Richard Addinsell

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Richard Addinsell (January 13, 1904 - November 14, 1977) was a British composer, best known for his Warsaw Concerto and film music.

After studying at Hertford College, Oxford, Addinsell went to the Royal College of Music in 1925 and continued his musical education in Berlin, Vienna and the USA. Films for which he wrote the music include:

• The Amateur Gentleman (1936)
• Fire Over England (1937)
• Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939)
• Blithe Spirit (1945)
• Scrooge (1951)
• Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951)
• The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
• A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
• Beau Brummell (1955)
• The Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)

The Warsaw Concerto was written for the 1941 film, Dangerous Moonlight, and continues to be a popular piano piece. The film-makers wanted something in the style of Sergei Rachmaninoff, but were unable to persuade Rachmaninoff himself to write a piece. Although Addinsell created the melodic material, the job of producing a concerto in the style of Rachmaninoff fell to Roy Douglas.

Addinsell also wrote the short orchestral piece "Southern Rhapsody", which was played every morning at the start of black-and-white TV broadcasts by the former Southern Television company in southeastern England from 1958 to 1969. Like much of his film music, it has been heard by millions of people who do not know either its title or the composer's name, and is still fondly remembered even today.

Addinsell also collaborated from 1942 with Joyce Grenfell, for both West End revues (including Tuppence Colored and Penny Plain) and Grenfell's one-woman shows.

For many years he lived at Chichester Terrace in Brighton with his close friend, the fashion designer Victor Stiebel.