British Light Music

[Artifex]

This is my first thread here; I hope I'm doing it right!

I've searched around, and haven't found any pre-existing references to this around here. That seems an omission, so I'll have a go at introducing the topic - though I can hardly claim to be an expert.

British (or English) Light Music flourished in the first half of the 20th century, and gained cultural exposure through its use in television and radio programming, as well as more conventional concert presentations.

Stylistically, it is a branch of classical composition. Generally played by orchestras in many parts, with strong and relatively complex melodies. Vocal elements are rare, but not hugely so. As you might expect from the word "light", pieces tend to be relatively short and energetic. Something you can hum along to.

Some better-known examples:

• Eric Coates' marches, such as the one he wrote for The Dambusters [1955]
• Radio themes like Coronation Scot (Paul Temple)[1947], In Party Mood [1946](Housewives' Choice), Barwick Green [1924](The Archers), Sleepy Lagoon [1930](Desert Island Discs), The Devil's Galop [1951](Dick Barton), Puffin' Billy [1952](Childrens' Favourites) and dozens of others.
• Romantic ballads like Roses of Picardy [1916] by Haydn Wood
• Rearrangements of well-known themes, such as Percy Grainger's adaptations of folk tunes, or Roger Quilter's Children’s Overture
• Novelty pieces like Billy Mayerl's Marigold [c1930]
• Atmospheric illustrations, such as Albert Ketèlby's In a Monastery Garden [1915]

Much of the genre is lost and forgotten in corporate music libraries these days, but there is a substantial peak to the proverbial iceberg that can be found in your favourite record shop, or online.

A reasonable introduction can be found here:
Elizabethan Serenade: The Best of British Light Music
I'm pretty confident that that particular playlist has been published online by agreement with a corporate copyright holder - but, sadly they show so little interest in the genre that your best (legal!) source of recordings may well be the nearest 2nd-hand shop.

Like most genres, it is not sharply defined. There are fringes where it blurs into the "hard" classical. There's a folk fringe, an area where it turns into cinematic scoring, and a jazz/easy-listening edge to explore. Parts of it might be described as "pastoral" - like the work of Vaughan Williams.

I became aware of it through the cinema organ* scene, which includes much of the genre in its repertoire. A number of organists (Notably Mr Hills and Mr Gledhill of London) have been doing some outstanding work to revive and perform forgotten works, based on archived sheet music and vintage 78s, such as this one:

Quentin MaClean plays "The music of Eric Coates" on the Trocadero (Elephant & Castle) 4/21 Wurlitzer

That same organ was moved a short distance to Limehouse in the London Docklands a few years back, and sounds absolutely superb.

Since I've only got an anglocentric, view, it would be interesting to hear about any comparable styles the developed in US (or anywhere else, for that matter). Was the movement limited to this little island?

*That's theater organ for those on the other side of the pond​

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was quite a bit of this style of music on radio in the US, but it generally wasn't original compositions -- more often it was arrangements of popular and show tunes done in a lush, string-oriented style. Andre Kostalanetz, Harry Horlick, Leonard Joy, Rosario Bourdon, and Percy Faith were among the most prominent conductors to work in this style, with the "Carnation Contented Hour," the "Cities Service Concert," and the "Prudential Family Hour of Stars" among the long-running radio programs to emphasize this type of music.

Theatre organ music was very very common on American radio. Jesse Crawford, the "Royal Typewriter Poet of the Organ," was perhaps the most prominent American radio organist, and others included Dick Liebert, Ann Leaf, Lew White, Dean Fossler, and Gaylord Carter, all of whom had their own programs at one time or another, and who doubled in providing theme music for various other shows.

Some British light music made the crossover to the US as part of transcription music libraries in the 1940s and 1950s, and some pieces you'd find familiar showed up as theme selections for various programs. Probably the most famous was Edward White's "Melodi Light Orchestra" recording of a tune called "Puffin' Billy," which every American over the age of fifty will instantly recognize as the theme music for "Captain Kangaroo."

There was an American radio format in the 1970s called "Beautiful Music" which was basically the "light music" paradigm optimized for automated FM stations -- lots of lush instrumental arrangements of popular, show, and movie music by such orchestras as those of Kostalanetz, Frank Chacksfield, the 101 Strings, and Jackie Gleason. Although its detractors snubbed it as "Muzak" or "elevator music," the format was quite successful into the late 1980s until the wholesale shift of top-40 type music to FM pushed it into extinction. I worked at a beautiful music station around 1986, and it was one of my more relaxing broadcasting jobs.

 

[GHT]

This is my first thread here; I hope I'm doing it right!

You're doing fine, if you worry that you might be repeating an old thread, google whatever your subject is, followed by, Fedora Lounge.

Much of the genre is lost and forgotten in corporate music libraries these days, but there is a substantial peak to the proverbial iceberg that can be found in your favourite record shop, or online.

Facetious as it sounds, when did you last see a record shop, let alone a favourite one?
Sidney Torch was instrumental in bringing light music to the ear of the masses by way of the BBC's, "Friday Night is Music Night." First aired on the BBC Light Program in 1953 and the station's successor, Radio2, it's still running today. The UK seems to have mirrored the US, just as Lizzie describes, rarely, if at all, apart from the previous mentioned radio show, do you hear light music except when it's been plagiarised as a jingle for washing up liquid or some other commodity.

