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William Alwyn: The Art of Film Music.

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William Alwyn: The Art of Film Music. By Ian Johnson. Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2005. [viii, 357 p. ISBN 1843831597. $47.95.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliography, discography, filmography, index.

William Alwyn (1905-1985) was one of the most important and prolific composers in the history of British film music. He entered the profession in 1936 and quickly became a major participant in the British Documentary Movement. During the Second World War, he scored such influential propaganda films as Fires Were Started (1943) and Desert Victory (1943). Around the same time, he began his fruitful collaboration with director Carol Reed, who inspired Alwyn to produce his two most famous scores: Odd Man Out (1947) and The Fallen Idol (1948). As the British film industry began to decline in the late 1950s, Alwyn gradually curtailed his activities as a film composer. He wrote his last score, The Running Man, in 1963.

Ian Johnson's William Alwyn: The Art of Film Music is without doubt a labor of love. In the acknowledgements, the author reveals: "In the autumn of 1958, William Alwyn gave a lecture at London's...

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