Clifton Parker: The Glass Slipper - Overture

The Glass Slipper is the only piece of music by Clifton Parker currently in the CD catalogues that is not film music. Although he is best known for his scores to the feature films Treasure Island, Western Approaches and Sink the Bismark! Parker was also a composer of concert hall and recital room pieces. His catalogue includes a symphony, a piano concerto and a number of chamber works. It is a repertoire that surely calls out for exploration.

In 1942 Herbert and Eleanor Farjeon were commissioned by Robert Donat to write a libretto for a children’s pantomime. It was to be based on the Cinderella fairy tale – with a few twists and changes to the traditional story. The Times reviewer suggested that it is effectively the story of Cinderella, “delicately disengaged from its familiar theatrical conventions”. The wonder is introduced by grandfather clocks, the tongs, the taps and the brooms that all have their own voices ‘establishing genial avuncular relations with Cinderella.” It is fair to say that The Glass Slipper was hardly a pantomime, yet neither did it seem to be an operetta. It opened in St James Theatre in December 1944. It was revived for the 1945/46 Christmas season.
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The Overture is a short work lasting just over three minutes. However, it is a well-constructed piece that employs felicitous touches of instrumentation giving a subtlety well beyond what is required for a ‘pantomime.’ It opens with three repeated chords that are a feature of the music throughout the piece. The main constructive principle of the overture appears to be a couple of tunes presented in various guises. There is much contrast with a dance-like tune as it is tossed between woodwind and strings. One of the problems, which was identified by the Guardian reviewer, was the lack of a fairy godmother. This is reflected in the music by the complete absence of anything that might be construed as ‘magical’ effect. It is very much a ‘secular’ workmanlike score rather than one that takes the listener into the realm of ‘fairyland.’ This is a criticism of The Times reviewer who notes that ‘No fairy godmother stepped out of the kitchen fire to breathe stage magic into [the play].

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All were agreed that the Ballet Rambert and the music of Clifton Parker made a significant contribution to the evening’s pleasure. In fact the Guardian reviewer notes that the composer’s ‘airs are full of graces.’
Robert Donat himself assisted as a stagehand due to labour shortages. In fact this seemed to be a criticism of the operetta: there were too few scene shifters. He was paid the equivalent of about 3/6d!

The Glass Slipper Overture can be heard on The Film Music of Clifton Parker on Chandos 10279

Clifton Parker: Virgin Island – A Caribbean Rhapsody

I first came to know Clifton Parker’s music through the British Transport Films that included The Elizabethan, Blue Pullman, Ocean Terminal and The Long Night Haul. A year or so I posted a link to a scene from one of the feature films that he provided the score for – the 1944 film Western Approaches. However one of his most attractive pieces of ‘light’ music is called Virgin Island: A Caribbean Rhapsody.
The original score was produced for a light comedy film, Virgin Island (1958) starring John Cassavetes, Virginia Maskell and Sidney Poitier. It was a lighthearted romp involving a young American student who finds himself married to an attractive British tourist. They set up their home on a small atoll in the West Indies. Naturally there are all sorts of minor adventures and difficulties to resolve, including a troublesome mother-in-law and a commissioner who asks a few too many questions. In fact it is questionable as to whether the couple actually own the island. And then what about the lantern on the hill at night? Are they wreckers? Sidney Poitier plays a friendly islander who acts as a father figure, especially when ‘junior’ arrives on the scene.

Clifton Parker originally scored the music for a calypso group – on the film soundtrack it was played by Hermanos Deniz Cuban Rhythm Band. Later, the composer rescored the work for guitar, orchestra and a battery of ‘exotic percussion’ including maracas, bongos and timbales. The recorded version was edited by Philip Lane.

