Dudley Simpson (1922 – 2017). Composer and conductor

Dudley Simpson was born in Melbourne in 1922 and showed an early musical talent. At the age of 13 he won a piano competition for a radio station, and became its official accompanist. While excelling at improvisation, he also studied musical theory, including orchestration and composition. His studies were interrupted by five years military service in the Australian army, after which he started working for the Borovansky Ballet (the fore-runner of The Australian Ballet), first as a pianist and then as assistant conductor and, in 1957, as its musical director.

As a result of working in Australia with Margot Fonteyn and a group of ballet dancers from the UK, Simpson decided to go to London. He worked first as a ballet pianist, but in 1959 began to conduct the Royal Opera House Orchestra in ballet performances, becoming its principal conductor from 1960 to 1963. This involved a considerable amount of touring in Europe and the Middle East, with Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev leading the company. In 1963, Simpson arranged Lizst’s B minor sonata for Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand.

By 1964, he had already started working for television. Simpson began the work for which he is best known, the incidental music for Doctor Who. This involved composing and directing the music for 62 stories over nearly 300 episodes. Simpson’s involvement with Doctor Who continued until 1980. During this period he worked on many other television series, including The Brothers, Blake’s 7, The Tomorrow People and Tales of the Unexpected. He also composed symphonic music and music for two ballets, A Winter Play for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and Ballet/Class for the The Royal Ballet School. Simpson retired in 1987 and returned to Australia, where he died in 2017, aged 95.