a number of them, such as I Live In Grosvenor Square, Spring In Park Lane, Maytime In Mayfair, Lilacs In The Spring, Elizabeth Of Ladymead and King's Rhapsody, written for Herbert Wilcox productions. As the resident conductor/ arranger for Decca (the London label in the US), Farnon made many outstanding albums and influenced other writers. Andre Previn, for example, regarded him as "the greatest string writer in the world". He also provided the backing for a remarkable collection of vocalists, including Bing Crosby, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Vera Lynn (for whom he arranged and conducted her first number one US hit, You Can't Be True Dear, in 1948), Ray Ellington, Lena Horne and José Carreras. He won Ivor Novello awards for Westminster Waltz in 1956, On The Seashore in 1960 and the Colditz March in 1973, and also began to produce larger-scale pieces again, the Rhapsody For Violin And Orchestra appearing in the 1958 Light Music festival in response to a request from the BBC, which went on to commission The Frontiersmen and Scherzando For Trumpet. Fellow Canadians Tommy Reilly and Bob Burns both benefited from fine works, the former with the Prelude And Dance For Harmonica And Orchestra, dating from the mid-1960s, the latter from the three movement, 25-minute long Saxophone Tripartita of 1971. Down the years, Farnon also produced a series of atmospheric tone poems, mainly inspired by Canada. There were more film scores, including Circle Of Danger, Captain Horatio Hornblower RN and Expresso Bongo among about 40 pictures. He continued to make regular appearances on the BBC Light Programme. In 1987, the BBC's Friday Night Is Music Night was devoted entirely to the man and his music - even the title was amended to Friday Night Is Farnon Night. For television, he wrote the stirring theme for the BBC series Colditz, and the main title for Secret Army. Many of his mood music pieces have attained the status of light-music classics. His Jumping Bean became the most used signature tune in the world. He also contributed to brass band literature; Une Vie De Matelot was chosen as the test piece for the British National Brass Band Championships in 1975.

From the late 1950s, Farnon lived on Guernsey, in the Channel Islands. In his later years, ill health curtailed his appearances, and he was especially disappointed at being too ill to conduct a special Radio 2 concert celebrating his 75th birthday. However, five years later, he took part in a Radio 2 arts programme commemorating his 80th birthday. Shortly after that, he accepted a commission to write a piano concerto, Cascades To The Sea, with the same title as the piece whose score had previously been lost. In 1991, Farnon received his fourth Ivor Novello award, to acknowledge his outstanding services to British music. In 1995, he won a Grammy for best instrumental arrangement, for his version of Dimitri Tiomkin's Wild Is The Wind. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1998. His wife Pat and four children survive him.

Robert Joseph Farnon, composer and conductor, born July 24 1917; died Guernsey, April 22 2005 --

Bob Farnon, who has died aged 87, was the finest of light music composers and arrangers, whose luxuriant and energetic scores proved unfailingly popular over 60 years. Farnon's successes ranged from the popular Jumping Bean and Portrait of a Flirt, to scores for the films Spring in Park Lane, Captain Horatio Hornblower RN and The Road to Hong Kong. His television work included the first theme music for Panorama and the series Colditz; he also did arrangements for the crooners Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne and Vera Lynn. The only drawback was that, while Farnon's attempts to establish a reputation as a "serious" composer were politely acknowledged, his work continued primarily to be regarded as being easy on the ear.

Robert Joseph Farnon was born in Toronto into a clothier's musical family on July 24 1917. He took up the violin, studied piano with his mother and played drums in his elder brother Brian's band before taking up the trumpet; Brian later did some arranging for Nat "King" Cole while their brother Dennis did the same for Maynard Ferguson and the "Mr Magoo" films. On leaving Humbercrest Collegiate, young Bob worked with local bands, then became lead trumpet with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation orchestra, where a copyist gave him lessons in theory, harmony and counterpoint. Although claiming to have absolute pitch only on trumpet, he began doing choral arrangements for Percy Faith, whom he succeeded as leader. Soon he was also producing material for the American orchestra leaders Paul Whiteman and Andre Kostelanetz as well as playing in jam sessions with the young trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and the pianist Oscar Peterson, who became lifelong friends. His Symphonic Suite was premiered by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Sir Ernest Macmillan, in 1941, and his second symphony, Ottawa, by the CBC the following year. In later life, Farnon declined to rework the score of the former for a new performance, while saying that the only manuscript of the latter had been sunk in the Mersey on a ship from Canada.

