From Ariel....

A snippet from a film score sketch by William Alwyn. When I tell relatives, friends or colleagues that I have been reconstructing old film scores, a polite if somewhat blank expression usually passes over their faces. I am sure they are conjuring up images of scissors and sellotape, and although I do use such things occasionally, they are not pivotal to my endeavours. What I do requires much more than pencil and rubber and a cassette machine, since what I am involved in is a series of extended aural tests. Since the first question tends to be "Why?", I'll start there. When music was recorded for film no-one, not even the composer thought it would be required again, so the material was usually collected up and binned. There were obviously exceptions. Composers from the concert tradition, as opposed to those primarily involved in commercial music, sometimes saw their film music as just another composition and saved evidence of their work in terms of sketches, shor