Celebrity Biographies
Richard Rodney Bennett
The British composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett died at the age of 76 at his residence in New York, the city where he had settled in 1979, on December 24, 2012. Among his great compositions for the cinema stands out “Four weddings and a funeral “.
Born on March 29, 1936 in Kent, his mother was a pianist and composer, and his father an author of children’s books. Richard Rodney Bennett began to compose very early, since at the age of 15 he had already written his first string quartet. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and also had Pierre Boulez as a private teacher, who taught him the technique of the European avant-garde, which helped him develop his abstract style.
Between 1957 and 1996 he composed more than three dozen soundtracks, including Indiscreet , The Honest Guild of Robbery , Yankees , Four Weddings and a Funeral , and An Enchanted April . For his score for Far From the Madding Crowd he was nominated for an Oscar for the first time. He was nominated for the award on two other occasions, also for Nicolás y Alejandra and Murder on the Orient Express , by Sidney Lumet , with whom he also collaborated on Equus .
He also achieved great success with his compositions and concerts, especially in the field of jazz, although he also wrote piano solos, choral music, and even operas. Richard Rodney Bennett was considered one of the most influential people in the British gay community.