PLAY THE GAME Victorian and Edwardian Sporting Songs.
Claud HILL: Cycling Song;
James GALLATLY: a Rugger Song;
Algernon DRUMMOND: Eton Boating Song;
Henry WATSON: The Glorious Twelfth;
Herbert PRESTON-THOMAS: The Cricketer's
Carol; Franklin ARDELLE; Won't You Come
Over and Play Croquet?; Harriet KENDALL:
A Game of Tennis; Henry PETHER: Our Football
Supper; Odoardo BARRI: The Rival Blues;
Harry BALL: The Newmarket Coat;
J.C. MACY: Little Tommy Went A Fishing;
Herbert SCHARTAU: Caddie;
Charles COOTE
Jnr: I Won Her Heart At Billiards;
Samuel CORBETT: Captain Webb, The Champion
Swimmer; Leo KERBUSCH: Mountaineer Song:
Thomas CHILVERS: Boxing Song;
Alfred SILVER: A Hunting Morning.
Ian Partridge (tenor), Peter
Savidge (baritone), Jennifer Partridge (piano). The Song And Supper Club
JUST ACCORD MUSIC JUSCD
001, £9.99 post free from PO Box 224, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5YJ.
E-mail
info@justaccordmusic.fsnet.co.uk
This highly entertaining disc is both a musical (light musical, basically)
experience and a social document. The Victorian and Edwardian eras, notable
for ballads and "glees" (partsongs) and more serious music, too, saw an upsurge
in the development of sporting activity. Football, rugby, tennis, golf, cricket,
croquet, billiards, cycling, rowing and boxing were either invented or assuming
their modern form at that time, while other long-established leisure activities
like hunting, shooting, fishing, mountain climbing, swimming and horse racing
maintained, even enhanced their importance. All these are represented on
this CD which is a neat mixture of parlour songs or concert ballads, a few
music-hall songs (Our Football Supper and The Newmarket Coat)
and three "glees". One of the latter The Eton Boating Song, the only
item on the whole CD that is at all well known. The parlour song/ballads
themselves subdivide into humorous (Caddie and Cycling Song),
hearty (Rugger Song, Glorious Twelfth, Rival Blues)
and sentimental (A Game of Tennis, Cricketer's Carol; and
especially I Won Her Heart at Billiards) examples. Most of the items
are by British born composers but Kerbusch was German, though domiciled in
Ireland, and Ardelle, Macy and Chilvers were American. The composers are
an interestingly varied lot. Barri and Coote had a considerable reputation
as Victorian Composers of the lighter sort, James Gallatly played lacrosse
and wrote many songs for children, Harriet Kendall enjoyed a reputation as
a singer, pianist and elocutionist, Pether wrote scads of music-hall songs,
as did Ball (The Newmarket Cont, whose horse-racing connections are
slim, was written for his daughter Vesta Tilly), Henry Watson established
a well known Manchester music library, Alfred J Silver was an organist who
composed comic operas and Preston-Thomas was a career civil servant. Claud
Hill and the blind Samuel Corbett, a Shropshire man like his hero Captain
Webb, are the most obscure English Composers. But all could write good tunes;
not a few of them seem to echo the Savoy operas. The lyrics are perhaps less
good, generally speaking, though they serve the music well enough. The
attractively illustrated, well researched booklet prints all the words and
gives details of all composers and lyricists. The performances are splendid.
Ian Partridge remains after 30 odd years one of our finest tenors, Peter
Savidge, who appears on eight tracks to Partridge's six, conveys well the
virility we associate with sportsmen of all kinds (the diction of both is
impeccable) and the Song and Supper Club are a stylish "glee party". Jennifer
Partridge, one of our finest pianists, has, as I also heard in Doncaster
recently in a programme devoted to Ivor Novello, a particular gift for lighter
music. I warmly recommend this CD.
Philip Scowcroft
