John Addison

John Mervyn Addison (16 March 1920 – 7 December 1998) was a British composer best known for his film scores.

Addison was trained at Wellington College, Berkshire and at the age of sixteen entered the Royal College of Music. He studied composition with Gordon Jacob, oboe with Léon Goossens, and clarinet with Frederick Thurston. This education ended in 1939 with service in World War II. Addison served with the British XXX Corps in the 23rd Hussars. He was a tank officer in the Battle of Normandy and wounded at Caen. At the end of the war, he returned to London to teach composition at the Royal College of Music.

Addison is best known for his film scores. He won an Academy Award for the music to the 1963 film, Tom Jones and Luther. (1961) He collaborated with John Cranko on a revue, "Cranks" in 1956.

Although he wrote numerous classical compositions, Addison explained that "If you find you're good at something, as I was as a film composer, it's stupid to do anything else." His classical works included a trumpet concerto, described by The Times as "buoyant" and "Gershwinesque"; a trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon; Carte Blanche, a ballet for Sadler's Wells from which an orchestral suite of "sophisticated high spirits" was performed at the Proms; a septet for wind and harp a concertante for oboe, clarinet, horn and orchestra; and a partita for strings, which was warmly praised.

Marlene Dietrich recorded If He Swing By the String and Such Trying Times from the music in Tom Jones''.

Addison's collection of correspondence, scores, and studio recordings were donated to the Film Music Archives at Brigham Young University in 1994. He was survived by his wife Pamela; two sons Jonathan and Daniel; daughter Lucinda; stepson Rex Birchenough, and stepdaughter Sandra Stapleton.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Addison. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.