A 189th GARLAND OF BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC COMPOSERS
To begin this bunch, here are two orchestral composers
or arrangers from the 1930s or thereabouts. David Stephen (1869-1946)
was really an arranger, specialising in settings of Scots songs, whether
individual ones (e.g. Loch Lomond and Willy’s Rare and
Willy’s Fair) or potpourris such as the Scottish Fantasia
and Scotland Serenade. About Cecil Stanley I know nothing,
apart from the fact that he composed a Romantic Suite in three
movements: Courtship, Wedding Morn and Festivities.
Henry Sullivan, born in 1893 and no relation,
so far as I know, of Sullivan of G & S, composed for revues: Bow
Bells which had one big hit "Mona Lisa" and with Nicholas
Brodsky, Home and Beauty. Henry Vere Fitzroy Somerset,
born in 1898, was known principally (as a composer) for church music
but his ballad A Song of Sleep was quite popular in its day.
Alma Bazel Androzza (1912- ?) was a composer
of old fashioned ballads. I say "old fashioned" advisedly
because she published Live in the Sunlight as late as 1964. Her
best known song was however If I Can Help Somebody, from the
hit parade of 1945. Despite her foreign sounding surname she set English
words, worked in England and published her songs here.
Finally from roughly the same period we should remember
Cecil Rayners, who composed orchestral items (the entr’acte Dance
of the Little Robins and Elfin Serenade, both however orchestrated
by Joseph Engleman, discussed in a previous Garland) and ballad-type
songs, has titles including A Clockwork Courtship, Within
Your Eyes and Little Fairy Boat.
Philip L Scowcroft
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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