A 260TH GARLAND OF BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC COMPOSERS
I start this time with a well respected composer for
brass bands of the present day. Kenneth Downie has published
a St Austell Suite, in three movements (entitled A Jaunt Around
the Town, Holy Trinity Churchyard, St Austell Band),
Bridgwater Intrada, Princethorpe Variations, Purcell
Variations and Music for a Joyful Occasion as well as
many arrangements, notably of hymn tunes.
Now for a few female composers who worked in films
either side of 1939, if not as famously as Doreen Carwithen and
Elisabeth Lutyens, previously noted. Ursula Grenville
wrote a score for the documentary The Key to Scotland (1935),
Molly Berkeley for another documentary Out To Play (1936).
Two others contributed a song each to a feature film score mainly written
by others: Mabel Buchanan’s Thoughout the Years (For
Give Me the Stars, 1944, music otherwise uncredited); and Anna
Marley’s The Hullalooba (for Dead of Night, 1945,
whose music was otherwise by the Frenchman, Georges Auric).
While on British film composers of the great period
of 1936-60, we should put in a mention for John Veale (born 1922),
a composer of symphonies and orchestral pieces like Elegy and
Metropolis but this otherwise serious composer, born in Kent and
who studied and later taught at Oxford University wrote scores for the
films The Purple Plain (1954) and The Spanish Gardener
(1956) and also for TV.
Finally, a more modern TV composer is Andy Davies
whose scores have included that for the BBC documentary The Land
(2002)
Philip L Scowcroft
April 2002
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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