Battle of Britain (film) - Musical Score

Musical Score

As recounted in Mervyn Cooke’s A History of Film Music (2008), the film has two musical scores. The first was written by Sir William Walton, and conducted by Malcolm Arnold. However, the music department at United Artists objected that the score was too short. As a result, a further score was commissioned from Ron Goodwin. Producer S. Benjamin Fisz and actor Sir Laurence Olivier protested this decision, and Olivier threatened to take his name from the credits. In the end, one segment of the Walton score, titled "The Battle in the Air"', which framed the climactic air battles of 15 September 1940, was retained in the final cut, as well as a few bars of his March in the final scene before the credits roll. The Walton score was played with no sound effects of aircraft engines or gunfire, giving the "Battle" sequence a transcendent, lyrical quality.

Prime Minister Edward Heath retrieved Walton’s manuscript from United Artists in 1972, presenting it to the composer at Walton’s 70th birthday party held at 10 Downing Street. Tapes of the Walton score were believed lost forever until being rediscovered in 1990 from the sound mixer’s garage. Since then the score has been restored and released on compact disc. The option to watch the film with the complete Walton score was included on the Region 2 Special Edition DVD of the film, which was released in June 2004.

Very little attention has been paid to the comparative quality of the scores produced for the film. Walton's music was composed with considerable help from Malcolm Arnold, who was responsible for producing the orchestrations. Aside from the undoubted originality and impact of "The Battle in the Air" sequence, much of Walton's score is derivative, including references to Wagner's 'Siegfried', and a main march which follows a well-worn template: Walton himself admitted that he had basically revamped his "Orb and Sceptre" march several times over.

By contrast, Ron Goodwin's score, which has always been regarded as a poor relation, encapsulates the atmosphere of the film perfectly: For the opening theme, Goodwin composed the "Aces High March" in the style of a traditional German military march in 6/8 time. The march places heavy emphasis on the "oom-pah" sound of tubas and lower-pitched horns on the first and second beats and has the glockenspiel double the horns in the melody. Because of the great length of this sequence, which shows a Luftwaffe general's inspection of a Heinkel squadron in occupied France, the Aces High has three separate bridges between choruses of the main theme, one of which recurs several times in a gently sentimental variation. Despite its origin in a representation of a tyrannical threat to democracy, the march has become a popular British patriotic tune, like the "Dambusters March", and is frequently played at military parades and by marching bands in Northern Ireland. American radio personality and convicted Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has used the march as bumper music on his syndicated radio programme.

The remainder of the score is distinctive in its careful underpinning of the visual action and musical characterisation of the opposing sides, each of which is retains its own thematic material.