Early years Roy Douglas was born in
Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on 12 December 1907, the youngest of the three children of Edith Ella Douglas, Charlton, and her husband, Richard Moses Douglas, a buyer and manager in a furnishing company. His involvement with music began early: as a five-year-old he would listen to his sister playing in her piano lessons and then seat himself at the piano and play by ear. His mother decided that he too should have piano lessons. An attack of
rheumatic fever left him with a damaged heart, and the doctors said he was unlikely to live to adulthood. His fragile health meant that he received little formal education, but when well enough, he spent many hours playing the piano, "reading at sight everything I could find from Beethoven to ragtime" He was
harmonium player, deputy pianist,
celesta player, extra percussionist, librarian and programme-planner, for the pay of £6 a week for 14 performances and two rehearsals. When the local council cut the orchestral players' pay Douglas left to pursue a career in London. The family moved to
Highgate, and he secured engagements with the
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), which admitted him to full membership in 1933 as pianist, celesta player, organist, fourth percussionist and librarian. He also played in ballet and opera seasons in the
West End. By his own reckoning he played the piano part in
Stravinsky's
Petrushka 80 times, and he recalled that in the "Polovtsian Dances" from
Borodin's
Prince Igor, "I played triangle and tambourine, both parts together, one with each hand". After this film,
Karma, Douglas composed scores for
Dick Turpin (1933), released in 1934, and five other films between then and 1943. During the 1930s Douglas assisted other film composers including
Mischa Spoliansky (
The Ghost Goes West, 1935),
Arthur Benjamin (
Wings of the Morning, 1937) and
Anthony Collins (
Sixty Glorious Years, 1938). Douglas first broadcast on
BBC radio in 1935 as the pianist of the Cellini Trio, with two LSO colleagues: Gordon Walker (flute) and Geraint Williams (cello). From 1936 to 1939 his arrangements featured in regular broadcasts by the Broadhurst Septet in chamber versions of orchestral or solo piano music. Walton's biographer
Michael Kennedy writes that over the next thirty-two years Douglas helped to prepare almost all Walton’s works for performance and publication: When orchestrating these bars of Walton's film scores, Douglas based his work on the composer's outline sketches, following specific instructions or in Walton's style. The Walton film scores on which Douglas worked included those for
Gabriel Pascal's film of
Bernard Shaw's
Major Barbara (1941),
The Next of Kin, (1942),
Went the Day Well? (1942),
Leslie Howard's
The First of the Few (1942) and
Laurence Olivier's
Henry V (1944), He assisted Walton with the orchestration of the score for the radio play
Christopher Columbus (1942) and for the live theatre, he and
Ernest Irving helped Walton complete the ballet
The Quest for its premiere performance in 1943, Walton was invited to compose the score for
The Bells Go Down, but declined and secured the commission for Douglas to write the music. Douglas also gave Walton some lessons in conducting, and deputised for him as conductor at one recording session for the
Henry V music. In 1946 Douglas undertook what
The Times described as "his last official project in the film industry", orchestrating the theme music for
David Lean's
Great Expectations. In 1948 Douglas pointed out to Walton's publisher, the
Oxford University Press (OUP), that there were more than eighty errors in the published score of Walton's
cantata, ''
Belshazzar's Feast''. Douglas worked with Walton on correcting the score; during the revision the composer took out much of the percussion, to Douglas's regret.
1950s Douglas's close association with Walton and Vaughan Williams continued in the 1950s. When the latter's
Sinfonia Antartica was in preparation in 1952 Douglas went to Dorking to help. The composer's wife
Ursula recalled: Douglas helped Vaughan Williams with his 1951 opera ''
The Pilgrim's Progress'' The piano reduction for the vocal score of Walton's opera
Troilus and Cressida was largely Douglas's work. After the first rehearsal of the opera at
Covent Garden was abandoned because of multiple errors in the printed orchestral parts – Douglas counted more than two hundred – he dissuaded the furious Walton from breaking with the OUP and going to their rivals,
Boosey and Hawkes. Douglas worked with Vaughan Williams on symphonies nos. 7–9, the
Tuba Concerto and other works. In this way he was able to produce manuscripts that were even more authoritative than the composer's originals, as all issues of notation had been discussed and clarified with the composer himself. Douglas was not generally involved with the composer's new works until they had been substantially sketched in short score. For example, he was first made aware that RVW had written a Sixth Symphony in a letter from the composer dated 13 February 1947, but he was not given the score to work on until almost seven months later. In an apparent departure from the usual method, Douglas was asked to write out the score for the Tuba Concerto in 12 days to meet a deadline, but without the opportunity of checking with the composer's piano sketches. This later led to uncertainties of scoring, which had to be clarified. Sometimes Douglas's involvement with Vaughan Williams's works became more than that of an assistant. Vaughan Williams considered the orchestral suite arranged in 1952 from his 1949 cantata
Folk Songs of the Four Seasons to be so much the work of Douglas, that he arranged for it to be published as Douglas's composition based on his own, rather than his own arrangement of an earlier work. This was first recorded in 2012. Douglas's association with Walton continued in the later 1950s and the 1960s. Before the British premiere of the
Cello Concerto in 1957, he worked with the soloist,
Gregor Piatigorsky, on alterations to the solo cello part. He worked with Walton on the piano score and orchestral parts for the comic opera
The Bear (1967).
Later years Douglas's connection with Vaughan Williams continued after the composer's death in 1958. A found among Vaughan Williams's papers, thought to have been sketched in 1913 for the
flautist Louis Fleury, was edited by Douglas and published in 1961. A lost score from 1939 was rediscovered in 1971 and edited by Douglas as
Flourish for Wind Band. He edited the Prelude from Vaughan Williams's music for the 1941 film
49th Parallel, making a string version in 1960 and a
brass band version in 1981. Michael Kennedy's 1964 study
The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams carries the dedication, "To Roy Douglas, In memory of our friendship with RVW and in gratitude". In 1972 Douglas published a book of reminiscences,
Working with RVW, Douglas died at his home in Royal Tunbridge Wells on 23 March 2015, at the age of 107. He never married; he lived with his sister Doris until her death in 1997. ==Major compositions==