John Hudson talks to Bristol based composer and arranger David Bedford about his life.

You might imagine that David Bedford would have to think hard to name the high spot of an eclectic career stretching back four decades.

Conducting and arranging the orchestral version of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Oldfield himself on guitar, sounds just about the ultimate in classical-rock crossover.

Four works for the BBC to be played at the Proms tell of his concert hall credentials, while his skill at working with a wide range of abilities was recognised two years ago when his big outdoor community piece Old Joe on the Beach celebrated the Aldeburgh Festival’s 60th birthday.

Then again, when it comes to names to be dropped, how many musicians’ CVs take in the London and Royal Liverpool Philharmonics, the English Sinfonia, Madness, Elvis Costello, Frankie goes to Hollywood, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Billy Bragg and a-ha?

But the pinnacle of his achievement?

“It’s got to be the piece I’m working on at present,” he says. “I think any composer would tell you the same.

“You’ve learned from other pieces you’ve done, so you think you’re getting better.

“You know from experience what players like to do and what they’re capable of – and at the age of 72, I certainly don’t feel any less creative.

“It’s not a job from which you retire.

“I still get ideas that I, at least, think are good!”

The new piece, to be completed in January and performed next July, is certainly the longest and most complex of his works in that it is to be performed by musicians across the skills spectrum, from novices to professionals.

The Wreck of the Titanic has been commissioned by the schools music services of Cumbria, Lancashire and Liverpool to mark the North West’s links with the tragic liner.

The White Star Line was founded in Liverpool; Maryport in Cumbria was the birthplace of the company’s most famous owner, Thomas Ismay, whose son Bruce notoriously survived the sinking; and Colne, Lancashire was the birthplace of Wallace Hartley, whose band played on to the end.

After all three authorities have performed the piece’s world premiere, in the centenary year of 2012 there are plans to stage it in Southampton, Cherbourg, and Cobh, formerly Queenstown, in Ireland, the various ports visited by the Titanic.

It is hoped it might also be put on in Belfast, where she was built, and New York, her intended destination.

The piece will feature words from survivors’ accounts, newspaper reports and the official inquiry, and the line-up of that brave string band will be recreated.

“It’s a huge challenge, and it’s the kind of thing that keeps you on your toes,” says David.

“Last year I wrote a work for an orchestra of deaf children, who were all beginners.

“I knew they’d know only three or four notes, but I kept getting emails saying things like, ‘the clarinets can now do G, can you change your piece?’

In the end I simply asked them to work out what notes they’d know by the time of the performance...

“With this one, a problem was that I don’t know what instruments the beginners, the young Wider Opportunities children, have in the three different areas.

“So I’ve ended up writing high, middle and low parts, so that whatever instruments they have, they can play.

“It might be a violin in Liverpool, a recorder in Cumbria.

“Then there are the youth orchestras and choirs for the respective areas, young people of considerable ability, plus the professional ensemble that plays the Titanic’s band, so I’m having to write to suit them all.

“The professionals are an ensemble from Lancashire who will play the exact instruments of Wallace Hartley’s band – violins, cellos, bass and piano.

“I’m writing arrangements of tunes we know were played on board, including several known to many people today – Oh You Beautiful Doll, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Somewhere a Voice is Calling, some Elgar.

“There’s still controversy over what they were playing at the end.

“Some people said – and it sounds nice – that it was a hymn, Nearer My God To Thee, but others insisted it was cheerful music all the time.

“I’ve chosen to go with Harold Bright, the radio operator, who survived and said it was a song called Don’t Dream of Autumn, which is a minor key waltz, half sad, half happy.

“I suppose as people looked back from the lifeboats, they would have heard different tunes at different times.”

So much of the Titanic story lends itself to music.

For the construction scene, David is asking the organisers to “find some scaffolding to bang on”.

A piece called The White Star March, written for the company to mark Titanic’s launch, is an obvious choice, and there are the first few carefree days as the ship steams serenely west.

“And then they hit that iceberg,” says David.

“The problem there is that it was felt differently in various areas of the ship.

“In the salons, the coffee cups might have wobbled a little in their saucers, while down below, in the boiler house, there was chaos, a huge bang and water crashing in.”

The Wreck of the Titanic, which will spawn CDs and DVDs, is part of a huge education project which even fits into the schools’ composition curriculum.

David is writing part of the score based on the morse code SOS rhythm – dash dash dash – dot dot dot – dash dash dash – while the children are being asked to come up with music stemming from the other mayday signal of the time, a rather catchy CQD.

It all sounds very complicated, but then again, he has been doing this kind of thing for a long time – 65 years, to be exact; his grandmother was the composer Liza Lehmann, his mother Lesley Duff, of the English Opera Group, and he was seven when he caught the composing bug.

“My mum taught me how to notate, and I went from there. I’ve never needed to play to arrive at what I’m striving for.

“I can hear it in my head.

“Composing at the piano is a disadvantage for me – certain chords sound beautiful on strings but terrible on the piano.”

After this precocious start, he went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music under Lennox Berkeley, and later in Venice with Luigi Nono.

It was in 1969 that he was asked to orchestrate Kevin Ayers’ masterpiece album Joy of a Toy, and some years later he joined Ayers’ Whole World band on keyboards.

Mike Oldfield was its bass guitarist.

A busy number of years in rock ensued.

“I think I was the first crossover musician to come over from the classical side,” he says.

“From the ‘other’ side, Deep Purple did a concerto for rock band and orchestra. My arranging work with Kevin led to my working for other bands on the same label or under the same management, and there were some interesting moments.

“I thought the Madness songs were really good, but they couldn’t read music.

“The first time I did something with them, I asked what key it was in, and they didn’t know what I meant.

“In fact sometimes they changed key without realising it after I’d done the arrangement, so it could start to sound rather strange.

“But it all worked out, and I still think they were incredibly good songs.

“I remember a fellow classical composer suggesting I should buy an inferior grade of manuscript paper now I was working in rock music.

“Nowadays, everybody’s crossing over all the time.”

David came to Bristol from London 10 years ago with his locally-born wife Allison and the third and surely final instalment of a family that now extends to seven children, who range in age from 51 down to seven; today there are three at home, aged 14, 11 and seven, and Allison is teaching again, at the Castle School in Thornbury.

It’s the kind of family where the occasional evening might be spent singing Beatles songs around the piano, while David keeps fit playing tennis twice a week at a Clifton sports centre. Jogging on the Downs?

“No, too boring.”

A different kind of a life, then, as he is sometimes reminded rather abruptly:

“I once had a row with a tax inspector who said I shouldn’t be claiming for CDs as a business expense.

“One of the reasons I felt I should was that I really do need them for work, and don’t often listen to music for pleasure.

“A the end of a working day I just want to watch films on telly or whatever, any old rubbish, just to give my brain a break, so I joked to the taxman ‘Surely you don’t read books about income tax for pleasure?’

“I thought I’d scored a point, but the poor chap looked quite reproachful.

‘Oh yes I do’, he said.”