George Fenton, Oscar-nominated British composer for more than 100 films, dies aged 76

Fenton’s successes include scores for Gandhi, Groundhog Day and 18 Ken Loach films, plus BBC TV news themes, Blue Planet and more

George Fenton, the British composer who earned five Oscar nominations for scores to films such as Gandhi and Dangerous Liaisons, has died aged 76.

A statement from his family said his death was “unexpected” but did not give a cause. The statement added that he was survived by various family members, as well as “a life of music”.

Often in repeated partnerships with directors such as Stephen Frears, Ken Loach, Nora Ephron, Richard Attenborough , Nicholas Hytner and Neil Jordan, Fenton amassed a large and remarkable body of work that stretched across more than 100 feature films, plus documentary, theatre, TV news and more.

Born George Howe in Bromley, Kent, in 1949, Fenton’s interest in music began as a child, playing guitar then studying organ. As a young man he aspired to be on stage, whether as a musician, he recorded a cover of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer which became a Top 10 hit in Sweden, or an actor. In 1968 he took a role in Alan Bennett’s first West End production, Forty Years On, taking the stage name George Fenton; and in the mid-1970s had a recurring role on TV soap Emmerdale Farm (as it was then called).

But after work as an arranger and musical director in theatre alongside his acting, in 1974 he was commissioned to compose music for a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Twelfth Night, beginning a series of collaborations with the RSC.

By 1976 he had branched out into composition for TV, for Stephen Poliakoff’s Hitting Town, and his partnership with Frears began in 1978 with the TV movie Me! I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He eventually worked on 11 productions with Frears, including four feature films: Dangerous Liaisons (earning an Oscar nomination), Hero, Mary Reilly and Mrs Henderson Presents (the latter was also developed into a stage musical with music by Fenton).

His first collaboration with Attenborough came in 1982 with Gandhi, earning Fenton his first Oscar nomination, shared with Ravi Shankar. His next two nominations were for his next film with Attenborough, Cry Freedom, where Fenton was nominated for best original score, and best original song for its title track, shared with Jonas Gwangwa. Fenton shared vocals on that song, and performed it at the Academy Awards.

“It was like some bad waking dream,” he later said of that performance. “I was virtually rigid with fear trying to remember and not mispronounce the lyrics, which included the names of ANC leaders and important events in the struggle against apartheid, while singing live to an audience of over a billion people, without even a piano to hide behind. It was infinitely more stressful than working on the film itself.”

He also scored the Attenborough films Shadowlands, In Love and War and Grey Owl.

Attenborough’s brother, the naturalist and TV documentarian David Attenborough , was another client of Fenton’s, who composed music for the landmark series The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, plus Wildlife on One, Natural World, The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer. Fenton later developed live concert formats for Planet Earth and Frozen Planet.

His most sustained collaboration was with Ken Loach , scoring many of the British director’s films including the Palme d’Or-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the Eric Cantona drama Looking for Eric, and 16 others.

He scored all of the feature films by Hytner: The Madness of King George, The Crucible, The Object of My Affection, Center Stage, The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. With Jordan, he scored The Company of Wolves, High Spirits and We’re No Angels, and with Ephron, Mixed Nuts, You’ve Got Mail, Lucky Numbers and Bewitched.

Another repeated partnership came with the US director Andy Tennant, on crowd pleasing Hollywood fare such as Hitch, The Bounty Hunter, Sweet Home Alabama and Fool’s Gold.

Beyond those regular clients, Fenton’s composition can be heard in hit movies such as Groundhog Day, Stage Beauty, Clockwise, Memphis Belle and two films by Terry Gilliam: The Fisher King (earning another Oscar nomination) and The Zero Theorem.

Fenton’s work also became part of everyday British life thanks to him writing theme tunes for various BBC news programmes: its flagship broadcasts as well as Newsnight and Radio 4’s PM.

Fenton is survived by his wife Amanda, his ex-wife Jane, three children and six grandchildren.