Richard Rodney Bennett

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 193624 December 2012) was an English composer and pianist. He was noted for his musical versatility, drawing from such sources as jazz, romanticism, and avant-garde; and for his use of twelve-tone technique and serialism. His body of work included over 200 concert works and 50 scores for film and television. He was also active in jazz, as a composer, a pianist, and an occasional vocalist. For his scoring work, Bennett was nominated for a total of 10 BAFTA Awards, winning once for Best Original Music for the film Murder on the Orient Express (1974). He was also nominated for three Academy Awards (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967; Nicholas and Alexandra, 1971; and Murder on the Orient Express) and three Grammy Awards, among other accolades. He was the International Chair of Composition of the Royal Academy of Music, and was knighted in 1998. His mother, Joan Esther, née Spink (1901–1983) was a pianist who had trained with Gustav Holst. His father, Rodney Bennett (1890–1948), was a children’s book author, poet and lyricist, who worked with Roger Quilter on his theatre works and provided new words for some of the numbers in the Arnold Book of Old So