Post by petrolino on Jan 22, 2022 0:30:41 GMT
Composer Marc Wilkinson has died at the age of 92. Wilkinson was born in Paris, France and became a student of Edgard Varese. He later studied the music of his contemporary Pierre Boulez closely. Wilkinson developed a highly distinctive baroque style which shone through in many of his works. He was a prolific composer of music for theatre, film and television.
Thanks for the music.
'A nearly forgotten English classic, 'If….' (1968) is one of those genuinely provocative films that only the 60s and 70s could produce, satirizing school and religion, glorifying sex and drinking, and offering youth the dangerous idea of freedom. Marc Wilkinson’s hypnotic soundtrack helps ensure that the film’s dangerous ideas corrupt the impressionable youth of the audience.'
- The Film Scorer
'Family Life' (1971)
'Born in Paris, Wilkinson studied composition at Columbia and Princeton Universities; he also took some private lessons with Varèse in New York. For a time he was resident composer and musical director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, then musical director of the Royal National Theatre (1963–74). One of the first scores he composed in that post was for Peter Shaffer’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun; the result deeply impressed the playwright, who has described Wilkinson’s work as “perhaps the best score for a play to be written since Grieg embellished Peer Gynt“. Wilkinson subsequently wrote the incidental music to Shaffer’s play Equus (1973).
Other National Theatre productions for which Wilkinson wrote incidental music included Tom Stoppard‘s plays Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) and Jumpers (its premiere production, 1972).
Through his work at the National Theatre Wilkinson met Piers Haggard, who was working as an assistant director: the two worked together on the National Theatre production The Dutch Courtesan (1964). Having directed several TV dramas, Haggard was about to direct his first feature film and invited Wilkinson to score. The result is one of Wilkinson’s most celebrated film scores, Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971),acclaimed by Jonathan Rigby in English Gothic as “easily among the best ever composed for a British horror film”. Wilkinson subsequently gave crucial advice to Paul Giovanni who had been commissioned to score the film The Wicker Man.
Wilkinson and Haggard subsequently worked together on further TV and film productions, including Quatermass and The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.'
Other National Theatre productions for which Wilkinson wrote incidental music included Tom Stoppard‘s plays Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) and Jumpers (its premiere production, 1972).
Through his work at the National Theatre Wilkinson met Piers Haggard, who was working as an assistant director: the two worked together on the National Theatre production The Dutch Courtesan (1964). Having directed several TV dramas, Haggard was about to direct his first feature film and invited Wilkinson to score. The result is one of Wilkinson’s most celebrated film scores, Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971),acclaimed by Jonathan Rigby in English Gothic as “easily among the best ever composed for a British horror film”. Wilkinson subsequently gave crucial advice to Paul Giovanni who had been commissioned to score the film The Wicker Man.
Wilkinson and Haggard subsequently worked together on further TV and film productions, including Quatermass and The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.'
- Movie Music International
'Blood On Satan's Claw' (1971)
"I sometimes worked with an orchestrator; I liked to stick with people I knew such as Gary Hughes, John Coleman and Nic Rowley."
- Marc Wilkinson
'Sanctus' - Missa Luba
R.I.P.
