Golden Oldies

[ardcarp]

On a car journey today I casually pressed the 3 button on my radio...and was immediately transported back 55 years (approx). It was the Lunchtime Concert, and tenor Ben Johnson was in the throes of Liddle's How lovely are thy dwellings. I hadn't heard this since singing it (in SATB form) as a treble. With the arrogance of youth, I proclaimed it superior to ditto by Brahms at the time! Then, O joy, we had Sullivan's The Lost Chord which I proudly sang as a solo at speech day...can one imagine a 12-year-old treble doing such a thing (proudly or otherwise) today? The words are utter tosh, of course, but what a great tune! Now if Mr Johnson had sung Adams' Holy City, I might have swooned with ecstasy.

[rauschwerk]

Funny isn't it? About the same age as you (I think) I don't know the Liddle and can't abide the other two! Not golden to my ears I fear.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

How about:
The Floral Dance
Drake's Drum
The Yeomen of England
Roses of Picardy
O for the Wings of a Dove
The Nuns' Chorus
The Creed
Count Your Blessings

My old music teacher used to describe the opening of The Lost Chord as "the world's worst tune" but then went on to show what changes of harmony could do to compensate for it.

[Richard Tarleton]

Listened in to some of this.

My mother used to sing Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar. Serving in the WRNS in Ceylon at the end of the war, she and a chum took trains up through India and had a holiday on a houseboat on Kashmir's Dal Lake - I fear life was mostly a disappointment to her thereafter

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Thanks for the pointer, ardcarp. I'm listening to concert on iPlayer.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My mother used to sing Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar.

I always thought the Shalimar was where hippopotami bathed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjnOj9O16_I

[Mary Chambers]

My grandfather used to sing songs like these (and some more serious stuff), and he paid my mother sixpence for every accompaniment she learnt to play for him when she was a child/teenager. I know some of the songs, because my mother used to laugh about such ditties as The Lost Chord and Pale Hands I Love.

I think maybe Ben Johnson is onto a winner here, but possibly only with people old enough to have some memory of the songs.

[ardcarp]

I think maybe Ben Johnson is onto a winner here, but possibly only with people old enough to have some memory of the songs.

...or maybe with people new to them? I went through a phase of despising that stuff, but I think I've come out the other side.

Can I add, The Viking Song by Coleridge Taylor?

[decantor]

My reaction (I didn't hear all of it) was much the same as ardcarp's in the OP. It took me back to family Christmas parties in the 1950s, when my parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts were happy to leap to their feet and sing us an old song. Our list was less august than Alpensinfonie's (above): Old Father Thames, Always be an England, Carmencita, May Morning, Old Shako, Company Sergeant-Major, Two Gendarmes, Lost Chord, and Indian Love Lyrics spring to mind. Of the last-named, my favourite was "Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheels", which I think was omitted today.

As a teenager, I was the only one available to accompany, and I loved every moment of it - lots of crash-bang-wallop, and so many big scrunchy chords. It was where I learned to (a) sightread, and (b) fudge at the keyboard.

[rauschwerk]

Funny what you can get used to, though. When I formed a male voice quartet we did lots of barbershop, and I surprised myself by being able to sing Nellie Dean with a straight face.

[Padraig]

Funny what you can get used to, though.

By George you've got it rauschwerk. It's hard to better the sheer enjoyment factor. Not to mention the spin-off learning possibilities.

[MickyD]

I've always had a certain fondness for Ketelby's 'Sanctuary of the Heart'.

[ardcarp]

...and while we're on a reminiscence trip, can anyone recall a song whose first line is 'Brave Isle of meadow cliff and cloud'? The tune is still in my head. I'm sure it's rubbish really....but one is impressionable as a youth.

[rauschwerk]

I've always had a certain fondness for Ketelby's 'Sanctuary of the Heart'.

I'm afraid everything of Ketelbey's that I have ever heard is on my pet hate list. Kashmiri Song is best experienced (imo) in Stephen Hough's beautiful solo piano version.

[W.Kearns]

I read that Sullivan composed the 'Lost Chord' as a memorial to his dead brother. Also as a party piece for his much adored mistress. I have also read - I think it was in Blackwell History of Music in Britain (correct title?) whose editors must be a wicked irreverent lot - that it was contrived as a careful parody of S.S. Wesley.