The Rhapsody opens quietly with a guitar melody. At this stage the music is more pastoral than Caribbean. Perhaps this is suggestive of the homeland of the heroine? Yet the Latin beat is gently simmering beneath the musical activity. Another key element of this piece is the trademark Clifton Parker sea-music. Once again this element of the work is never far away. After what could be described as a ‘jocund dance’ the Latin beat takes over.
The composer, in this orchestral score does not try to parody or mimic the calypso combo instrumentation. It uses

At the halfway point a beautiful little duet is contrived between guitar and ‘cello. It is a combination that deserves further exploration. This is night music. After this interlude the Latin beat takes over with the percussion, although this is laid back rather than frenetic. A romantic string tune emerges, before the music ‘gets into the groove’ although retaining a touch of melancholy. Amongst this activity the ‘love theme’ makes attempts at establishing itself, however it is pushed aside by the last minute romp to the final bars. Here the Latin trumpets shout in glory, the percussion provides a myriad of exotic effects and the strings provide a romantic subtext. Effective countermelodies provide interest. The work concludes with a handful of quite night-music in a quiet reminiscence before the Rhapsody comes to a close.

The piece can be heard on ‘The Film Music of Clifton Parker’ Chandos 10279

Clifton Parker: Western Approaches

Clifton Parker, like many film composers, is someone whose music will have been heard by many people, but few will know him by name or reputation. For example. the Robert Newton version of Treasure Island, Kenneth More in Sink the Bismarck! and the Walt Disney feature The Sword and the Rose all have scores by Parker. But perhaps one of his finest achievements was the music for part feature, part documentary Western Approaches.
This is a gripping story about twenty-four seamen who have had their ship torpedoed and are adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. After many days at sea they see smoke from a lone merchantmen. Naturally, they send up the distress rockets to attract its attention. But just then they see the periscope of a German U-boat and realises that they are being used to decoy the British ship to destruction. The men in the lifeboat desperately try to warn the merchantman, but she receives two torpedoes in her hull. The ship is evacuated, save for the captain and a few men. The U-boat surfaces to complete the job, but it is itself sunk by the captain and his party left on board. Naturally the men in the lifeboat are finally rescued.
See a short extract from this film at YouTube

John Huntley in his seminal British Film Music, believes that this was one of the Crown Film Unit’s best films. The film was shot in Technicolor and used real sailors instead of actors. It is described as being “realistic, exciting and dramatic.”
The composer and critic Hubert Clifford writes in the Tempo magazine for June 1945:- "Western Approaches is among the two or three outstanding British films of the war period. It is a triumph of intelligent direction over the difficulties of using 'naturals' instead of professional actors. ‘Western Approaches ' comes unscathed through the gorgeous Technicolor, in spite of many sequences being stiff with visual falsehoods, in the picture-postcard conventions of Messrs. Raphael Tuck & Sons.
The film is full of magnificent sequences, true and convincing, and provides the composer, Clifton Parker, with many opportunities of contributing to it even within the scope of the naturalistic drama. This is, I believe, Clifton Parker's most important film score to date. It is highly effective and is always apt, and it reveals quite a new side of a composer who had previously been known-and far less known than the quality of his music merited-only as a composer of light music. To his task in ' Western Approaches' Parker brought a fine sense of orchestral colour, plus skill and taste in handling his medium. Although it seemed that his music broke little new ground it nevertheless was always vital and significant.”

Clifton Parker later adapted some of the music from Western Approaches into a short tone poem. He called it Seascape. This work in three short sections, beginning rather tranquilly as the merchant ship leaves its berth in an American port. Naturally as the boat reaches the mid-Atlantic it begins to get stormy, and this is reflected in the expansive music. The last joyful section alludes to the rescue of the seamen and their safe arrival in ‘blighty’.
James Marshall has noted that due to the wartime economies the musical budget for the film was only £521. Out of this some £100 was paid to the composer. The remainder was shared out between Muir Mathieson and the forty-eight players of the London Symphony Orchestra after their recording session at Denham Studios in 11 April 1944.

The tone poem 'Seascape' is available from Chandos .The film itself is available from Amazon