CLASSICAL music concertgoers whose reveries are broken by the sounds of mobile telephones will be able to make their own point with a set of ring tones created by Britain’s oldest independent orchestra.

The London Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1904, has become the first orchestra to record and sell ring tones.

It is joining a burgeoning market for 30-second performances that generated £120 million for ring-tone creators in Britain last year, more than double the value of the compact disc singles market.

The orchestra has created tones for 54 well-known classical themes that can be downloaded onto a mobile telephone. Barry Gray’s theme to Thunderbirds leads a chart that includes works by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Vaughn Williams. There is even a classical rendition of the theme to the 1980s action series The A-Team and the introductory music to This Is Your Life.

All tunes are samples of the orchestra’s recordings, either as a realistic “true tone” sound, or simplified “polytone” or “monotone” adaptations.

After the orchestra recorded the work, the sound was converted in a studio by Nigel Gomm, the orchestra’s trumpet player, Gareth Davies, principal flute, and John Alley, principal keyboard.

The orchestra hopes to make thousands of pounds by selling the tones from its lsoringtones website for between £1.50 and £3.00 a time. Clive Gillinson, the orchestra’s managing director, said the LSO would take between a quarter and a third of the price of each tone sold.

“If you can make classical music everyone wants on their telephone then that is excellent,” he said. “We want to make classical music part of life. Even if we make a loss we feel it will have been worth it.”

The commercial venture is the latest money-making enterprise for the orchestra, which began its own label in 2000. LSO Live is now the world leader in orchestra home recordings and sold 20,000 compact discs last year. If LSO Ringtones has the same success, the orchestra stands to make £20,000 a year. Mr Gillinson said his primary objective was to popularise classical music. “But with LSO Live our musicians are also receiving a decent return.”

The ring-tone market threatens to overtake the singles market in terms of volume.

Compact disc singles sales fell by 15 per cent last year as rappers such as Usher and Eric Prydz became top of the ring-tone chart. The sale of tones may also be incorporated into official charts as downloaded music is included in listings for the first time later this year.

The global ring-tone market was worth an estimated £3 billion last year, spurred by Britain’s £3.3 billion youth mobile telephone market.

LSO'S TOP TEN

1 Barry Gray’s Thunderbirds theme

2 Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite — March

3 Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite — Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

4 Verdi’s Aida — Grand March

5 Themes from James Bond films — Goldfinger

6 Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — Allegro

7 Gounod’s Faust — Soldier’s Chorus

8 Themes from James Bond films — James Bond Theme

9 Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — finale

10 John Williams’ Star Wars

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