One of the most prolific and in his time most popular
of Victorian ballad composers was JOHN BLOCKLEY. His Arab's Farewell
to His Favourite Steed can still be heard occasionally (I seem to
recall a recording in LP days), though The Better land was soon
exceeded in popularity by Frederick Cowen's better known version. Blockley
cashed in on the popularity of Tennyson's The Charge of the Light
Brigade by making a song version. Other popular titles were Break,
Break, Break, The Flowers of Home, Hearts and Homes, List to the Convent
Bells, The Sands of Dee, The Memory of the Past, By the Shore, Jessie's
Dream, The Elfin Echoes, Evangeline, The E nglishmen, Ring Out Wild
Bells, The Mother's Song To Her Child, Many Happy Returns and-a
duet - Floating Away. There are a mixture of the sentimental
and the patriotic. In many cases he wrote both lyrics and music.
One of the greatest eras of British light music was
the post-war period of the mood music libraries and the broadcasting
light orchestras. Conductors of the latter included RAE JENKINS, conductor
successively of the BBC Variety and BBC Welsh Orchestras, and JACK LEON,
who also used the name Joy Jerome and directed his own orchestra; both
arranged and composed to a fair degree. Library composers included CECIL
NORMAN, whose compositions included the marchlike numbers Whistling
Commandos, dated 1962, and Small Town Parade; BBC producer
ERIC WARR born in 1905, arranger and composer of orchestral titles like
Blue Waters, and REG ARTHUR, who also used the name KEITH PAUL.
Runaway Bells was actually a "Paul" piece; Say it Over a Nova
was an "Arthur".
Film composers have been legion from the 1930s and
1040s up to the present. From the earlier years we may mention CEDRIC
MALLABEY, whose scores included these for the Gainsborough/Gaumont British
films The Man in Grey (1943) and Fanny By Gaslight (1944),
and Temple Abady(1903-70), who composed both for feature films,
like The Women in the Hall (1947), Miranda (1948), All
Over the Town (1949), Folly be Wise (1952) and Street
Corner (1953), and for documentaries like the British Transport
films This Year London. More recently ELIZABETH PARKER is worth
a mention for her score for the recent BBC TV documentary Meet the
Ancestors. JOHN CAMERON, born in 1944, has been a notable composer
for both TV (including Jack the Ripper, 1988, and Jekyll and
Hyde, 1990) and the large screen, examples being The Ruling Class
(1968), Kes (1970) and the Agatha Christie "detective", The
Mirror Crack'd (1980). Two film composers called Jones (unrelated
separated by approximately a generation) are also worth a brief mention.
KENNETH V JONES, born in 1924, produced scores for Sea Wife (1956),
The Horses Mouth (1958), Leopard in the Snow (1978) and
many others. TREVOR JONES, born in South Africa in 1949, wrote for Brothers
and Sisters (1980), The Runaway Train (1985), the updated
version of Richard III (1995) and Hideaway (also 1995).
Finally let us mark the recent passing of ANTHONY
NEWLEY (1931-99), actor on both stage and screen, singer and later director,
who joined to write a musical with Leslie Breciusse, on three notable
occasions: Stop the World - I Want to Get Off (1961), which ran
for 478 performances in the West End and then 555 more in America, not
to mention a revival in 1978 and a film version in 1966; The Roar
of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd (1964) , which did not
reach the West End but was put on in America; and The Good Old Bad
Old Days (1972), which managed 309 performances at the Prince of
Wales Theatre on its West End run. Newley's music is "popular" rather
than "light", if not indeed "pop" (he was a pop singer in his earlier
days), but several of the tunes are memorable ones, transfer well to
a light music ambience and may well survive.
© Phil Scowcroft
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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