A 204th GARLAND OF BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC COMPOSERS
Michael Begg, active particularly in the 1960s
and 1970s, was a BBC producer. He contributed songs to the musical Mr
Polly, after H.G. Wells, produced in Bromley (Kent) in 1977. His
genre piece Mexico Grandstand was published in 1970 in an arrangement
by "Edrich Siebot" (Stanley Scott-Masters) for brass
band. This leads us to a present-day composer for wind and brass bands;
Kenneth Hesketh, whose works include Masque, known in
brass and wind versions and Dancerie for wind band.
The current Director of Music of the Band of the Royal
Corps of Signals, Paul Morrell has, besides marches, composed
a Dance of the Messenger, an attractive piece sporting considerable
Irish colour.
Two song composers, now; Roy Teed (1928-), who
lives and teaches in Colchester, has composed many songs, some of them
lightish, like April Morning and Song For Sunrise (both
dated 1955) and Three Jolly Gentlemen (1957). Then there was
the ballad composer John Gair ("Jack") Robson (1885-1957),
responsible for The Cheviot Hills – but details about him are
difficult to find. And one film/TV composer before we revert to earlier
times: Julian Stewart Lindsay, whose scores include that for
the BBC2 documentary Workers at War, shown in 1999.
Theo de la Riviere was a viola player with the
Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra in Dan Godfrey’s day and like so many
others in that orchestra – Cecil White; Montague Birch and
Byron Brooke came to mind – contributed light orchestral miniatures
for his colleagues to perform. George Job Elvey (1816-93) was
Organist of St George’s Chapel, Windsor for almost half a century and
was known in his day for his church music – chants, anthems, services
and hymns – but, like so many other church musicians, many of whom we
have saluted in these Garlands, he composed secular music, often lightish
in character – songs and the occasional orchestral novelty like the
gavotte A La Mode Ancienne, played at the Henry Wood Promenade
Concerts in 1898.
Philip L Scowcroft
June 2001
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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