John Lunn (born 13 May 1956) is an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

winning Scottish composer, known for the music of the series ''

Downton Abbey ''Downton Abbey'' is a British historical drama television series set in the early 20th century, created and co-written by Julian Fellowes. The series first aired in the United Kingdom on ITV on 26 September 2010 and in the United States o ...

'' and many other television and movie soundtracks.

Early life and education

Lunn was born in May 1956. His father was a saxophone player in a jazz band. Lunn graduated from Glasgow University, where he studied 12-tone techniques. He has cited among his musical influences

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...

, Milton Babbit, and

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century ...

, as well as

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

. Lunn was also a member of "

systems music Systems music is music with sound continua which evolve gradually, often over very long periods of time. Historically, the American minimalists Steve Reich, La Monte Young and Philip Glass are considered the principal proponents of this compositio ...

" band Man Jumping, an early 1980s "jazz-pop-worldbeat fusion ensemble", where he played bass and keyboard.". He took a short course in computer music at MIT, and assembled his own computerised compositional system. He first used a Maselec MLA-2 tri-band compressor, with a Prism Sound ADA-8XR multichannel converter and an Orpheus FireWire interface, before settling on a Maselec MEA-2 analogue equaliser.

Career

Television

He began composing for

BBC Scotland BBC Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: ''BBC Alba'') is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Scotland. It is one of the four BBC national regions, together with the BBC English Regions, BBC Cymru Wales and BBC Northern Irela ...

in the late 1980s, with ''Beatrix: The Early Life of Beatrix Potter'' (1990) and ''The Gift'' (1991). His work also includes music for the television series '' Hamish Macbeth'' (1995-1997), ''

Lorna Doone ''Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor'' is a novel by English author Richard Doddridge Blackmore, published in 1869. It is a romance based on a group of historical characters and set in the late 17th century in Devon and Somerset, particularly ar ...

'' (2000), '' North Square'' (2000), ''

Cambridge Spies ''Cambridge Spies'' is a four-part British drama miniseries written by Peter Moffat and directed by Tim Fywell, that was first broadcast on BBC Two in May 2003 and is based on the true story of four brilliant young men at the University of Cambr ...

'' (2003), ''

Bleak House ''Bleak House'' is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and ...

'' (2005), '' Hotel Babylon'' (2006), ''

Little Dorrit ''Little Dorrit'' is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Cl ...

'' (2008), ''

'' (2010-2015), ''Waking the Dead'' (2011), '' The White Queen'' (2013), ''

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the n ...

'' (2013), ''

Grantchester Grantchester is a village and civil parish on the River Cam or Granta in South Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about south of Cambridge. Name The village of Grantchester is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as ''Grantesete'' and ''Graunts ...

'' (2014), '' The Last Kingdom'' (2015), and ''

Belgravia Belgravia () is a district in Central London, covering parts of the areas of both the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Belgravia was known as the 'Five Fields' during the Tudor Period, and became a danger ...

'' (2020).

Opera

He has written several

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

s. Two of them, ''Misper'' (1997) and ''Zoë'' (2000) (shown by

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

), were written for

Glyndebourne Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hun ...

. Another, ''Mathematics of a Kiss'', was written for the

English National Opera English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English ...

. He wrote the 2006 operetta '' Tangier Tattoo'', with

librettist A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major litu ...

Stephen Plaice Stephen Plaice (born 9 September 1951) is a UK-based dramatist and scriptwriter who has written extensively for theatre, opera and television. In 2014 he was appointed Writer in Residence at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He became P ...

, again for Glyndebourne. Lunn's violin concerto was premiered by

Clio Gould Clio Gould is an English violinist, professor, director of the Royal Academy Soloists and leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Gould has appeared as soloist with a number of orchestras, including the London Sinfonietta, the London Philhar ...

and the

London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert in 1968—giv ...

at the

Queen Elizabeth Hall The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. The Q ...

Albums published

* (audio CD) * (audio CD)

Awards

Lunn has won two Emmy Awards, in 2012 and 2013, both for the Outstanding Music Composition for A Series (Original Dramatic Score), each for an episode of ''

''. He was nominated three other times: Outstanding Music Composition For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special (Original Dramatic Score) for ''

'' in 2009; for Outstanding Music Composition for A Series (Original Dramatic Score), for ''

, Episode 8'' in 2014; and Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score) for '' The White Queen'' in 2014. His music for Sky TV's '' Going Postal'' was winner of Best TV Score in the 2010

RTS RTS may refer to: Medicine * Rape trauma syndrome, the psychological trauma experienced by a rape victim * Revised Trauma Score, a system to evaluate injuries secondary to violent trauma * Rubinstein–Taybi syndrome, a condition characterized by ...

Awards and was nominated for a BAFTA and an

Ivor Novello award The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They have been presented annually in London by the Ivors Academy (formerly the BASCA) since 1956, and over 1,000 statuettes have been ...

. The BBC adaptation of

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

' ''

'' was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Original Score.

References

External links

*
John Lunn on Pop Music, Minimalism, and Composing for Downton Abbey
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lunn, John 1956 births British television composers Living people Scottish classical composers Scottish opera composers Male opera composers