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Donald Macleod explores Doreen Carwithen's life as a film composer in the 1940s and 50s and the musical legacy she's left behind.

Doreen Carwithen is one of only a handful of female British composers who worked in the film industry in the 1940s and 1950s. Dramas, mysteries, horror flicks, documentaries, the thirty-plus films she scored form a substantial part of her musical legacy.

Carwithen first came to critical attention in the concert hall, with the catchily titled ODTAA, One damn thing after another, in 1947. Predictably, newspaper headlines made much of her gender and her youth. She was just 24. It seemed as if a bright future lay ahead, yet, at the beginning of the 1960s, Carwithen would stop writing music, a situation which perhaps in part explains why her music dropped off the radar for many years.

To mark the centenary of her birth, Donald Macleod is joined by Leah Broad, whose biography of Carwithen is due to be published in 2023. Together they bring to light the little-known yet fascinating story of this 20th-century British composer.

In 1947 when she was still a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Carwithen was offered one of the newly created J. Arthur Rank apprenticeships as a film composer at Denham Studios. She was the only woman selected to join the scheme and quickly showed herself to have a real talent for the genre.

Three Cases of Murder Suite, arr Philip Lane
III: Reception at the Connemaras (excerpt)
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Gavin Sutherland, conductor

The Men of Sherwood Forest, arr Philip Lane
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Gavin Sutherland, conductor

Travel Royal Suite, arr Philip Lane
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Gavin Sutherland, conductor

Three Cases of Murder, arr Philip Lane
I: Main Titles
II: Mr X’s Gavotte
III: Reception at the Connemaras
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Gavin Sutherland, conductor

East Anglian Holiday, arr Philip Lane
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Gavin Sutherland, conductor

Boys in Brown Suite, arr Philip Lane
I: Main Titles and opening scene
II: Escape Plan
III: Kitty and Jackie. End titles
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Gavin Sutherland, conductor

Producer: Johannah Smith