We begin this time not with some forgotten Victorian
composers of dance music but a composer of the present day, and a young
man at that, ADAM SAUNDERS who shows - not uniquely, of course - that
light music is still being written and not just as incidental to a film
or TV programme. Saunders' Comedy Overture is an ebullient piece,
very much in popular style with one or two quotations of favourite melodies:
good fun.
Another interesting figure, who is still alive, is
NORMAN HARVEY RUTHERLYN, born in 1930 and self-taught in music. In 1965
he conceived the idea of portraying the life of Sir Winston Churchill
in music. The task, completed in 1974, took him more than eight years;
Derek Barnes helped with the orchestration. The work has yet to be heard
in public in this country, though it has been performed in Czechoslovakia
(as it then was known) and recorded on CD. The movements of Churchill,
A Legend in Music, are "Cradle Days", "Nursery Days" "Sad Days at
St Georges' School", "Harm School" (an orchestral setting of Forty
Years On!) "Peering at Life Around a Corner", "Churchill March"
(this has been heard live in this Country), "The Malakand Field Force",
"Cavalry Charge at Omdurman", "The Blenheim Romance", "Seascape (Lord
of Admiralty)", "The First Great World War", "The Chartwell Suite" (in
four movements, Spring Dawn, Summer's Day, Autumn Mists, Winter's Night)
and "The Second World War", which is also in four sections. Rutherlyn
founded the Churchill Society which has sponsored the music and benefits
from its performance. The music is perhaps derivative but it does show
awareness of British musical tradition, not least in the light music
sphere
Now for some Victorians. Here are a few more dance
composers, whose effusions were performed by brass bands in Doncaster
- and doubtless elsewhere - in the 1890s: W O KEEFE, who produced, inter
alia, the polka The Three Musketeers; T Green (gallop, Sunshine);
EUGENE ROSE whose works included Invitation Schottische and the
polka Garden Party; LAWRENCE CAROLAN, of the schottische Queen
of Heart, and H.L.D. JAXONE (?JACKSON) composer of the valse, La
Canzonetta.
JACOB (sometimes Jacques) BLUMENTHAL (1829-1908 was
German-born, a pianist, who studied with Herz for piano and Halevy for
composition, but he settled in London in 1848 and became pianist to
Queen Victoria. He naturally composed a large number of shortish, light
movements for piano solo and hundreds of songs, including many to German
words, but also many characteristic Victorian ballads, among them The
Message, Across the Far Blue Hills, Maria, Sunshine and Rain,
Love the Pilgrim, My Queen, Sweet is True Love, Venetian Boat Song,
The Burning Ship and Thinking of Thee.
Finally mentions for ARTHUR WILKINSON, active a generation
or so ago as a composer of light orchestral pieces including the Dance
Mexicaine and the Three Rivers Fantasy (the rivers were the
Tyne, Wear and Tees), TIM WILLS, otherwise known as RICHARD JOHNSON
and MALCOLM BARRON, whose orchestral miniatures included World Traveller
March (arranged by the great Robert Farnon) and the harpist JOHN
MARSON (1932-) who studied at the Royal College of Music and who composed
a number of lightish pieces for his instrument, including, for clarinet
and harp, the Acadian Sketches.
© Philip L Scowcroft.
November 1999
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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