At the time of writing, its run is very nearly over, but well worth watching is the re-run on BBC 2 of Jeremy Isaac’s mammoth 26-part story of “The World at War”. Originally shown on ITV, and subsequently available on video, it also contains an impressive score by Carl Davis. Some years ago I spoke to Carl Davis about his contribution to “The World at War”. The award-winning series had just been released on to video via The Video Collection, as indeed it still is so.

How did the series come about? Was it through Jeremy Isaacs?

Yes, he rang me. We had a long chat about what his aims were in making the series, namely whereas most war series focused on the military, he would still tell the military aspect, but also put an emphasis on what it was like to be there, if you were in an occupied country or a German, if you were British, if you were French, Japanese. What it was like from all sides, just as individuals, and I think that's what made the series so different from any others. It gave it a much broader, more humanitarian feel and intensity of what it was like as an individual to have gone through that sort of experience. So based on that idea, the next move was really to give me some ideas about the credits. We talked a lot about the title theme.

The next step was that his graphics people at Thames showed me a story-board of what it was going to be. Flames, a monument and faces coming through. There were various drafts of it. There was going to be a tree destroyed by fire, various things that were discussed and discarded. Inspired by that I sketched the theme on the piano and played it to Jeremy, made a cassette of it of course, and that's how it began. I said to Jeremy, ‘Look, why don’t we do a couple of episodes before we embark on a theme, bearing in mind the work was across 26 episodes and several years. Let me do some work on it and then the theme will be that much informed. That's what in fact happened. I think we may have done 3 or 4 of the episodes and then recorded the theme.

There were a number of episodes that had no music at all.

Yes; I think there was about four out of the 26 where there was no music.

Whose decision was that or was it discussed first?

It was up to the individual director. We had our credit music, of course. I didn’t do the one on the bomb or the one on the concentration camps. There was no original music in the one on the ground in England because there was a lot of source music for that, and I didn’t do the very first episode either.

I really like the LP that came out with a few cues from the series.

Yes. What I did was take four chunks, orchestrated them for full orchestra and Decca released an album, split between my original music and lots of Vera Lynn, Flanagan and Allen etc.

The producer of the series, Jeremy Isaacs, is currently General Director of the Royal Opera House, London. Before this appointment, he was in charge at Channel Four. I am deeply grateful to Mr. Isaacs for giving me his thoughts on the series and on Carl Davis’s music in particular. Indeed, it seems very right and proper that Mr. Isaacs should have the last word on Mr. Davis’ fine music:

“Carl Davis's music made an absolutely essential contribution to the success of ‘The World at War’. He not only provided us with an opening and closing which did justice to the scope and tenor of our subject, and wrote leitmotifs for each of the protagonists that gave its own character to each, but he also captured a variety of moods that gave particular colour to episode after episode. Other series have used a paint-pot approach to music; fill pot, and dip into as required. Carl wrote specifically for each sequence, and extracted marvellous music from the gifted instrumentalists who played sessions for us.” Jeremy Isaacs, 1992.