When Elvis Presley came on the scene it was a huge culture shock, he sang country music, but he also introduced many people worldwide to the music of African/Americans, but he did it in his own inimitable way. He had a profound effect on many other musicians, not least, John Lennon. So when Lennon, in his arrogant way, said that before Elvis there was nothing, he dismissed light music, big bands, crooners and just about everything else.

Welcome to the lounge, and well done in kicking off an interesting thread.

 

[Artifex]

Welcome to the lounge, and well done in kicking off an interesting thread.

Thank you!

As a side-note, I was disappointed to see The Organist Entertains cancelled last year, after a 49-year run on the Light Programme. The BBC said they wanted to attract a younger audience - which seems a sad indictment of my peers!
The Organist Encores is doing a sterling job of filling the gap, but as a volunteer-run, web-only affair, I fear it will struggle to reach the same audience.

 

[Ticklishchap]

Thank you!

As a side-note, I was disappointed to see The Organist Entertains cancelled last year, after a 49-year run on the Light Programme. The BBC said they wanted to attract a younger audience - which seems a sad indictment of my peers!
The Organist Encores is doing a sterling job of filling the gap, but as a volunteer-run, web-only affair, I fear it will struggle to reach the same audience.

It’s nice to find someone else who refers to Radio 2 as The Light Programme - which we listen to, of course, on the Wireless (interesting how technology has given that term a new relevance and resonance). I used to be a habitué of Malcolm Laycock’s Dance Band Days and Sunday Night at Ten. He was a presenter of the old school and a nice Yorkshireman as well. Although a ‘bloody Sootherner’ I think I must have been a Northerner in a previous life as I feel ‘right at home’ up there and have friends all over Yorks and Lancs. Thanks for the tip about ‘The Organist Encores’. Another sad loss to the Light Programme - a sacrifice to yoof kulchur.

 

[vitanola]

Yes. Some of this sort of music led to innovations, such as this 20 minute long dinner music record which plays at 80 revolutions per minute.

Or this early electric coupling of a middle European and American selection:

 

[vitanola]

Another couple of fine examples under the baton of Nat Shilkret:

 

[vitanola]

Whiteman (not quite) swings it:

 

[vitanola]

These last show "Beautiful Music" arrangements arising fully formed, like Venus on the half-shell:

The we have a slightly more ambitious offering from the Whitman organization:

 

[Artifex]

To add to the collection, a novelty piece with a charming title from no less than:

Frederick Curzon (Composer)
Sidney Torch (Conductor)
and the Queen's Hall Light Orchestra​

Dance of an Ostracised Imp [1940][1948]:

...and an example of the new recordings that are still being made of early 20th-century works. Slightly more serious, although I do think the references to "Early One Morning" are rather fun:

Edward German (Composer)
John Wilson (Conductor)
and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra​

Overture to Nell Gwynn [1900][2011]:

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the most notable American composers to work almost entirely in the "light music" style was Leroy Anderson, whose highly stylized pieces were familiar to anyone who listened to radio or watched television in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. His "Syncopated Clock" was pretty much the default theme song for every local station's late night movie package.

And then there was Robert Maxwell -- not the barbarous media tycoon of the 1990s, but a harpist/composer who had a number of interesting pieces in the early fifties. His most famous recording, "Solfeggio," owes its notoriety to its appropriation by TV comedian Ernie Kovacs as "The Song Of The Nairobi Trio."

 

[ChiTownScion]

And don't forger Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter."

 

[vitanola]

Yes, Anderson was a giant in his field. Almost everyone born before, say, 1980, would find his melodies familiar:

Then we must not forget Percy Faith

Nelson Riddle:

 

[LizzieMaine]

And then there's David Rose, who rose out of the Hollywood music scene in the late 1930s and gained prominence on the Mutual network's "California Melodies" program before going on to a successful career as a film composer. He wrote quite a bit in the "Light Music" domain, including one piece that earwormed two generations.

"Holiday For Strings" became comedian Red Skelton's closing theme song -- Rose led the house band on Skelton's show from the late forties to the early seventies -- and has become perhaps the definitive bit of music used even today whenever someone wants to evoke an ironic, deliberately hokey image of "Fifties White Suburbia."

Rose also composed and recorded "The Stripper," which gave a bit of American raunch to the Light Music genre, and which is still used whenever a TV show wants background music for somebody coming out of a cake.

Margie Hart would have been appalled. She was much classier than that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And of course, we can't leave out Ferde Grofe, whose "Grand Canyon Suite" is probably the pinnacle of American Light Music.

"Cawwwwwwwwl Forrrrrrr Phillllllllip Mawrrrrrrr-reeeeeeeeeis!"

 

[vitanola]

David Rose:

Gordon Jenkins:

Paul Weston:

And, perhaps greatest of all, the inimitable Leona Anderson:

 

[vitanola]

That last post of mine was composed late this afternoon, and somehow did not post.

Then there are all of the Jackie Gleason (that is Bobby Hackett) records; Music to Make You Misty, Music For Lovers Only, Music to Change Her Mind...

 

[vitanola]

And of course, we can't leave out Ferde Grofe, whose "Grand Canyon Suite" is probably the pinnacle of American Light Music.

"Cawwwwwwwwl Forrrrrrr Phillllllllip Mawrrrrrrr-reeeeeeeeeis!"

I agree, but think that the Whiteman waxing that I posted earlier a better performance.

Then we have more or less.serious music which has not quite found it's place in the concert hall, things like Gershwin's Comcerto in F, Cuban Overture, and his Second Rhapsody

 

[vitanola]

And of course Raymond Scott

 

[vitanola]