We start with STEPHEN HOUGH born in 1961, for many
years a distinguished pianist but also a composer from his early teens;
years ago I heard in Doncaster a work for four clarinets composed by
him at the age of 15. Naturally enough, his more recent efforts have
been for piano solo, usually short and sometimes light; Etude de
Concert and Musical Jewellery Box have been recorded by him
recently. It is possible that he views his compositions modestly as
there is no mention of them in his entry in Who's Who in Music.
In the course of these Garlands we have listed many
"mood music" composers, another is J. GEDDES MAXWELL, who was active
especially in the 1950s and who produced such titles as Ebb Tide
and Jack Frost.
Two composers now, who are better known in the more
classical surroundings. HUMPHREY SEARLE (1915-82) often wrote in a by
no means listener-friendly idiom - I recall his Piano Concerto being
booed at the Sheffield City Hall in the 1950s despite a fine performance
by Clive Lythgoe - but is worth a mention for his film music, especially
for horror films and for his scores - at least 20, including Gulliver's
Travers, Hamlet, Dr. Faustus and Antony and Cleopatra
- for radio.
IAN PARROTT, born in 1916, not only composed choral
music, chamber music, five symphonies and sundry concerts but was a
university professor and wrote books in inter alia Elgar and Cyril Scott.
But his approachable idiom suggests that he is a plausible exponent
of light music. He contributed to the genre of the light, bright, bustling
British concert overture, with Seithenin, Fanfare Overture for a
Somerset Festival and The Coast of Ceredigion and many of
his shorter instrumental pieces can reasonably by reckoned as being
in the light genre, examples being the piano rhapsody of 1948, Westerham,
the Arabesque and Dance for flute/piano, a Minuet of
1950 for oboe/piano, the Aquarelle (1952) for clarinet (or viola)
and piano, the Fun Fugato and Awkward Waltz for bassoon and piano
extracted from the 4th Symphony, Aivel Dyfi for recorder
and piano, Soliloquy and Dance for harp solo and two titles for
brass, Fanfare and March for quartet and Gleaming Brass for
quintet.
Younger than any of those so far featured in this
65th bouquet (or for that matter younger than practically all in the
previous 64) is WILL TODD, born in Durham 1970 and educated in Bristol
University. It was doubtless Bristol which gave him the inspiration
for his opera Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which is so full of good
tunes that the five movement suite derived from it (and recorded) may
certainly be regarded as light music.
Three Victorian composers before we return to the
present day. The ballad composer ELLEN WRIGHT was especially popular
during the last years of the Queen's reign, her titles including With
My Guitar, Violets (which has a violin obbligato), Spring Again,
A Song of Roses, The Queen's Shilling, The Parting Hour, In My Garden
and - quite the most popular - Fidelity. From the brass band
world of the 1890s we may mention the names of MILLER forename unknown,
composer of inter alia the intriguingly titled The Frolicsome Oyster,
and J. MITCHELL, one of whose more popular numbers was the valse, Sur
La Mer . Dances were an important ingredient of later 19th
Century brass band programmes, and surely a throwback to Louis Jullien,
along with selections of operatic excerpts (many of them of operas which
have dropped out of the repertoire), popular airs and religious melodies,
marches, overtures (mainly obscure ones to us) and the occasional solo
where there was a good enough individual talent in the band. Only in
the second decade of the 20th Century and later were significant
original compositions beginning to be written for brass band, and many
of these, like Holst's Moorside Suite or the effusions of Percy
Fletcher and Hubert Bath, we can now also categorise as light music.
We end, as we began, with a present day exponent,
better known as a performer than as a composer. EVELYN GLENNIE, born
in Aberdeen in 1965 and trained at the Royal Academy of Music, has reached
the top of her profession as a player of percussion instruments despite
being profoundly deaf. Many people have written compositions specifically
for her, often of great complexity, but her own compositions - and she
enjoys composition enormously - are often simple, tuneful and quite
short ("light music", almost by definition); they include solos for
percussion like the charming solo for marimba entitled Little Prayer
and music for television, including advertisements.
© © Philip L Scowcroft
December 1999
November 1999
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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