14 Facts About Roy Douglas

Richard Roy Douglas was an English composer, pianist and arranger.

Roy Douglas worked as musical assistant to Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, and Richard Addinsell, made well-known orchestrations of works such as Les Sylphides and Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto, and wrote a quantity of original music.

Roy Douglas assisted people such as Mischa Spoliansky on The Ghost Goes West, Arthur Benjamin on Wings of the Morning, Anthony Collins on Sixty Glorious Years, Nicholas Brodzsky on Freedom Radio and Tomorrow We Live, Noel Coward in In Which We Serve, John Ireland in The Overlanders, and Walter Goehr in Great Expectations.

In 1937, Roy Douglas first worked with Richard Addinsell, on the score for Dark Journey.

Roy Douglas generally orchestrated the shorter sections of Walton's film scores, based on Walton's jottings on 2 or 3 staves, and according to specific instructions or in Walton's style.

Walton was commissioned to write the score for The Bells Go Down, but declined and instead offered it to Roy Douglas to write his own music.

Roy Douglas worked with Walton on the revised version of Belshazzar's Feast, but regretted Walton's decision to use less percussion than in the original.

The vocal score of Troilus and Cressida was largely the work of Roy Douglas, assisted by Franz Reizenstein in Act III.

From 1947 until the elder composer's death in 1958, Roy Douglas worked as Ralph Vaughan Williams' musical assistant and amanuensis.

Roy Douglas's job included producing legible copies of RVW's scores, and in the process he identified numerous issues of orchestration needing resolution, deciphered RVW's often illegible handwriting, and made various suggestions for improvement, most of which were accepted.

Roy Douglas has been described as "the most important surviving witness of Vaughan Williams's technique as a musician".

Roy Douglas was not generally exposed to RVW's new compositions until they had been substantially sketched in short score.

Roy Douglas died on 23 March 2015, at the age of 107.

Roy Douglas never married; he lived with his sister Doris until her death in 1997.