BaL 25.06.11 - "Essential Light Music"

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Adrian Edwards with a personal recommendation from available recordings of essential Light Music on CD.

This follows on from the previous week's review of former Radio 2 music and signature tunes on "Composer of the Week" and the previous day's "Music While You Work" and "Friday Night is Music" (this one being broadcast on Radio 2 AND Radio 3).

[Serial_Apologist]

Great - British Light Music: the musical blotting paper of postwar austerity and those Pathe news reels showing "Our boys coming BECK from their brave stint in Korea" etc etc that epitomises the 1950s as we emerged from rationing into "consumer choice" - all of course to the sounds of the BBC Light Orchestra or whatever it was called... all those backdrops to postwar reconstruction, gleaming new town centres, the Festival of Britain in Look At Life in the local fleapit, Blackpool Butlins on Bank Holiday, telly ads, and all those reassuringly homely radio soaps of the time, up to Dr Findlay, I s'pose. All destroyed by rock'n'roll and the swinging sixties, of course,, tut tut.

British light music was the buffer between me and the grey rest of the world as a tot growing up in a lower middle class family in west London; Dad was at work 9-5, Mum did the hoovering to the Light Programme, Strauss waltzs and the Khatachurian's Sabre Dance kept listening little one-sprog-me-cos-Mum-couldn't-have-had-another (as one learned, much, much later) out of her way, along with my Hornby O gauge train set and Dinky car collection.

The 50s was sad, its sadness hidden under in a warm blanket of aesthetic decency and buttoned up denial about the blitz - portrayed as in some far-off distant past. A week of untrammelled nostalgia to indulge in.

S-A

[MrGongGong]

Surely thats an Oxymoron ?

"essential" I mean
not that i'm dissing it bro alpen

[aeolium]

The 50s was sad

Do you think so, S_A? Not more than other C20 decades, surely? Increasing prosperity, high levels of employment, relatively peaceful (at least here). Yes, it had its horrors, child brutality and hidden abuse, racism, but no more than other decades with different problems. And anyway, sadness and happiness are personal not collective things. I like that quote from Schubert: "We think that we can find happiness in places where we have been happy, but the truth is that happiness lies in ourselves".

And anyway, how can a decade with the Beano and the Dandy and the Eagle - and children's serials on the radio - be all sad?

[Serial_Apologist]

Do you think so, S_A? Not more than other C20 decades, surely? Increasing prosperity, high levels of employment, relatively peaceful (at least here). Yes, it had its horrors, child brutality and hidden abuse, racism, but no more than other decades with different problems. And anyway, sadness and happiness are personal not collective things. I like that quote from Schubert: "We think that we can find happiness in places where we have been happy, but the truth is that happiness lies in ourselves".

And anyway, how can a decade with the Beano and the Dandy and the Eagle - and children's serials on the radio - be all sad?

You're right, of course you are But the sixties was, in so many ways (if not all!!!) like the sun coming out after the long winter - in my case.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Surely thats an Oxymoron ?

"essential" I mean
not that i'm dissing it bro alpen

I merely cut and pasted that sentence from the BBC website, MrGG. However, I shall be interested to hear some of the "light" music next week. I'm surprised they haven't resurrected "Grand Hotel" directed by the ghosts of Reginald Leopold and Max Jaffa.

[verismissimo]

Surely thats an Oxymoron ?
"essential" I mean

Sound of nail hitting head there. :)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

[verismissimo]

I wonder if "light" in this context will mean mostly British/American light? The nearest to "essential" for me would be several Strausses.

[mikealdren]

Concentrating on composers rather than performers makes some sense but in a genre like light music, the period performers certainly bring a very different style from the modern, large orchestras, however polished. Hearing the likes of Campoli in light music is a totally different experience and none of today's performers comes close.

Mike

[DracoM]

Nice to hear someone getting serious and enthusiastic about music that still sounds like a collection of BBC sig tunes and irretrievably trivial to me.

Still, quot homines etc?

[gradus]

To hear the BBC Phil swing into Belle of the Ball (not British admittedly) yesterday was magical, as indeed was the remainder of the Music While You Work live broadcast. I suspect that many of us owe some of our enthusiam for classical music to the early conditioning of light music broadcasts heard as a child in the late forties and fifties. The sound of an orchestra and the sheer melodic invention and brilliance of orchestration caught and held the attention and BBC signature tunes played their part. The only problem for me is that although I remember the tunes I can rarely remember their names, although like Donald Macleod I admit to a welling-up when I hear some of them. They may be 'light' but they pack an emotional punch, through the powerful associations of childhood that they evoke.

[Serial_Apologist]

They may be 'light' but they pack an emotional punch, through the powerful associations of childhood that they evoke.

I am in the same situation as yourself, gradus, being of the same generation I guess. And yet, not for the most part having heard these tunes since my childhood, the versions in my head are as though recalled through some kind of echo chamber, and in the flesh they really do sound pretty obvious and something one could have penned oneself: the orchestration is the best part of a lot of this music... but there were examples aplenty from much more substantial yet equally "singeable" early 20th C composers to draw from. The only piece from COTW that really managed to bring a lump to my throat was the Benjamin Frankel piece "Carriage and Pair", which I used as a sort of emotional baffle in the head to shield me from the sheer awfulness of the boarding school experience my deal parents subjected me to, at great expense (in all senses).

An interesting discussion starts up in 15 minutes' time, which I will be listening to for some answers. What really WAS light music about?

[hmvman]

I agree, gradus, the Music While You Work concert was marvellous, although some of Suzy Klein's links were a bit cringe-making; did you catch that apparently Sir Malcolm Arnold celebrates his 90th birthday this year? I was also amused that, looking at the pictures on the website, the entire orchestra had to wear yellow hi-vis vests!

One of the things that has struck me about this celebration of light music is that a common theme of the programmes has been that it's a forgotten genre and why don't more people enjoy it? Yet clearly there already is a sizeable market for it judging by the number of recordings available - a good number mentioned this morning on BAL.

I suppose it is interesting to try to analyze why some people enjoy light music but in a way it sort of defeats the purpose of the genre. I do get some sort of 'nostalgic' feeling from listening to some of the pieces (nostalgia for what I don't know as I was a child of the '60s) but at the end of the day - literally for much of my listening - it is what it is: a delicious confection to be enjoyed without having to work at it too hard or ask any serious questions.

[gurnemanz]

I'm afraid I deemed this BAL to be not essential listening and stuck with Danny Baker on Five Live. However, last year my father died, aged 95, and I inherited his (not huge) CD collection which included some items which I have found interesting but would never have bought myself. One of them is a Hyperion disc of British Light Music with Ronald Corp and the New London Orchestra. It starts off with a bracing rendition of "Calling All Workers" by Eric Coates which took me straight back to my Fifties childhood (The Home Service, rice pudding and school caps). Maybe, in its way, it is kind of essential, after all.