Nostalgic Children's TV and other themes from childhood....

[MrGongGong]

Maybe Hornspieler can tell us about the great Vernon Elliott ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't want to hog this thread, but…

One of my great TV/Radio influences was Steve Race. Pupil of William Alwyn at the Academy, no less. Here's his most successful piece of music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0d5J8CvT2A

- one of Patsy Kensit's most successful pieces of acting, too!


(Saucer of milk for the Geliebte household ... )

[Pabmusic]

- one of Patsy Kensit's most successful pieces of acting, too!...

So it is!!

[Richard Tarleton]

Used to go round to the neighbours' house to watch Champion the Wonder Horse, aged 6-7 - I see from Wiki that it ran for 26 episodes in 1956-7, in which case I must have seen most of them. Ricky lives with his uncle Sandy and his Alsatian, Rebel, with wild stallion Champion who comes when he whistles. The plots were always more or less the same - Ricky would get into a scrape, or baddies do something bad, until Ricky managed to summon Champ [sic] with a two-fingered whistle. The baddies would generally be pinned to the canyon wall by Champion's rearing hooves until the law arrived. Why the baddies never thought of just shooting the horse was never made clear

Here's the theme song, sung by Frankie Lane

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Urban myth!

Indeed, this is true.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What classical music are children introduced to via today's programmes?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The plots were always more or less the same - Ricky would get into a scrape, or baddies do something bad, until Ricky managed to summon Champ [sic] with a two-fingered whistle. The baddies would generally be pinned to the canyon wall by Champion's rearing hooves until the law arrived. Why the baddies never thought of just shooting the horse was never made clear

Here's the theme song, sung by Frankie Lane

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo used the same scripts ("Used - Acceptable. May show signs of wear, notes pencilled in margins, crease to spine; Frankie Laine may be missing.")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_agtNKbgSfI

... now this chap did his own animal fighting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pXrpmJ0XEE

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

On a similar theme, it is common for "modernised" versions of signature tunes to be given a stronger beat. Examples include the later series of Ballykissangel and Monarch of the Glen. An interesting exception was All Creatures Great and Small. The signature tune for series 1-3 had a drummer who appeared to be less than competent, which made me wince every time I heard it. Series 4-7 (a decade later) had the same theme rearranged for a chamber group, but with no drumkit. Perhaps I wasn't alone in my disgust with the original version.

[MrGongGong]

What classical music are children introduced to via today's programmes?

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/orchestra/hire/films_and_games

and .......

[Richard Tarleton]

What classical music are children introduced to via today's programmes?

I wrote to the BBC to ask what the theme music to their 1966 version of The Three Musketeers was, I was so impressed with it. It was the March to the Scaffold. I think they used the final repeat of the big tune. My introduction to Berlioz.

[Beef Oven!]

What got me hooked on classical music was Peter and his Loup and The Carnival of the Animals. Didn't everybody get hooked this way?

Meanwhile, back to The Singing Ringing Tree and The Clangers

[johncorrigan]

Used to go round to the neighbours' house to watch Champion the Wonder Horse, aged 6-7 - I see from Wiki that it ran for 26 episodes in 1956-7, in which case I must have seen most of them. Ricky lives with his uncle Sandy and his Alsatian, Rebel, with wild stallion Champion who comes when he whistles. The plots were always more or less the same - Ricky would get into a scrape, or baddies do something bad, until Ricky managed to summon Champ [sic] with a two-fingered whistle. The baddies would generally be pinned to the canyon wall by Champion's rearing hooves until the law arrived. Why the baddies never thought of just shooting the horse was never made clear

Here's the theme song, sung by Frankie Lane

'Champion the Wonder Horse' and 'Casey Jones' are probably two of my favourite ever theme tunes - the Casey Jones theme was different from the magnificent Furry Lewis version, by the way (when you hear the tootin' of the whistle, it's Casey at the throttle of the cannonball express).
Someone may already have said it but 'The Lone Ranger' probably introduced me to one of my first pieces of classical music...does that count?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/orches...ilms_and_games

and .......

These EA games sound fascinating.

[Serial_Apologist]

Those of us contributing to this thread represented the first generation to have been brought up amid the soundworld and images of television. I think that's worth thinking about. My childhood introduction to atonal music came via the very short Webern-like theme tune to a TV science series, possibly a predecessor to Tomorrow's World. It was for chamber group, I remember xylophone in the instrumentation, and it beginning with an immediately repeated 3-note motif in inversion. No doubt Liz Lutyens was the composer.

[Richard Tarleton]

Someone may already have said it but 'The Lone Ranger' probably introduced me to one of my first pieces of classical music...does that count?

Yes! Come to think of it I must have gone round to the neighbours 2 nights a week (Lone Ranger also ended 1957). We did eventually get a TV of our own......