He arrived in Britain in 1944 as leader of the Allied Expeditionary Force's Canadian band, alongside George Melachrino's and Glenn Miller's British and American outfits. Conscious that his musicians were not the best, he tried to keep ahead by taking down the harmonies of the latest songs on short-wave broadcasts from the United States. The disadvantage of his versatility soon became clear when his serious offerings gathered dust in publishers' offices. Nevertheless, Farnon was taken with the higher standards of musicianship in London, recognising that he could bring a North American virility which would contrast with the more genteel offerings of such composers as Eric Coates. On coming out of the Army he decided to remain in Britain, becoming arranger for Geraldo and then Ted Heath; by 1950 he had his own wireless programme. After marrying Pat Smith, a casting director for the director Herbert Willcox, Farnon settled on Guernsey, where he was a keen photographer and chairman of the local softball association. He and his wife had five sons and two daughters. Among his notable later works were the CD How Beautiful is Night, with the pianist George Shearing, and an arrangement of Lament, offering a rich variety of textures behind the trombonist JJ Johnson, which won a Grammy award in 1996. He received four Ivor Novello awards and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. Atlhough Farnon, who died on April 23, achieved only limited recognition as a serious composer, he returned in recent years to longer works. His third symphony is to be premiered in Edinburgh next month.

Robert Farnon

The Independent 14 May 2005

Robert Joseph Farnon, composer and arranger: born Toronto, Ontario 24 July 1917; married (five sons, two daughters); died St Martin's, Guernsey 23 April 2005.

Robert Farnon's enormous catalogue of arrangements helped British light music survive the post-war years, while as a musical director he worked with many of the great names of 20th-century popular music as well as writing film scores. Farnon was born into a musical family in Toronto in 1917: his older brother Brian worked with Spike Jones and his younger brother Dennis wrote music for Mr Magoo cartoons. Only the eldest, Norah, did not pursue a musical career. After playing in dance bands, Farnon became first trumpet and arranger for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Orchestra at 19, while on regular trips to New York he played with Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson. When the CBC conductor Percy Faith left for the United States, Farnon replaced him. Encouraged by his teacher Louis Waizman, Farnon hoped for success in "serious" music ("At that time I thought of nothing else"). Sir Ernest Macmillan and Eugene Ormandy took up his first symphony (1940) and a second, The Ottawa, followed in 1942. But Farnon was later dismissive of these early serious works though he did raid the melodies for future works. In September 1944 Farnon came to Britain as leader of the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces - his American and British equivalents were Glenn Miller and George Melachrino. After the war he stayed and his breezily jazz-tinged pieces and Debussian textures in pastoral works such as A la claire fontaine, helped light music survive the post-war years. But he also desperately wanted to get into the film industry. Meanwhile he wrote library music for use in radio, newsreels, films and, later, television including "Jumping Bean", "Portrait of a Flirt", and the title which sums up his ethos, "Journey into Melody".

In the late 1940s he worked for Decca, composing and conducting his own orchestra and celebrating the Coronation with a set of English folk-song arrangements. After work with Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields, he was music director for artists including Tony Bennett, José Carreras, Bing Crosby, Eileen Farrell, Lena Horne, George Shearing, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan. Richmal Compton's famous schoolboy helped Farnon into the film industry as he scored Just William's Luck (1947) following this with other film scores. After providing dance-hall music for Herbert Wilcox's I Live in Grosvenor Square (1945), Farnon scored several phenomenally popular vehicles for Wilcox's wife Anna Neagle: Spring in Park Lane (incorporating his orchestrations of Debussy's "En bateau" , the revue song "The Moment I Saw You" and the folk song "Early One Morning", 1948) and Maytime in Mayfair (1949). For the title music of Elizabeth of Ladymead (1948) he reworked part of his library composition "State Occasion". In the mid-Fifties, Farnon married Wilcox's casting director Patricia Smith. The post-war years were a high-water mark as Farnon worked with popular music stars, wrote film scores and received commissions from the BBC including the "Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra" (1958) which has a foot each in the "serious" and "light" camps. One of his best film scores is Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951), with its Korngoldish swashbuckling, and he later reworked one of its most ardent moments as the song "On the Lips of Lovers". In 1962 he was music director for The Road to Hong Kong, although he joked that he had killed the series off, as no more were made. The 1960s and 1970s also brought television work, most memorably the series Colditz (1972-74) and Secret Army (1977-79). With typical modesty, the composer told David Ades, secretary of the Robert Farnon Society, that he "could not understand how people claimed to recognise a 'Farnon sound' ", but André Previn called him "the greatest living string writer in the world" and Tony Bennett said that "the greatest music I ever heard in Great Britain was composed by Robert Farnon". Farnon received a Grammy in 1995 and four Ivor Novello Awards, including one for lifetime achievement in 1991. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1988. A celebratory 80th-birthday trip led to a commission and the resulting piano concerto, describing the play of water, has the typically romantic title Cascades to the Sea. With the resurgence of interest in light music in the 1990s Farnon's own recordings were reissued on CD, but he continued to compose new pieces and make new arrangements of older ones. His last works include a jazzy concerto for amplified bassoon, and a return to the symphony, with the writing of a third, whose premiere takes place this evening in Edinburgh, the city to which it is dedicated.

John Riley