ABSTRACT
Brassed Off (1996) and Notting Hill (1999) are possibly the two most successful films for which Trevor Jones has provided scores, but in both cases his original contributions are somewhat overshadowed by pre-existing material; brass band music in Brassed Off and pop songs in Notting Hill, particularly the Elvis Costello cover of ‘She’. However, the materials in the Trevor Jones Archive show that the composer played a key role in devising the sound of both pictures, being involved in the production of the brass band music for the former picture and creating and coordinating arrangements of songs for the latter, including ‘She’. Jones’s close engagement with pre-existing music and musical styles across these pictures and others including Richard III (1995) – English music in the style of Elgar and Holst – is typical of his creative approach and continues a practice that can be traced back to his earliest professional work. Similarly, his score for Dark City (1998), which draws on and complements ambient electronic effects, emphasises the continued importance of technology to Jones’s working methods, particularly during a period of substantial technological change that impacted significantly on the industry in the 1990s.
