Ronald Binge (15 July 1910 – 6 September 1979) was a British composer and arranger of light music.

Biography

Binge was born in a working-class neighbourhood in Derby, Derbyshire, in the English Midlands. and later worked in summer orchestras in British seaside resorts (including Blackpool and Great Yarmouth), for which he learned to play the piano accordion. Binge's skill as a cinema organist was put to good use, and he played the organ in Mantovani's first band, the Tipica Orchestra.

After the war, Mantovani offered Binge the job of arranging and composing for his new orchestra. They had two children.

He died in Ringwood, Hampshire, of liver cancer in 1979, aged 69, survived by his wife, son and daughter.--->

Compositions

Binge was interested in the technicalities of composition and was most famous as the inventor of the "cascading strings" effect that is the signature sound of the Mantovani orchestra, used in their arrangements of popular music. it was originally created to capture the essence of the echo properties of a building such as a cathedral, although it later became particularly associated with easy-listening music.

Binge's catalogue includes hundreds of works, most of them light orchestral. His first big compositional success was the orchestral overture Spitfire, composed in Blackpool while he was still on RAF service, which predated William Walton's orchestral tribute by a year. Best known today is probably Elizabethan Serenade (1951), Other well-known pieces include Miss Melanie (used as the theme for the CBS Network's radio comedy The Couple Next Door from 1957 to 1960), Like Old Times, The Watermill (1958) for oboe and strings (used as the theme for the BBC children's series The Secret Garden),

<!---UNCITED Less well known is a 1948 piano piece known as "Vice Versa", a musical palindrome which was not only a front-to-back palindrome, but also exploited the two staves used for writing for piano. The music reads the same whichever way it is turned. He later extended this theme, composing a piece known as "Upside/Downside" for his son, who was learning to play the recorder at Downside School. This musical palindrome was for piano, recorder and cello and again was universally reversible – two players could play from the same sheet of music reading from opposite ends.--->

Selected works

References

  • Ronald Binge, composer website
  • Biography at the Robert Farnon Society
  • Classical Composers Database (with photo)
  • Biography at Chaddesden Historical Group (Derby)
  • Obituary by George Pollen, copyist to R Binge
  • Photogallery on Obituary to R Binge