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FROM RUMANIA TO ENGLAND: The Musical Career
of FRANCIS CHAGRIN (1905-1972)
By Philip L Scowcroft
Chagrin was born Alexander Paucker in Bucharest
on 15 November 1905 and initially trained (in Switzerland)
as an engineer, changing course to a musical career, despite
family opposition, in the 1930s. He studied first in Paris
(with Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas of Sorcerer’s
Apprentice fame) while earning money playing the piano
in night clubs and composing light music, and then in London
with Matyas Seiber. He settled here in 1936 and married an
English girl, by whom he had two sons. He died on 10 November
1972.
During the war he worked as musical director
and composer for the French section of the BBC Overseas Service
(1941-44) for which the French government later decorated
him. He retained his connections with the Corporation thereafter.
Also during the War (1943) he founded and ran the Committee
for the Promotion of New Music (later SPNM) to help build
a platform for younger composers to have their works heard.
This is not to say that his own compositions were avant garde.
Serious music he did produce, but this was always accessible
and one suspects that did not commend him to the BBC music
hierarchy in the Glock era. Certainly his two symphonies (1959,
published 1967, and 1970), rather French in idiom, were not
often played, nor were his Piano Concerto, Wind Octet and
string orchestra pieces like Lamento Appassionato, Prelude
and Fugue, premiered at the Proms in 1947, and an Elegy.
However he had considerable success with
his lighter music which also included works for string orchestra:
Three Bagatelles, the five Aquarelles (portraits
of five children) and Suite Mediévale. Like
many light music figures he relished composing "old"
pastiche music, other examples for fuller orchestra being
a Renaissance Suite, similar to Warlock’s Capriol,
the Orchestral Suite No. 1 and the Sarabande for
oboe and strings (or piano). Chagrin conducted various orchestras,
including some ballet ensembles (he indeed composed music
for ballets) and his own Chagrin Ensemble, so it was not surprising
he wrote so many orchestral miniatures, dances like Mirage
(a tango), Concert Rumba and Castellana (a Spanish
dance) and other miniatures including Chanson d’Amour,
Reverie, Thrills of Spring, Promenade, Berceuse, Clockwork
Revels, Trickery and Alpine Holiday, arranged by
Ronald Hanmer, which could serve as concert items or, hopefully,
as "library" music. In 1956 the BBC commissioned
him to write the Rumanian Rhapsody for harmonica and
orchestra (at that time Larry Adler was in his pomp) for the
Light Music Festival of that year. For non-orchestral instrumental
combinations most of his output was light in character and
much of it was appropriate for younger musicians including
the Divertimenti for wind and brass quintets, Four Lyric
Interludes, All Together Now, for wind band, Improvisation
and Toccatina for clarinet and piano, recorder pieces
(in which he derived inspiration from the work of Carl Dolmetsch)
and the Olympic Sketches for a quartet of clarinets
(I suspect these were inspired by London’s Olympic year
of 1948).
Chagrin wrote large quantities of incidental
music, for the theatre, including Shakespearean productions,
at least three songs from which achieved publication, for
films, for radio and later for TV. So much of this is, by
its nature, ephemeral, though occasionally there was an opportunity
to recycle, as with The Beggar’s Theme (from the
film "Last Holiday") and the Yugoslav Sketches,
from a documentary film of 1945. No such rescue work was
done on the scores for well-remembered large screen features
like "An Inspector Calls", adapted from J B Priestley,
and "The Four Just Men" and "The Clue of the
Twisted Candle", both adapted from Edgar Wallace. Altogether
Chagrin composed over 200 film scores including those for
documentaries and Hoffnung cartoons. His work for radio included
incidental music for plays and also, interestingly, "production
music" like Two Fanfares, Dutch Signature Tune and
Focus, Opening and Closing Theme Music for which, as
the BBC owned the manuscripts, suggest they had "cut
out the middlemen" of the music publishers.
His writing for the voice comprised mainly
arrangements of popular French songs, a few original French
songs, and some English songs, one taken from the 1954 film
"Colditz Story" and others, with titles, such as
Only Tell Her That I Love Her, We’ll Go No More A
Roving and Time of Roses, which suggest they are
slightly updated drawing-room ballads. He compiled various
vocal medleys for radio use including one, unsurprisingly,
of French National Songs.
Chagrin may have been particularly fond of
French music but several of his lighter works show an awareness
of the British light music heritage. The Nursery Suite
(Daybreak, Mischief, Daydreams and Playtime) (1951)
is a thematic orchestral suite in the Eric Coates/Haydn Wood
template, while Helter-Skelter, reworked film music,
is an example of the light, bright British concert overture.
One or two of his miniatures have, I believe, been recorded
during the last generation, but we could do with the revival
of so much more.
In 2005 the CD "The Film Music of Francis
Chagrin" was released on Chandos CHAN 10323. The BBC
Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Rumon Gamba plays Chagrin’s
music from Helter Skelter, An Inspector Calls, The Colditz
Story, Greyfriars Bobby, Four Just Men, The Intruder, Easy
Money, Last Holiday and The Bridge. The Charles
Williams 78 of the Beggar’s Theme from the film
‘Last Holiday’ is also available on Guild
GLCD 5109.
This article first appeared in the Robert
Farnon Society’s magazine "Journal Into Melody"
in June 2009.
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