Barrington Pheloung is an Australian born composer who studied in and moved to the UK. Here he has created music for the concert hall and the theatre (including a number of ballets), done some work for radio and commercials, and a considerable amount for British television including series and one-off programmes. More recently he has composed for film, notably the film "Hilary and Jackie" based on the life of the cellist Jaqueline du Pre. (Jackie was a leading cellist, had a celebrity marriage to pianist Daniel Barenboim, and died tragically from multiple sclerosis.) Coincidentally, one of the TV movies Pheloung worked on also featured music played on a cello. This was the highly regarded "Truly, Madly, Deeply" featuring a duet for Cello and Piano where one of the players is a ghost.
Pheloung can clearly get his inspiration from surprising places, like wordplay for example. The theme for the TV series "Inspector Morse" about a police inspector has an accompaniment which is not only a rhythmic morse code figure on a single note but also spells out the letters M.O.R.S.E in morse code. (Another composer who has used morse code in film music is John Williams when ET was "phoning home".) Pheloung has created all the music for the morse series, recording his own compositions and classical works used within the programme. Among the wealth of classical music included in the series, you will find Debussy's Arabesque No.1 for piano and Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. The London Metropolitan Orchestra was formed in 1994 from the group of musicians put together to record "Inspector Morse" and "Truly, Madly, Deeply".
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