For this "diamond" instalment we resume our survey
of what may be reckoned as the "Big Six" of British 20th
Century composers. Elgar has been dealt with in detail. We move to SIR
MICHAEL TIPPETT (1905-98), one whose output is overwhelmingly serious
but even he may be reckoned as a purvey or light music: two examples
of the light, or lightish, concert suite, the Suite For the Birthday
of Prince Charles (1948) and, written for the Leicestershire Schools
Symphony Orchestra, the Shires Suite (1965-70), plus the arrangements
of Negro spirituals he made for his oratorio A Child of Our Time
and later extracted as a concert item.
Tippett would perhaps be surprised to find himself
in a survey of this kind. Perhaps even EDWARD BENJAMIN BRITTEN later
LORD BRITTEN OF ALDEBURGH (1913-76) would be similarly taken aback,
but he was a very complete musician, pianist and conductor as well as
composer and very prolific. For many he is the greatest British composer
of the 20th Century. Among his lighter pieces we may point
most obviously to the two Suites after Rossini, Soirees Musicales
(1936) and Matinees Musicales (1941), originally intended for
the ballet. Some, at any rate of his folk song arrangements would sit
comfortably in a programme of British light music, as would his cabaret
songs to words by W.H. Auden, composed over virtually the whole of his
adult composing life (eg. Tell Me the Truth About Love and Funeral
Blues). Much of his incidental music for stage (eg for J.B. Priestley's
Johnson Over Jordan) and film (eg for Love From a Stranger
and the celebrated documentary Night Mail) may be reckoned as
light music and a case could be made for the suite of Spanish dances,
Mont Juic, assembled with Lennox Berkeley, for any of the movements
of the early Simple Symphony for strings and for at least some
of the ballet score The Prince of the Pagodas. I recall that
the English Opera Group's publishing for three performances of Paul
Bunyan in Doncaster in 1976 described it as a "musical". The Doncaster
theatre going public did not swallow it, though, and no-one came, but
the tunes are certainly good. Oddly, Britten, unlike Holst, Vaughan
Williams, Ireland, Bliss or Elgar, wrote nothing for military or brass
band.
Talking of Holst, GUSTAV THEODORE VON HOLST (1874-1934)
used , as did his great friend and contemporary Ralph Vaughan Williams,
English folk song in the service of light music, although both composers
had other musical influences besides folk song. Examples found in his
two suites for the National Championships in 1928 (his daughter Imogen
said that he preferred writing for brass rather than military bands
because he found the sound to be mellower and more flexible, but he
composed only that one piece for the brass medium (other hands supplied
arrangements of the military band suites for brass). To these suites,
we may add the St. Paul's and Brook Green suites for string
orchestra, intended originally for the talented girl pupils of St. Paul's
School, Hammersmith, where Holst taught, and p[perhaps the ballet music,
from his opera The Perfect Fool (1921), the Golden Goose
ballet for chorus and orchestra and the Two Songs Without Words
(Country Song and the rousing Marching Song). He also arranged for strings
the middle movements (Nocturne) from the Moorside Suite; and
one or two of his handful of pieces, for solo piano may be reckoned
as light music.
Delius, baptised Fritz Albert Theodor but generally
known as FREDERICK DELIUS (1862-1934) was born in Bradford but drew
musical inspiration generally from places far from Bradford. Few, if
any of his sensitive native-inspired poems really rank as light music
and few of his songs, despite the tunefulness of many of them, regarded
as ballads. However he did make a number of contributions to the light
music repertoire, mostly early in date: the Florida Suite of
1887 ("La Calinda" from this was later incorporated into Delius' opera
Koanga and in an orchestral arrangement became a standby of light
orchestras), Sleigh Ride (1888) and the March Caprice
(1889), perhaps also the Air and Dance (1915) for strings, the
Intermezzo and Serenade from the incidental music for Hassan (1920),
the Caprice and Elegy for cello and orchestra (1925) and some
keyboard miniatures.
We come finally in this Garland to RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS,
another who is regarded as one of the greatest British composers of
the 20th Century. Dotted between his choral music, symphonies,
concertos and so on are many examples of light music. Like Holst, he
drew on English folk and traditional melody in the cause of light music.
His first work to receive a major performance, the Serenade in A Minor
(1897, played at Bournemouth in 1901) probably falls within the "light"
category as so several other of his suites, the Charterhouse Suite,
based on an early piano miniatures (1923), the Suite de Ballet
for flute and piano (1913/20), The Running Set, based on traditional
dance tunes (1933) and the music for his 1923 ballet Old King Cole
(Job, also a ballet, more or less, is more serious).
On many occasions VW was asked many times to write
incidental music, for stage radio and screen and at times this was re-worked,
by him or others, into a suite, perhaps a single movement for the concert
hall, as happened must notably with the music for a production in Cambridge
of Aristophanes' The Wasps (1909, concert suite 1912), whose
overture is one of the finest of British Overtures. The Prelude on
an Old Carol Tune (1950) was based on music for a BBC radio adaptation
of Hardy's novel 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'. The incidental music he
provided for five Shakespeare plays at Stratford in 1953 was not adapted
for the concert room.
He came to films during World War II, after people
like Herbert Bath, Bliss and Walton had flexed their muscles in the
studios. Once started, the roll-call of his films is quite impressive:
49th Parallel (1941), with its expansive Prelude,
Coastal Command (1942), which yielded a seven movement concert
suite, The People's Land (1943), Flemish Farm (1943),
which also was turned into a seven piece suite, Stricken Peninsular
(1945), The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947: not adapted for
the concert hall but records of the music, presumably from the sound-track,
were released), Scott of the Antarctic (1948, adapted as the
Sinfonia Antarctica), Dim Little Island (1949), Bitter
Springs (1950) and The England of Elizabeth (1957, which
finished, posthumously as, Three Portraits and Two Shakespearean
Sketches).
V.W. quite quickly followed Holst into writing for
military band, his output in that direction coming mainly in 1923-4:
a March, Sea Songs, the crisp Toccata Marziale, written
for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 and, best known of all, the
English Folk Song Suite, quickly adapted for orchestra and brass
band by Gordon Jacob. Apart from the brass band version of Sea Songs,
he was not to write for brass band until the 1950s when he composed
Three Welsh Hymn Tunes (1955, for the Salvation Army) and, adopted
the test piece for the National Championships of 1957 and including
parts for two B Flat baritone saxes, the Variations for Brass Band.
One can go on.
Not many of Vaughan William's songs, are reckonable
as ballads, but the lyric, the time and the general feel of Linden
Lea, first performed in 1902, surely makes it such. Arrangements
of Greensleeves have been legion in light music programmes down
the years but there is none finer than Vaughan Williams Fantasia therein,
arguably his most heard single movement. He had the gift of touching
the hearts of many with his quintessentially British music and it is
scarcely surprising that he provided so much for British (and perhaps
other) light orchestras.
© Phil Scowcroft
1999
Philip's book 'British Light Music Composers' (ISBN 0903413 88 4) is
currently out of print.
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