British composer Sir Malcom Arnold, the first British composer to ever win an Academy Award, died Saturday at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, after a being afflicted with a chest infection, according to the BBC. He was 84, just one month shy of his 85th birthday this October 21st.
You may not recognize his name, but you would certainly recognize his music, having composed the music for over 130 films, nine symphonies, seven ballets, two operas, one musical, more than twenty concertos, two string quartets, and music for brass band and wind band.
Sir Arnold was probably best known for his score to The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he won the Oscar in 1958. I would wager that its theme has been whistled by you at some point in your life, as it was by The Breakfast Club in a well-known scene. Click here for an MP3 and you'll say "oh yeah..." Some of his other well-known film scores include 1984, Solomon and Sheba, and The Angry Silence.
He is survived by two sons and one daughter. His companion and care-giver for the last 23 years, Anthony Day, praised Arnold as "the most wonderful man," telling the BBC "people didn't see the man that I knew because he had frontal lobe dementia over the last few years which slowly developed but, being with him, he was a happy, lovely man who enjoyed his music and enjoyed his life."
