Marcus Dods

Marcus Dods (1918-1984) was a Scottish conductor, arranger, and sometime composer. He conducted the score for The Dark Crystal, and before that shared conductor credit with Joe Raposo on The Great Muppet Caper.

Dods conducted many film scores including Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile (with Peter Ustinov), Far from the Madding Crowd, Life at the Top (with Honor Blackman), Billion Dollar Brain (with Michael Caine), and Life of Brian, and was musical director for the animated feature Watership Down. He entered film work in the 1940s and spent several years as assistant conductor at the Rank Organisation. He also arranged "Yo Ho" for the 1950 Disney version of Treasure Island. On stage, he conducted the original productions of West End musicals Oliver! and Pickwick (with Harry Secombe)

After leaving Rank, Dods joined Sadler's Wells opera company in 1951 as chorus master (later conducting) and remained with the company until 1956. For the BBC, he was chorus master and later associate conductor on Music for You (1957-1961), composed music for radio plays (including Pericles, Prince of Tyre with Paul Scofield), and conducted Music in Camera (1962) and four 1964 installments of Doctor Who. He arranged music and composed songs for The First Churchills and conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1966 until 1970.