Richard Hartley
Richard Neville Hartley is an English composer, best known for his work on The Rocky Horror Show. He grew up in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.
Richard Hartley
- Born
- 1944 · Holmfirth.
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Occupation
- composer · conductor · musician
- Languages
- English
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Richard Neville Hartley is an English composer, best known for his work on The Rocky Horror Show. He grew up in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.
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Richard Hartley (born 1944) is a composer, conductor and musician, of British nationality. The composer was born in Holmfirth. Languages used include English.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
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In this article
Career
Career
In the 1970s he began a long association with Richard O'Brien. Hartley was originally part of the four-piece band for The Rocky Horror Show. He went on to arrange the score for the London stage and film adaptation (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) as well as its follow-up Shock Treatment, and then worked with O'Brien on another, as yet unproduced, sequel, Revenge of the Old Queen. His other 1970s film scores included Galileo (1975), The Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Aces High (1976), and the remake of The Lady Vanishes (1979).
Stage productions
Stage productions
• Dionysius 73 (Harrowgate Opera House, 1973) – composer, musical director • The Threepenny Opera (Sydney Opera House, 1973) – musical arrangements • The Rocky Horror Show (Royal Court Theatre, 1973) – musical director • Tooth of Crime (Royal Court Theatre, 1974) – musical director • T. Zee (Royal Court Theatre, 1976) – composer, musical director • The Rocky Horror Show (Broadway, 1975) – vocal and dance music arrangements • Disaster (Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1978) – composer, musical director • The Stripper (Sydney Theatre Company, 1982) – composer, musical director • The Rocky Horror Show (London, 1990) – musical arrangements • The Stripper (UK tour, 2009) – composer, musical director
Other
Other
Hartley is credited as producer of two of the four tracks on "The Music of Torvill and Dean" EP, which reached #9 on the UK Singles Chart in the wake of Torvill and Dean's success at the 1984 Winter Olympics. Hartley is credited as composer for the music on "High Tide" (1980). However, as this score sounds lifted pretty much note for note from Bernard Hermann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", the credit is unlikely to be valid.
Film and television
In the 1980s, Hartley worked primarily in television, including providing the music for the 1986 Doctor Who story Mindwarp, and TV movie productions, such as Kennedy (1983), Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil (1985), Mandela (1987) and Rules of Engagement (1989). However he also composed for film, including the Nicolas Roeg film Bad Timing (1980), Bad Blood (1982), The Trout (1982), The Return of Captain Invincible (1983), Sheena (1984) (for which Hartley was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award), Dance with a Stranger (1985), Parker (1985), The Good Father (1985), Consuming Passions (1988) and Tree of Hands (1989). However, one of his lesser known works is the music for The Fifth Dimension, a dark ride at Chessington World of Adventures. In 1986, he composed additional music for the Wham! documentary Wham! in China: Foreign Skies directed by Lindsay Anderson. In the 1990s he provided the scores for many films including Afraid of the Dark (1991), The Railway Station Man (1992), The Secret Rapture (1993), Princess Caraboo (1994), Victory (1995), An Awfully Big Adventure (1995, which was released on CD), Rough Magic (1995), Stealing Beauty (1996), September (1996), Rogue Trader (1999), and Alice in Wonderland (1999), in which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries or a Movie (Dramatic Underscore). Hartley provided music for the BBC/HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers in 2004, and wrote the music for the film Flashbacks of a Fool (2008).
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Shaw, Martin. Award-winning film composer Richard Hartley returns to roots for Holmfirth Film Festival. Huddersfield Examiner. 11 May 2013.
- 2.Richard Hartley Original Musical Arrangements. Rocky Horror Show.
- 3.Abbott, Kate. How we made: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Guardian. 4 March 2013.
- 4.Sokol, Tony. The Rocky Horror Picture Show 40th Anniversary: Absent Friends & Absolute Pleasure. Den of Geek. 26 September 2015.
- 5.AllMovie. Richard Hartley – Movies and Filmography – AllMovie.
- 6.Morley, Christopher. The Composers of Doctor Who – Richard Hartley. Warped Factor.
- 7.Ellis, Lucy. The complete guide to the music of George Michael & Wham!. Omnibus Press. 131. 1998. 9780711968226.
- 8.Richard Hartley. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
- 9.Guinness World Records Ltd. British Hit Singles & Albums. 228. 2005. 1-904994-00-8.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 18 August 2026.
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