Richard Arnell

Richard Anthony Sayer ("Tony") Arnell (15 September 1917 – 10 April 2009) was an English composer of classical music. Arnell composed in all the established genres for the concert stage, and his list of works includes six completed symphonies (a seventh was realised by Martin Yates) and six string quartets. At the Trinity College of Music, he "promoted a pioneering interest in film scores and electronic music" and jazz. Electronic composer David Hewson, who worked with him on films including Dilemma (1981), Doctor in the Sky (1984), Toulouse-Lautrec (1986), and The Light of the World (1989), was one of his pupils.

Arnell was born in Hampstead, London. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1935 to 1939, and was taught there by John Ireland (composition) and St John Dykes (piano). He was awarded the Farrar Prize for composition during his final year at the college. At the outset of the Second World War, attending the New York World Fair, Arnell (along with other English composers, e.g. Arthur Bliss) was stranded in New York, and stayed on until 1947, thereby finding himself in the position of having an established reputation in the US, but remaining relatively little known in his homeland. During his American soujourn, Arnell was the Music Supervisor for the BBC in North America, and was commissioned to compose (to a text by Stephen Spender) a cantata, The War God, in celebration of the opening of the United Nations, as well as a fanfare to greet Winston Churchill's arrival in New York.

His music has been championed by Thomas Beecham, Leopold Stokowski and Bernard Herrmann, among others and more recently by Warren Cohen and Martin Yates (one of his composition students at Trinity). Between 1947 and 1987 he taught at Trinity College of Music in London, where his students included Peter Tahourdin (1949–52).

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