William Alwyn's good fortune was to join the British film industry near the close of the 1930s, just before it ripened in the hothouse of the Second World War. He left at the beginning of the 1960s, as the first signs of decay were setting in.

He was fortunate in another way, too. The period coincided with developments in sound: within months of his joining, improvements in the optical sound track freed the composer from subjection to wind instruments; when he left, combos and electronic contrivances were partially eclipsing the traditional orchestral score.

In the years between he was easily one of Britain's most prolific film composers : his titles number over 200, of which more than 70 were features. Many of the titles are much loved ; some like Fires Were Started (1943), Desert Victory (1943), The Way Ahead (1944), Odd Man Out (1947), and The Fallen Idol (1948), have come to be seen as “classics”. Others - some virtually forgotten - deserve to be remembered, reviewed, and re-evaluated, sometimes simply as models of technical proficiency, sometimes as genuine artistic endeavours.

Film music is thought by some to be undemanding - “background” music, the name says it all. Yet when Ralph Vaughan Williams declared his belief that “the film contains potentialities for the combination of all the arts such as Wagner never dreamt of”,1 he was projecting a vision with which few thoughtful film composers would argue. For in the same way as a painting may be “read”, by examining detail, brush strokes, light and shade, perspective, facial expression, cultural subtexts, and so on, so a film may be read as the collaborative art of its several craftsmen, of whom the composer is a key contributor. I must quickly add that this understanding by no means undervalues the control and artistic input of the film director, but simply acknowledges the coalition of many talents that make up the commercial film. Alwyn expressed it thus: