The Battle of Trafalgar
Albert Elms (1920 - 2009) was a pioneering contributor of incidental music to television and films in the 1950s and 1960s and a composer of military music. He was born in Newington, Kent, and showing early musical promise, he joined the Royal Marines Band Service in Deal in 1934.
Having served throughout the Second World War, he left the Navy in 1949 and found employment in Tin Pan Alley with Francis, Day & Hunter, where composition and arrangement of popular songs were the order of the day.
After becoming a freelance musician, he composed incidental music for The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, The Buccaneers and William Tell. In the 1960s, film work included Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons, The Breaking Point and Treasure in Malta.
For the BBC he wrote music for the series Thorndike and scored the incidental music for The Champions and the hit series Man in a Suitcase as well as for 14 episodes of The Prisoner.
In the 1970s Elms returned to writing military band music. During a chance meeting, the principal director of the Royal Marines School of Music complained that he was weary of the 1812 Overture and requested “something about Trafalgar”. This led to the commissioning of The Battle of Trafalgar, which received its premiere at the 1974 Royal Tournament.
An orchestral version was performed at St Paul’s Cathedral conducted by Sir Charles Groves in 1981, and later at the Albert Hall at the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005.