Today is the birthday of Leo Arnaud, born in Lyon, France, on this date in 1904. You may not know his name, but from August 5 to August 21, yet again his most famous music will resound everywhere, as the 2016 Summer Olympics take place in Rio de Janeiro.
Arnaud composed the most widely recognized of Olympic fanfares, “The Bugler’s Dream,” for Felix Slatkin, to be included on his 1958 album, “Charge!” It was originally part of a larger work, the “Charge Suite.” However, in 1968, it was picked up by ABC, for use in its coverage of the Winter Olympics from Grenoble. As a result, the fanfare entered the popular consciousness, and it has been used by ABC in all its subsequent Olympics coverage. When the games moved to another network, the fanfare fell into dormancy for a time, but was revived by NBC for the Barcelona games in 1992.
Arnaud, who worked as an orchestrator in Hollywood for many years, studied with Maurice Ravel and Vincent d’Indy. His orchestrations can be heard in films ranging from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Ryan’s Daughter.”
In the 1980s, he revisited “The Bugler’s Dream” for a new recording on the Telarc label with legendary symphonic band director Frederick Fennell. This is a very interesting recording, since the composer not only expanded the fanfare into an Olympic triptych – adding a second movement, called “La Chasse,” and a third, titled “Olympiad” (written only a few days before the recording session) – but he also appears with the ensemble as a percussionist.
In more recent years, Arnaud’s fanfare has often been heard in an amalgam with John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare and Theme,” written for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Happy birthday, Leo Arnaud (1904-1991)!
Slatkin’s recording of “The Bugler’s Dream” (Olympic Fanfare at 2:52):
The third of Arnaud’s fanfares, “Olympiad,” for Fennell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR-1F3ZHylU
John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare and Theme”:
The amalgam: