A 246th GARLAND OF BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC COMPOSERS
For this Garland I return once again to the British
musical stage around 1900 and recall one or two of the lesser-known
names which were associated therewith. A number of these were multi-talented.
For example Victor Stevens was manager, actor, writer and director
besides, composer. In the latter capacity (and, concurrently, some of
the others) he brought out Nymphs of the Danube (1882), Randolph
the Reckless (1888), Bonnie Boy Blue (1892), The Saucy
Sultana (1894), A Village Venus (1895), A Merry Madcap
(1896), Forty Thieves (n.d.) and The Girl From Corsica
(1904), of which Randolph and Bonnie Boy Blue did best
in their provincial way. Stevens published several of his songs as "separates":
I’ll Never Go Home Any More (from Forty Thieves), Over
Goes the Show and Six Months’ Hard. The Saucy Sultana’s
music was written in collaboration with J.C. Shepherd, a musical
director for several provincial shows.
Harry Starr was theatre manager, actor and composer,
again on the provincial circuit. The shows that he composed music for
(all of which suited his own acting talents) included Carl the Clockmaker
(1894), Otto the Outcast (1898) and Schwerk the Dreamer
(1900). Starr’s published songs included one intriguingly titled The
Pro’s Political Palaver.
Harry C. Barry, primarily an actor, composed
the scores for the burlesques Shylock, or The Venus of Venice,
toured in 1892, and Turpin à la Mode, toured in 1897.
A.H. Behrend, grandson of Michael Balfe, composer of The Bohemian
Girl and much else, was a theatre manager-cum-composer who composed
the score for Iduna (1889), and contributed songs to a show called
Skipped By the Light of the Moon, produced in the United Sates
and Australia before it came to this country in 1896. Later it was revived
in London as A Good Time. Behrend’s published ballads were quite
considerable in number, including Auntie, Daddy, Clear and Cool,
Crossing the Bar (a very popular lyric in Victorian times!), Down
Beside the River, My Friend, My Fairest Child and The Old Barge.
Two who made their careers as provincial theatre musical
directors were Thomas Hunter, whose shows, all with only a provincial
reputation were Claudio (1889), The Tourist, or Here and Everywhere
(1895), Sport, or the Queen’s Bounty (1896) and, with Sidney
Shaw, Odd Man Out (1897). C.E. Howell’s The Golden
Plume was toured in 1886. His show The Caliph, premiered
in Bristol in 1892 had a more complicated history, being revised and
revived as The Black Cat at Walsall in 1893 and, after further
treatment, as Eastward Ho in 1894 in which guise it reached the
Opera Comique though for only six performances. And finally we have
mention for Merton Clark whose The Water Babes was toured
in 1894 and for C W. Cottingham and Arthur Trevelyan who
combined for the score of The Barber which surfaced briefly in
Folkstone in 1892.
Philip L Scowcroft
January 2002
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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