Composer Lookalikes

[Sir Velo]

:

James Robertson Justice

Henry Wood

[Serial_Apologist]

:

James Robertson Justice

Henry Wood

JRJ ac tually did play the part of a conductor in a British movie of the early '60s. The title of which may have been "Raising the Wind".

[Beef Oven!]

This is the Italian footballer, Andrea Pirlo.....







And this is the Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi

[antongould]

Uncanny Beefers I bet you've never seen them in the same room / match.....

[french frank]

Uncanny Beefers I bet you've never seen them in the same room / match.....

They look quite like Beefy too.

[Serial_Apologist]

They look quite like Beefy too.

Is that a UKIP badge the one in the jacket is wearing?

[mercia]

JRJ ac tually did play the part of a conductor in a British movie of the early '60s. The title of which may have been "Raising the Wind".

for which, wikipedia says, the screenplay and music were by crime writer Edmund Crispin aka Bruce Montgomery

[Pabmusic]

for which, wikipedia says, the screenplay and music were by crime writer Edmund Crispin aka Bruce Montgomery

And in which Bruce Montgomery appeared, conducting Messiah:

[mercia]

well well well. Now all we need is someone who looks like Bruce Montgomery. How about a young Jeffrey Archer.

[Pabmusic]

well well well. Now all we need is someone who looks like Bruce Montgomery. How about a young Jeffrey Archer.

Bruce Montgomery was an interesting chap, whose face calls out for a doppelganger:





He wrote a description of himself thinly disguised as Broderick Thouless, a film composer in The Glimpses of the Moon (my favourite Crispin novel). Montgomery himself was type-cast as a comedy - "wah-wah-wah" - composer - the Doctor series and the early Carry-Ons:

For him, type-casting had set in with a highbrow horror film called Bone Orchard … By nature and inclination a gentle romantic composer whose idiom would have been judged mildly progressive by Saint-Saens or Chaminade, Thouless had launched himself at the task of manufacturing the Bone Orchard score like a berserker rabbit trying to topple a tiger, and by over-compensating for his instinctive mellifluousness had managed to wring such hideous noises from his orchestra that he was at once assumed to have a particular flair for dissonance, if not a positive love of it. Ever since then he had accordingly found himself occupied three or four times a year with stakes driven through hearts, foot-loose mummies, giant centipedes aswarm in the Palace of Westminster and other such grim eventualities, a programme which had earned him quite a lot of money without, however, doing anything to enliven an already somewhat morose, complaining temperament. A bachelor of forty-six, he existed in an aura of inveterate despondency, lamenting his wasted life, various real or imagined defects in the luxurious large bungalow he had built himself, the slugs among his peas, his receding hair-line, taxes, the impossibility of getting decent bread delivered, the Rector, jet aircraft, the deterioration in the taste of Plymouth gin ("It's a grain spirit now, you see") and a whole manifest of aches and pains, some of them notional, others the inevitable consequence of smoking too much, a sedentary life, mild obesity, not being young any longer. In spit of his tales of woe he was quite well liked in the neighbourhood, possibly because his depressive phases were relieved on occasion by manic ones, during which he could be amusing company. His single state was accounted for locally by the theory that on visits to film studios he seduced starlets, a breed which no one realised had long since become extinct.

One storyline in the book is that Thouless has donated his score for The Mincer People to the church fete, but he wants Gervase Fen (the detective and Oxford Professor of Literature) to buy in back because no-one will actually want it and his housekeeper will be upset.

"Terrible stuff, you've never heard such a noise. There was one bit of kiss music, for a marvel, but by the time I'd got to it I'd done so many murders that it sounded exactly like another one. Derngh!" he excaimed in his nose, imitating sforzato stopped horns. "And then erk, skerk," he added, possibly attempting to convey ponticello strings. And then there was one part where I got Jimmy [Blades?] to put the xylophone down on its side and play tremolandos on the resonators - unspeakable, that was. I can't remember anything nastier I've done except for those sickening wailing violin harmonics in Thing of Things".

He then goes indoors to continue his (private) setting of poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. Now I'd hazard a guess that that's the only murder mystery that has sforzato, ponticello, xylophone, tremolandos, resonators, of violin harmonics among its vocabulary.

Montgomery was a friend of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin and I always detect a kinship in the writing.

This contains the Concertino for Strings (a bit Waltonesque):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-String-Miniatures-Vol-3/dp/B00005NUOM/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1402898912&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=naxos+english+dtrings

This has the Overture to a Fairy-Tale (maybe ditto):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Light-Overtures-Sutherland-Ballet/dp/B00009NJ26/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1402899297&sr=8-10&keywords=bruce+montgomery

And this has the Scottish Aubade and Scottish Lullaby:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Film-Composers-Concert-Sutherland/dp/B00008ZZ44/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402899359&sr=8-1&keywords=british+film+composers+in+concert

And this of course has the wah-wah's:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Carry-On-Album-Music/dp/B000026C2E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402899485&sr=8-1&keywords=carry+on+album

Raising the Wind is here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raising-Wind-James-Robertson-Justice/dp/B002VD5S4M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402899562&sr=8-1&keywords=raising+the+wind

[mercia]

crikey well done Pabmusic. He needs a thread to himself. I remember Crispin was mentioned several times on the "your favourite detective story" thread.

[Serial_Apologist]

crikey well done Pabmusic. He needs a thread to himself. I remember Crispin was mentioned several times on the "your favourite detective story" thread.

I would imagine anyone with the name of Montgomery, of all names, in the England of the 1950s/early '60s would have to have typecast himself thus.

[Flay]

JRJ ac tually did play the part of a conductor in a British movie of the early '60s. The title of which may have been "Raising the Wind".

I've quoted this before, but for anyone who hasn't seen the film, here is a clip. Brilliant - I especially love the Cor Anglais player's facial expressions!

[Tony Halstead]

I've quoted this before, but for anyone who hasn't seen the film, here is a clip. Brilliant - I especially love the Cor Anglais player's facial expressions!

Agreed, it's hilarious!
On a more serious note, that film - particularly its shots of the orchestra - is an important historical document.
Do the film credits actually name the orchestra? I recognised in the horn section Andrew McGavin, currently still 'with us' in his 90s and still playing his horn in a freelance capacity... amazing.
Maybe our fellow Message Boarder Hornspieler could let us know if he can name e.g. the leader, cor anglais player, the several horn players, principal 'cellist and principal flautist?

[Pabmusic]

... Do the film credits actually name the orchestra? I recognised in the horn section Andrew McGavin, currently still 'with us' in his 90s and still playing his horn in a freelance capacity... amazing.
Maybe our fellow Message Boarder Hornspieler could let us know if he can name e.g. the leader, cor anglais player, the several horn players, principal 'cellist and principal flautist?

I don't know if it's in the credits, but it was the Sinfonia of London, which was assembled for film work. Bruce Montgomery had worked with them many times. Apparently he threw a party for the orchestra at Pinewood and later told Douglas Gamley, "Wonderful evening. Can't remember a thing about it".