A 134^TH GARLAND OF BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC COMPOSERS

This series has included a number of organists (mainly concert organists, though church organists are by no means dull dogs and several were both, anyway). Here is another. Gatty Sellars, active from the 1920s until after the Second War, played the organ at the Queen's Hall and for the Crystal Palace concerts; in the 1920s he became Musical Director at the Kingsway Hall. His compositions, all for organ, I have found are all on the popular side: An Ocean Tempest, a Rhapsody on ‘Ein Feste Burg’, Royal Approach and Contemplation, the latter both dated 1942.

Brief mentions now for a few minor figures on the British light musical stage during the 1950s. Allon Bacon, lyricist and composer, brought out Caste (1955), which, revised as She Smiles At Me, managed the briefest of West End runs the following year, and, based on Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest, Found in a Handbag, which earned a few performances in Margate in 1957. Caste was a book also set in 1955 by Ronald Hill but it survived for only a fortnight, in Windsor. Roy Phillips' Trevallion (1956) did however reach the West End (Palace Theatre) but only for four performances.

Cyril Mockridge (1896-1979) was born in England, but he emigrated to America in 1921 and from 1932 onwards became involved in composing music for films there, examples (among many others) being The Littlest Rebel (1935), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), [The Adventures of] Sherlock Holmes (also 1939), Johnny Apollo (1940), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Donovan's Reef (1963).

Rosemary, usually known as Ro, Hancock-Child, a concert pianist, music publisher and author of a biography of Madeleine Dring, published in 2000, lives in Gloucestershire and she herself composes approachable miniatures for piano: Antipodean Postcards, a three movement suite for piano solo and, for four hands, one piano, the suites Branching Out and Four Angels, ending with "Lucifer"!

Philip L Scowcroft

October 2000

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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