Ronald Binge (15 July 1910 – 6 September 1979)[ He arranged many of Mantovani's most famous pieces before composing his own music, which included Elizabethan Serenade and Sailing By.][Ades, David. 'Binge, Ronald', in Grove Music Online (2001)]
Biography
Binge was born in a working-class neighbourhood in Derby, Derbyshire, in the English Midlands.[ Early in his career, he was a cinema organist][ During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Air Force, during which time he was in high demand for organising in-camp entertainment.][Carey, Mike. Sailing By, the Ronald Binge Story, Goodreads.com, (2000)]
After the war, Mantovani offered Binge the job of arranging and composing for his new orchestra.[ In 1951, his arrangement of "Charmaine" gave him and Mantovani worldwide success and recognition.][ However, he tired of writing arrangements and turned to composing original works and film scores.][ Mantovani's orchestra began playing his light orchestral pieces for radio broadcasts. In 1952, Binge devised and conducted his own BBC radio programme, String Song, which featured many of his compositions. He regularly composed for production and library music publishers, and a number of his works were used for radio and television signature tunes.
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Binge married Vera Simmons in 1945. During the 1950s, they lived at 18, Smitham Bottom Lane in Purley, Croydon.[Norris, Gerald. A Musical Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1981), p. 96] He died in Ringwood, Hampshire, of liver cancer in 1979, aged 69, survived by his wife, son and daughter.[ His grandson is British science-fiction author Nicholas Binge.
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Compositions
Binge was interested in the technicalities of composition and was most famous as the inventor of the "cascading strings" effect that is the signature sound of the Mantovani orchestra, used in their arrangements of popular music.[ First heard on the hit Charmaine (1951),][ Mackenzie, Colin. Mantovani: A Lifetime in Music (2005), pp. 126–7] it was originally created to capture the essence of the echo properties of a building such as a cathedral, although it later became particularly associated with easy-listening music.[Ernest Tomlinson. 'Ronald Binge', in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)]
Binge's catalogue includes hundreds of works, most of them light orchestral.[ Ronald Binge Music Catalogue, Ronaldbinge.com] His first big compositional success was the orchestral overture Spitfire, composed in Blackpool while he was still on RAF service, which predated William Walton's orchestral tribute by a year.[Scowcroft, Philip. L. British Light Music (1997), pp. 28–29] Best known today is probably Elizabethan Serenade (1951),[ which was used by the British Broadcasting Corporation as the theme for the popular 1950s series, "Music Tapestry", and as the play-out for the British Forces Network radio station, and for which in 1957 he won an Ivor Novello Award.]
Binge is also known for Sailing By (1963), which introduces the late-night Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4.[Saylor, Eric. The Sea in British Musical Imagination (2015), p. 4] Other well-known pieces include Miss Melanie (used as the theme for the CBS Network's radio comedy The Couple Next Door from 1957 to 1960), Like Old Times, The Watermill (1958) for oboe and strings (used as the theme for the BBC children's series The Secret Garden),[ and his Concerto for Alto Saxophone in E-flat major (1956). His largest, longest, and most ambitious work is the four-movement Symphony in C (or Saturday Symphony), which was written during his retirement between 1966 and 1968,][ and performed in Britain and Germany. It was issued as a recording by the South German Radio Orchestra, conducted by the composer.][ Saturday Symphony, YouTube]
Selected works
External links
