Dudley Simpson (1922 - 2017)
The Doctor Who Team
Composer Dudley Simpson has died at the age of 95. One of Doctor Who’s most prolific contributors, he scored 1964’s Planet of the Giants and for the next 15 years provided incidental music for the first four Doctors.
His style became an integral part of early Doctor Who, helping to establish the atmosphere and tone of so many classic adventures. From the jaunty fun of his City of Death music to the wonderful solemnity of his work on The Deadly Assassin or the sense of dread he injected into Horror of Fang Rock, Simpson was a master of interpreting the strengths of a scene and an artist in his ability to emphasize and enlarge those strengths. He worked on over 60 stories and made a cameo appearance in one, playing a conductor in 1977’s The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Doctor Who conductor and orchestrator Ben Foster tweeted, ‘the great composer Dudley Simpson has left us - he was the most delightful & generous man and his music was fabulous’ and many fans reflected how Dudley Simpson virtually scored their childhood.
Aside from his work on Doctor Who he wrote the full-blooded title music for Blake’s Seven and the haunting tune which ushered in The Tomorrow People. He also contributed to series including The Ascent of Man, Moonbase 3, Target, Paul Temple, The Brothers, Out of the Unknown and Peter and the Wolf.
Dudley Simpson (far right) during the production of 1965’s Peter and the Wolf.
Born in Australia in 1922, Dudley Simpson studied orchestration and composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and later worked as an assistant conductor and pianist at the Borovansky Ballet, eventually becoming its musical director. He moved to England and became guest conductor for a season at Covent Garden before becoming Principal Conductor of the Royal Opera House Orchestra for three years. He began working for the BBC in 1961 and after contributing to dramas such as Moonstrike and Epitaph for a Spy he scored the opening adventure of Doctor Who’s second season.
After retiring in the 1990s he returned to Australia but was back in Britain in 2013 to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who – the show he did so much to nurture in its early days.
Dudley Simpson died on Saturday, 4th November, 2017 in Australia.