The Great War – BBC 26 Part Documentary (1964) – List of all music in the series?



sensei_russ
03-09-2016, 12:33 PM
Would any one have a breakdown/list of the music used in this series? It’s a big ask I know! 😮

I have an audio rip of the complete series which I’ve been listening to (again) recently. It would be great to know what the musical pieces are. The score is a mixture of Wilfred Jospehs wonderful original music, pieces by Trevor Duncan (not sure if they were originally composed for this series – see link below) and Classical Repertoire.

Here’s a link to the first episode on Youtube and you can hear Wilfred Josephs opening theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxK-qR14pVg&list=PLdEBPyoq11-7H07u7iwGM_3l-_QfxFj9B

Currently I have the theme music and other selections of Wilfred Josephs original music written for the programme (thanks to filmcollector16 for original upload and restoration and Petros for the re-up).

However there is a lot of other music used throughout the 26-episode series that I would like to identify/get hold of too.

Edit: I’ve now found four pieces of Trevor Duncans music used including ‘Smouldering fury’ – see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Gqokg8un4&list=PL985B3732102C0C6B

I’m also going to list here what else I find:

Shostakovich: 5th Symphony
Shostakovich: 11th Symphony
Stravinsky: Rite Of Spring
Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia Antartica
Bax: Tintagel

Any help appreciated 🙂

This is from the Wiki page and it mentions some of the classical music used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_(documentary)

Musical score
The music for the series was composed by Wilfred Josephs. It was performed by the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Hurst. His expressive yet unsentimental score was widely acclaimed at the time and many have recalled the strong contribution it made to the series: in August 2007, Guardian columnist Ian Jack remembered how at the start of each episode Josephs’ ‘ominous music ushered the audience into the trenches’.[7] Much use was made of 20th Century symphonies, including Shostakovitch’s 11th and Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica. The opening music is the last refrain from Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 1. Such musical references do not appear in the credits, therefore a full list of these extra musical elements would be welcome.[nb 2]


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