Richard III – A Shakespeare Scenario (arr. Palmer)

Composer: WALTON, Sir William
  • Richard III was Walton’s last major film score as well as his fourth and final Shakespearean collaboration with Lawrence Olivier. The composer had preciously scored the music for Olivier’s As You Like It (1936), Henry V (1944), and Hamlet (1947).
  • Christopher Palmer arranged and condensed Walton’s score as an independent work outside the film in the following progression:
  1. Prelude
  2. Coronation
    • Fanfare and Homage Music
    • Fanfare and Processional
    • “Sound Drums and Trumpets”
    • Recessional
  3. Monologue: “Now is the winter of our discontent” (performed by Sir John Gielgud)
  4. The Wooing
  5. The Prince of Wales
  6. Elegy
  7. The Princes in the Tower
  8. Nightmare
  9. Bosworth Field
  10. Death of Richard and Finale1

More background on the 1955 film, Richard III

Synopsis for the Shakespeare play, Richard III

Sources

  1. Christopher Palmer, “Richard III – A Shakespeare Scenario,” in accompanying booklet, Walton: Richard III / Macbeth / Major Barbara performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, CHAN 8841, 1991, compact disc.

Cut IDs

24617