Carl Davis’s work ranged from films and TV to ballet and his own symphonies. He was particularly noted for writing new soundtracks for some 50 remastered silent films starring Greta Garbo, Rudolf Valentino, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and classics such as Ben-Hur, as well as Abel Gance’s 1927 five-hour epic Napoléon.
His versatility extended to documentaries, comedies, drama and war films. He used deep, unnerving bass notes for his soundtrack for the award-winning Thames Television’s 1973 documentary series The World at War, about the Second World War, whose lugubrious airs powerfully evoked the conflict.
During six decades of work he was noted for his skill in being able to interpret an emotional power and sense of place in films such as Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), scripted by Harold Pinter and starring Meryl Streep, for which he won an Oscar and an Ivor Novello Award.
Davis moved from Brooklyn to Britain in 1961 following the successful transfer to the Edinburgh Festival and London’s Arts Theatre of a 1959 off-Broadway Emmy award-winning revue, Diversions, of which he was co-composer. He wrote music for for the BBC satirical series That Was The Week That Was (1962) and the 1995 miniseries production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth, followed by the 1998 film adaptation of Goodnight Mr Tom.
Composer Carl Davis in 2005 (Photo: Getty)
His theme tune for the 2006 World Cup was an arrangement of Handel’s See the Conquering Hero Comes, and his music for the 1984 horse-racing drama Champions was adopted by the BBC for its Grand National coverage. There followed a host of TV films like The Snow Goose, Thames’s The Naked Civil Servant and the 1986 BBC adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac.
Davis once said he was always searching for a solution to find the right music to capture the mood: “It must always tell the right story.”
That “longing for love and experience” was his primary aim in the opening theme from The French Lieutenant’s Woman. He used French horns and piano bravura to convey inner turmoil in Pride and Prejudice and famously collaborated with Paul McCartney on his 1991 Liverpool Oratorio, an eight-movement live album recorded to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Davis alternated violin solos with arias to convey the life and career of the former Beatle, and the album was a huge commercial success, topping classical music charts around the world, although it was less well received critically.
McCartney led the tributes at Davis’s passing and shared a photograph of the pair sitting together at the piano. He recalled their collaboration: “It was my first full-length classical venture and I really enjoyed working with him to make it happen. I would show up at his house and we would start writing.
“I would suggest an idea and he would write it down on the manuscript paper which made it easy for him to play the idea back to me and we progressed like that. He was a very skilful and fun man to be with.”
Looking every inch the musician with his wild, white hair and colourful shirts and waistcoats, Davis described himself as “old-fashioned” and disliked being “tied to machinery”, preferring “to conduct … with as little apparatus as possible”. He was also an engaging conversationalist who always made time for friends and interviewers.
In later years, apart from his work for film and TV, Davis wrote scores for both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
A psssion for ballet music was awakened when he was commissioned to write Lady of the Camellias by the National Ballet of Croatia in 2008. This evoked his childhood love of Verdi’s La Traviata, based on Dumas’s La Dame aux Camellias. Davis gave the work a contemporary slant using projection and film to ensure that “the action could flow without pause”.
This led to commissions for the Northern Ballet Theatre, Scottish Ballet, English National Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, among others.
He received a Bafta special lifetime achievement award in 2003 and was made CBE in 2005. He married the actress Jean Boht in 1970. She survives him with their daughters Hannah and Jessie.
Carl Davis: born October 28, 1936. Died August 3, 2023
