The King of the Cascading Strings

Alexandra Wilde on Ronald Binge, the English composer whose music serenaded the world

- Alexandra Wilde

Although Ronald Binge isn’t a name familiar to many, at least one of his compositions is broadcast on a daily basis. Born in 1910, in Derby, Ronald Binge was the eldest of three children. His father, a talented pianist, joined the army in 1914; he returned home in 1919, too injured to work because of wounds he had suffered during World War One. He died a year later, so his influence on his son was minimal, and the family was left in very straitened circumstances.

Binge’s mother went out to work, and his relatives and friends also came together to help the family with his maternal grandmother providing them with financial support.

When Binge was seven, he became a chorister in St Andrew's Church, Derby, known as “the Railwayman’s Church”. Recognising his talent, the choirmaster taught Binge piano and organ.

Ronald Binge had set his heart on a musical career, and was educated at the Derby School of Music, where he studied the organ; sadly, there are now no physical records available from that time to show if he received a scholarship, but there was certainly help for promising students.

As the eldest child of the family, he needed to contribute some money to the household. His career began as a cinema organist, where his sight-reading of music was polished to a very high degree.

Binge had a wonderful innate talent for music; in the cinemas, he arranged and played the musical accompaniments to silent movies, and even when the talkies came in, one cinema manager kept him on, entertaining audiences during the intervals. He also worked in summer orchestras in seaside resorts, such a Great Yarmouth and Blackpool, where he learned to play the piano accordion.