Hubert Clifford

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Hubert John Clifford (31 May 1904 – 4 September 1959) was an Australian-born British composer, conductor, and film music director. He grew up in Bairnsdale, Victoria, studied chemistry before turning to music at the Melbourne Conservatorium under Fritz Hart, and began to make a name as a conductor in the late 1920s with the Victorian Opera Company. Following Hart’s advice, he moved to Britain in 1930 to study at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers included C. H. Kitson and Vaughan Williams.

In the mid-1930s he shifted to teaching. He was a music master at Beckenham County School for Boys in Kent and won a William Cobbett prize for an original Suite for School Orchestra, which became A Kentish Suite. He published a textbook, The School Orchestra: A Comprehensive Manual for Conductors, in 1939.

Clifford joined the BBC in 1940 and served as Empire Music Supervisor from 1941 to 1944, often conducting for overseas broadcasts. A photo from that era shows him with fellow composers John Gough and Sir Henry Wood at the ruined Queen’s Hall after the 1941 bombing.

After leaving the BBC, he taught at the Royal Academy of Music. From 1944 to 1950 he was Musical Director for Alexander Korda at London Film Productions, helping to bring established composers into film work and shaping their scores for the screen. Notable commissions included Anna Karenina (Constant Lambert), The Winslow Boy and The Fallen Idol (William Alwyn), and The Happiest Days of Your Life (Mischa Spoliansky). Clifford also wrote original scores himself.

He returned to the BBC in 1952 as Head of Light Music. He married in 1931 and had two children, Susan and Michael. In the 1950s he lived at Belmore, Queen’s Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight. He died of heart failure at 55 in Singapore, where he was taking a music exam for the Associated Board.

Clifford’s concert music was mainly orchestral, ranging from light overtures and suites to the wartime Symphony completed in 1940, and a String Quartet from 1935. Many of his works have been recorded in recent years.