Christopher Whelen

Whelen was born in London and christened at St Martin in the Fields. He was bought up by his mother Winifred, a violinist, with help from his Godmother Mary Gotch, also a musician. He became a chorister at New College Oxford, attended Worksop College (studying piano and cello) and then at the Birmingham and Midland School of Music (now the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) between 1944 and 1946 for clarinet and composition.[1] After two years with the RAF for his National Service Whelen secured conducting lessons with the Austrian émigré Rudolf Schwarz.[2] becoming assistant conductor at the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra under Schwarz.

Already interested in Celtic culture (particularly Yeats), the music of Arnold Bax became a central influence for Whelen after hearing a performance of Tintagel.[3] A correspondence began in 1947, which led to a close friendship until Bax's death in 1953. Around 40 of the letters have been published. In 1951 Whelen conducted Bax's Sixth Symphony in Bournemouth. Bax wrote: "I still dote on your performance of No 6 and want a repeat".[4] Through Bax Whelen also met the pianist Harriet Cohen, who became a supporter. He was awarded the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge medal for conducting in 1955.[1]

However, from 1951 Whelen became musical director at the Old Vic Theatre in London and most of his conducting commitments were dropped. While there (and from 1955 at other theatres as well) he produced much incidental music for Shakespeare and other productions.[5] He composed the music for John Osborne's The World of Paul Slickey (1959). This was Osborne's only attempt to write a musical. But after the huge successes of his previous plays Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer, the play was to become "one of the most spectacular disasters in English theatre".[6] Despite this setback, the theatre work led to a series of commissions for Whelen by the BBC for often experimental television and radio scores spanning the 1960s to the 1980s, including operas written for television as well as hard to classify music dramas for which Whelen typically wrote both the words and music, fusing the music and action together.

Whelen met his lifelong partner Dennis Andrews in 1948 in Bournemouth They lived together for many years in Cumnor, Oxfordshire before Whelen's death in 1993.[1] The Christopher Whelen Award for innovation in music in film and theatre was set up in his name. Winners include Paddy Cunneen, Jonathan Dove, Andy Price and Mick Sands.

Whelen was primarily a music dramatist and his most successful works are the series of radio and television music theatre works commissioned by the BBC starting from the 1960s. His first operatic production, broadcast on 6 August 1961, was The Beggar's Opera, for which he contributed new arrangements of the traditional ballads.[7] The original radio opera The Cancelling Dark, with text by the poet Vernon Scannell, followed on 5 December 1965.[8] The action alternates between a crashed aircraft in the African jungle near Benguela and the radio control room at Kakonda Airfield. Jeremy Rundall in The Sunday Times said it "has an Ancient Mariner-ish ring, and should be heard again".[9]

The specifically commissioned television opera Some Place of Darkness used an original libretto by the experienced television writer John Hopkins. The BBC insisted on realism, and the result was " a sombre domestic drama set in the present, it exemplified all that television promoted".[10][11] Whelen was less than enthusiastic. The piece, he said "was the result of a BBC edict - crisp and clear - 'contemporary plot and modern dress'. The words smacked like a damp cloth on the operatic table."[12]

By 1969 for Incident at Owl Creek Whelen had dispensed with a librettist, adapting the source material (based on the short story by Ambrose Bierce) himself. This led to him writing a text based on an original idea for The Findings (1972), concerning the excavation of an Etruscan tomb.[13] Creating his own plot and characters presented through his own words and music, Whelen was attempting to create a more personal form of "total musical theatre".[14] Christopher Palmer identified The Findings and Incident at Owl Creek as "outstanding".[2] The music drama The Restorer, produced and directed by Martin Esslin, is an example of Whelen's experimentation with the close combination of words and music. It concerns a picture in a Dutch museum and its influence on visitors, with echoes of Oscar Wilde and Walter de la Mare.[15]

Another strand of Whelen's work was in film. He composed the score for The Valiant (1962), The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and Coast of Skeletons (1965).[16] There was also a ballet, Cul de Sac, choreographed by Norman Morrice and staged by Ballet Rambert on 13 July 1964 at Sadler's Wells.[17][18]

• Christoper Whelen: Music excerpts from The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)