John Danforth Herman Greenwood (26 June 1889 – 15 April 1975), an English composer best known for his film scores, was the son of New Zealander Alfred Greenwood (1842–1912) and his English-born wife Ottilie Rose Minna (1855–1932) née Schweitzer. He was named after his grandfathers: Herman Schweitzer, a Prussian born analytical chemist; and Dr. John Danforth Greenwood (1803–1890) from Sussex, England, a pioneering New Zealand physician and educationist, who had emigrated to New Zealand in 1842 after retiring from medicine due to ill health.

Education and early career

Greenwood was born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. He learned

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

and

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

from his parents and at 18 entered the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

to study viola and

horn Horn most often refers to: *Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound ** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...

, as well as composition with

Charles Villiers Stanford Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic music, Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was ed ...

.Huntley, John. ''British Film Music'' (1947) While there he won the Grove scholarship and

Arthur Sullivan Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 comic opera, operatic Gilbert and Sullivan, collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including ''H.M.S. Pinaf ...

composition awards. For a short period he taught at Brighton and Hove Grammar School, and then made his living as a pianist, horn and viola player in various orchestras as well as conducting at the

Queen's Hall The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it ...

and in the provinces.

Composer

Greenwood's early concert works had their first performances from the Queen's Hall Orchestra under

Henry Wood Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hund ...

in the early 1920s. But he quickly became involved with writing music for the cinema, composing and editing music for silent films from the 1920s onwards. In 1929 he wrote a new score for the part-talkie film ''

To What Red Hell ''To What Red Hell'' is a 1929 British crime film directed by Edwin Greenwood and starring Sybil Thorndike, Bramwell Fletcher and Janice Adair. Made at Twickenham Studios, it was one of the earliest all-talking sound films to be produced in Br ...

''.Musiker, R and Musiker, N
''Conductors and Composers of Popular Orchestral Music''
(1998) From the 1930s until the mid-1950s he worked on around 50 films, from ''Man of Aran'' (1934) to ''Grand National Night'' (1954). While he no doubt gained considerable satisfaction from these compositions – and access to a large audience – there were also frustrations as the film editing process frequently required the removal or addition of passages of music quite regardless of the overall form and themes of the piece. Whether his compositions of incidental theatre music for

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's ''Merchant of Venice'' and ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (as staged by

J.B. Fagan James Bernard Fagan (18 May 1873 – 17 February 1933) was an Irish-born actor, theatre manager, producer and playwright active in England. After turning from the law to the stage, Fagan began his acting career, including four years from 1895 t ...

) were intrinsically more satisfying is not known. A ''Fantasy'' was extracted from ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' and performed separately. His film credits also include scores for documentaries such as ''Berth 24'' (1950), portraying the life of the Hull docks, and ''The Lake District'' (1954), with narration by

Michael Redgrave Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in ''Mourning Becomes Elect ...

. His march ''The Eighth Army'' (from the film ''The Nine Men'') written with

Eric Coates Eric Francis Harrison Coates (27 August 1886 – 21 December 1957) was an English composer of light music and, early in his career, a leading violist. Coates was born into a musical family, but, despite his wishes and obvious talent, his pa ...

, was recorded on 78. The concert works, composed in parallel with his work for film and theatre, are now entirely forgotten. ''Salute to

Gustav Holst Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...

'' was premiered at the

Sir Henry Wood Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the The Proms, Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introd ...

Promenade Concerts The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

in 1936, conducted by the composer. His setting of ''Psalm 150'' for chorus and orchestra was broadcast in May 1936, conducted by Adrian Boult. On 24 January 1938

Constant Lambert Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and (alongside Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton) he was a major figure in th ...

conducted the BBC Orchestra in the first performance and broadcast of Greenwood's ''Symphonic Movement''. The Piano Quintet, composed around 1940, was performed by the Aeolian String Quartet and

Kyla Greenbaum Kyla Betty Greenbaum (5 February 1922 - 15 June 2017) was a British pianist and composer, the younger sister of conductor and composer Hyam Greenbaum. She gave the first UK performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto in 1945 and the firs ...

on 15 October 1953 at Queen Mary Hall,

Great Russell Street Great Russell Street is a street in Bloomsbury, London, best known for being the location of the British Museum. It runs between Tottenham Court Road (part of the A400 route) in the west, and Southampton Row (part of the A4200 route) in the east ...

, as part of a chamber concert that also included the String Quartet No 2 (1928) and the Flute Sonata (1943). On 14 September 1956 his Viola Concerto received its world premiere at the Proms, with

Watson Forbes Watson Douglas Buchanan Forbes (16 November 1909 in St Andrews – 25 June 1997 in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire) was a Scottish violist and classical music arranger. From 1964 to 1974 he was Head of Music for BBC Scotland. Early life Wats ...

as the soloist, conducted by John Hollingsworth. The composer's archives, held at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

, contain documentation (including some manuscripts) of two symphonies, three piano sonatas and two orchestral ballet suites (''The Silver Harlequin''. 1917 and ''Piccadilly'', 1953). During the War Greenwood, a conscientious objector, worked on the staff of the BBC European Service as Assistant Music Supervisor. At that time he was living at 39, Hillcrest Road, Acton Hill. He later lived and died at

Ditchling Ditchling is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is contained within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park; the order confirming the establishment of the park was signed in Ditchling. ...

, Sussex, aged 75.Leach, Gerald. ''British Composer Profiles'' (3rd edition, 2012), p. 99

Filmography

References

Bibliography

*''Everyman's Dictionary of Music'' 5th Edition, 1975.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenwood, John Dh English film score composers English male film score composers 1889 births 1975 deaths Alumni of the Royal College of Music 20th-century British male musicians