John Veale
John Veale ( born June 15, 1922 in Shortlands, Kent as John Douglas Louis Veale, † November 16, 2006 in Bromley, Kent ) was a British composer and journalist. He created several musical works for the concert hall and the British cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Among these compositions not return for films like flames over the Far East, The Spanish Gardener or show.
Life and work
John Douglas Louis Veale was born in 1922 in Shortlands, in the English county of Kent. His father, Douglas Veale, who received the accolade later served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford ( 1930-1958 ).
John Veale was educated in history and music at Repton and at Corpus Christi College in Oxford.Als composer he was largely self-taught, but took at Egon Wellesz, Roger Sessions and Roy Harris also a few hours.
His compositions include three symphonies. No. 1 was written from 1944 to 1947 and first performed by Sir John Barbirolli at the Cheltenham Music Festival 1952; Symphony No. 2 in 1965 and he wrote Symphony No. 3 in 1997. Moreover emerged from the pen of John Veale a clarinet concerto, premiered on April 4, 1954 at the Royal Festival Hall, played by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sidney Fell.Ein Violin Concerto, panoramic ( an orchestral evocation of San Francisco) premiered in 1951 by Sir Adrian Boult, a Metropolis concert Overture premiered in 1955 by Sir Charles Groves and numerous other orchestral and ensemble pieces, including Apocalypse for chorus and orchestra.
Veales Violin Concerto was published in the Chandos CD label, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Hickox. It is coupled with the Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten.
Since the mid-1950s John Veale also composed for British cinema. Director Robert Parrish hired him in 1954 for his war drama flames over the Far East with Gregory Peck in the lead role.
1956 was followed by the drama film The Spanish Gardener, directed by Philip Leacock with Dirk Bogarde and Jon Whiteley and Michael Hordern in the lead roles. Philip Leacock signed him in 1957 again for the romantic drama Do not look back with Betta St. John, William Sylvester, Michael Craig and Flora Robson.
Yet emerged several crime and horror films for directors such as Montgomery Tully and Francis Searle in the following years. Among other things, the blind spider and danger at night.
The attempt to banish his original film scores in later years on recordings failed, as all compositions, ie recording tapes and scores at the British film studios were lost.
Since Veale increasingly suffered in the 1960s under the musical avant-garde regime the British Broadcasting Corporation by director William Glock, he worked from 1966 to 1980 only as a film correspondent for the Oxford Mail and from 1968 to 1987 as an editor at the Oxford University Press. Only through the rediscovery of his concert works during the 1980s came back John Veale to music and composing.
On 16 November 2006 he died at the age of 84 years in Bromley, a suburb southeast of London.