In November 1977 Mary C. Faith (widow of Percy Faith) together with the University of Southern California officially donated to Brigham Young University the entire collection of Faith’s original music manuscripts. The collection consists of approximately 2,300 arrangements and original compositions, including both full scores and orchestral parts.
Throughout the course of Faith’s life, he produced an impressive body of arrangements and original compositions. When Mary Faith and the University of Southern California gifted the library his collection, there were over 29,700 pages of original manuscripts, appraised at almost $300,000 in 1977.
Some of his most notable pieces in the collection include “Theme from A Summer Place,” “Song from Moulin Rouge,” and multiple selections from “The Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady.”
Percy Faith was born in Toronto, Canada, on 7 April 1908, the oldest of eight children. He began his career in music early, learning both the violin and the piano. By the time he was 11 years old in 1919, he was making $3 an hour, plus carfare as a pianist for silent films in Toronto. At the age of 15, he made his concert debut in Massey Hall, a performing arts theatre in the Garden District of downtown Toronto.
Faith's career abruptly shifted from playing to composing at age 18 after an accident left his hands badly burned. He began to study harmony and composition, and by 1933 he had become the arranger and conductor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. By 1937, he was given his own music program to broadcast entitled “Music by Faith.”
Faith worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the next 7 years before moving to the United States in 1940 to become the conductor for the Carnation Company’s radio program, “The Contented Hour.” He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1945, and continued his career by conducting music for The Coca-Cola Hour in 1947, and eventually finding employment as a conductor-arranger for Columbia Records in 1950.
While working for Columbia Records, he began arranging songs for motion pictures, such as the popular musical biography of Ruth Etting, “Love Me or Leave Me” (1955), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His musical talents lead to his involvement with leading singers such as Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis and others.
He continued to release orchestrations of Broadway, Hollywood, and Latin music throughout the 1950s and 60s, and received two Grammy Awards for Record of the Year in both 1961 and 1969, for “Theme from A Summer Place” and “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” respectively.
Faith remains the only artist to have a best-selling single of the year during both the pop singer era (Song from Moulin Rouge 1953) and the rock era (Theme from A Summer Place 1959). He is also only one of three artists, along with Elvis Presley and the Beetles, to have the best-selling single of the year twice in the same year.
He continued to release albums and singles for the next 6 years, before passing away from cancer in 1976. Even following his death, Faith’s music remained popular among devoted fans, especially in Japan.
Music Special Collections can be accessed in room 4437 on the 4th floor of the Harold B. Lee Library.
Hours are MWF 9 am to 6 pm, T 9 am to 10:45am & 12 pm to 9 pm, TH 9 am to 9 pm, and Sat noon to 6 pm.
For information, contact David Day at david_day@byu.edu.
