Music Webmaster Len Mullenger

A 126th GARLAND OF BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC COMPOSERS

We begin with four more composers for young amateurs. To include such as light music practitioners may cause some eyebrows to rise, but when their music is performed - and this does happen - its simple, tuneful, often pictorial qualities are synonymous with those of classic light music. W.H. Anderson's publications are mainly vocal: for unison choirs (e.g.The Fairy Cobbler, A Child's Prayer, Omens of Spring, The Sweet Nightingale, Song for a Baby Sister) or for solo voice, like To a Girl on her Birthday and The Old Shepherd's Prayer. Alison Hedger lives in Dorset, and is associated with the educational music publishers Golden Apple, as editor and composer. In the latter category, she has produced "a Christmas celebration", See the Stable, and a unison song, Jumping Jack.

Marjory Helyer was, between the 1950s and 1 980s, a prolific writer: many suites for young pianists - Holidays, High Days and Holidays, The Old Mill, Over Hill and Dale, Ship Ahoy, Flights of Fancy, Village Scenes, Winter Wonderland, Polka Dot, Away Day and Plum Stones for solo piano, and Contrasts, Holiday Sketches and Two Dance Duets for piano duet; vocal items (unison songs, like The Dandelion, The Swing, The Blackbird, Cradle Song, and two-part songs, such as The Mood); and string music, At Daybreak, a suite for violin and piano, and the Little Suite for two violins and piano. Janetta Gould, who lives in Glasgow, has published arrangements of Scots and other traditional songs and instrumental miniatures for harpsichord (Etudes and Fantask 85), cello, etc.

Margaret Hubicki, M.B.E., born in 1915, has produced mainly short, tuneful instrumental miniatures: Lonely Mere and Rigaudon for cello and piano, Scottish and Irish Airs (1962) for recorder (or oboe), violin, viola and piano; and, for piano solo, the "pastoral" Song and Dance, the Sussex Pictures and, apparently all Shakespeareinspired, Ariel's Song, the idyll; I Know a Bank, and the march, St Crispin's Day. Sheila May Power (1903-71) is worth a mention for her Suite No.1 for cello and piano, dating from 1938, which, from its movement titles (Prelude, Arioso,Giga) derived inspiration from the baroque era.

Finally, two composers from the mid 20th Century, known to me by just one orchestral work each: Don Caple (the Pied Piper Suite) and Ezra Read, who wrote the fast galop, Midnight Express, for the Paxton Recorded Music Library in the forties.

Philip L Scowcroft

Enquiries to Philip at

8 Rowan Mount

DONCASTER

S YORKS DN2 5PJ

Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is currently out of print.

E-mail enquiries (but NOT orders) can be directed to Rob Barnett at rob.barnett1@btinternet.com

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