- Born
- Died
- Birth nameGeoffrey Alan Burgon
- Geoffrey Burgon was born on July 15, 1941 in Hambledon, Hampshire, England, UK. He was a composer, known for Monty Python : La Vie de Brian (1979), The Forsyte Saga (2002) and Longitude (2000). He was married to Jacqueline Kroft and Janice Garwood. He died on September 21, 2010 in London, England, UK.
- SpousesJacqueline Kroft(1992 - September 21, 2010) (his death, 1 child)Janice Garwood(1963 - ?) (divorced, 2 children)
- He attended the Guildhall School of Music in London.
- Burgon was chosen to work on the Docteur Who (1963) serials Terror of the Zygons: Part One (1975) and The Seeds of Doom: Part One (1976) because the director of those stories, Douglas Camfield, didn't want to work with the series' regular composer, Dudley Simpson.
- Early in his career, he composed mostly music for ballet and modern dance.
- The 1976 performance of his "Requiem" at the Three Choirs Festival made him famous, and led to several major commissions.
- Despite his numerous highly-regarded compositions for TV programs and film, his main focus was concert music.
- Being asked to write music for Docteur Who (1963) came out of the blue and as a complete surprise. I had previously written only two scores for television, but it was the second of these that attracted director Douglas Camfield. It was a ghost story, the music of which was scored for a small and unusual group of instruments, plus two countertenors. The supernatural quality of the score appealed to Douglas, and I imagine it was the small number of musicians that appealed to the producer, because the Docteur Who (1963) budget ran to just four players, plus myself on whatever I could play, and access to the Radiophonic Workshop. I used the latter quite sparingly, mostly putting selected instruments through a ring modulator to make them sound quite unlike the original, thereby creating a bigger sounding group than I actually had. It was a great experience for an emerging composer, and I am terribly gratified to have been part of such a legendary television phenomenon.
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