Classic BBC Radio Theme ~ Desert Island Discs - YouTube Classic BBC Radio Theme ~ Desert Island Discs Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Aug 29, 2009 This is (By The) Sleepy Lagoon composed by Eric Coates and performed by Eric Coates and the Symphony Orchestra. The original version was recorded by Coates for introducing the BBC radio series Desert Island Discs, which has run since 1942, and the theme is still in use today. Upon hearing the melody, Jack Lawrence wrote the song lyrics to it, and it became a hit for bandleader Harry James reaching no1 in the Billboard magazine Best Seller chart in 1942. Other hit versions were recorded by Dinah Shore, David Rose, Fred Waring, Glenn Miller and others.

The song made the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960, in a version by the Platters, found originally on the flipside of the 1960 top ten "Harbor Lights". The song is used at one of the rides (The Magic Clock) in De Efteling in The Netherlands, one of Europe's largest theme parks. Category BBC Signature Tunes Home Page Signature Tunes Housewives' Choice was a record request programme broadcast on the Light Programme every weekday morning from 1946 until the arrival of Radios 1 and 2 in 1967. It had a different presenter each week, and the signature tune was In Party Mood by Jack Strachey. A programme called Children's Choice ran from 1952, following the Housewive's Choice format. Children's Favourites replaced it two years later. Until 1965 it was presented by Derek McCulloch, known from Children's Hour as Uncle Mac. The Reithian spirit prevailed and the programme included not just records made for children, or pop, but light classical pieces and even hymns. The signature tune was Puffin' Billy.

The launch of Radios 1 & 2 saw the programme, now called Junior Choice, broadcast on both channels with a new sig tune and more pop content. The programme ran until 1982. Family Favourites was a record request programme which linked families in the UK with members of the armed forces serving in Germany and elsewhere. As Two-Way Family Favourites it brought together London and Cologne but later it included more distant (and non-military) links including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Hong Kong. The signature tune was With a Song in My Heart. Related page Trevor Hill recalls the origins of Family Favourites and the choice of the signature tune. Down Your Way ran from 1946 to 1992, introduced by Horse Guards, Whitehall from the London Lankmarks Suite by Haydn Wood. The programme visited a different location each week, interviewing residents and playing their choice of music.

It was hosted by Stewart MacPherson (1946-1950), Richard Dimbleby (1950-1955), Franklin Engelmann (1955-1972), Brian Johnston (1955-1987) and then by a different host each week. The music of Eric Coates was often used. By the Sleepy Lagoon still is, with added seagulls. Desert Island Discs began in 1942 and can claim to be the longest running factual programme on radio. It was devised by Roy Plomley, who presented the programme for 43 years. Michael Parkinson took over in 1985 following Plomley's death. Sue Lawley followed in 1988 and Kirsty Young in 2006. Plomley himself was the castaway on two occasions, the interviewers being Leslie Perowne and Eamonn Andrews. Another Coates piece, Calling All Workers, introduced Music While You Work which began in June 1940. It was intended to improve morale in wartime factories and thus increase productivity.

It continued after the war up until 1967 when the Light Programme ended. With two editions a day, the programme was usually live, though some were recorded in later years. It featured dance orchestras, brass and military bands, light orchestras and small instumental groups. Music Magazine was co-edited by Julian Herbage and his wife Anna Instone. Presented by him (from 1952) and produced by her, the programme ran from 1944 to 1973. Julian had joined the BBC in 1927 and Anna became head of gramophone programmes. The tune used was Schubert's An die musik ("To music"). Originally broadcast from the 1930s to the 1960s Paul Temple was a detective series. The signature tune was Coronation Scot by Vivian Ellis. Paul and his wife Steve were played by several actors over the years but probably the best known voices were those of Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury. Some of the stories have been remade in the 21st century with Crawford Logan and Gerda Stevenson in the lead roles.

Devil's Galop by Charles Williams was the sig of Dick Barton - Special Agent which began in 1946 at 1845 on the Light Programme. The serial followed the adventures of ex-Commando Captain Richard Barton MC and his sidekicks Jock Anderson and Snowy White. They solved various crimes, escaped from all sorts of scrapes and often saved the nation from disaster, each evening's programme ending with a cliff-hanger. The sensational nature of the programme was felt to be unsuitable and so the Archers took over the 1845 slot. The Archers is the world's longest running soap opera. It began in 1950 on the Midland Region of the Home service and was broadcast in the Light Programme the following year, subsequently moving to the Home Service and then Radio 4. The actor Norman Painting holds the title of longest-serving actor in a single soap opera in the Guinness Book of Records having played the part of Phil Archer from 1950 until his death in 2009. The theme, Barwick Green by Arthur Wood, is still used, though in a newer recording. Sports Report began in 1948, initially produced by Angus Mackay.

Through the years it has been broadcast on the Light Programme, its successor Radio 2, the Third Programme wavelengths and on both varieties of Radio 5. The first part of the programme included reports from several football matches, usually of one minute duration. Angus would scold any commentator who dared to over-run his slot! Related page Mike Chessher describes one of the studios used for Sports Report. Top of the Form. began its 38 year run in 1948. Two teams of four pupils from secondary schools around the country competed, answering general knowledge questions. The programmes were recorded in the two competing schools which were linked by land-lines. The question masters in later years were Tim Gudgin (1965ï¿½86), Bob Holness (1974ï¿½76), Paddy Feeny (1965ï¿½86) and Geoffrey Wheeler (1962ï¿½75). A television version ran from 1962 to 1975. Marching Strings was composed by Ray Martin (using the pseudonym Marshall Ross). My Word's signature tune was Alpine Pastures by Vivian Ellis (who also wrote the Paul Temple theme).

After a pilot broadcast in the Midlands in 1956 the programme ran on the Home Service, and later Radio 4, from 1957 to 1990. The format was devised by Edward J. Mason and Tony Shryane. Two teams competed to solve word games and literary questions and in the final round Frank Muir and Denis Norden devised ingenious explanations of the origins of well-known phrases or quotations. A companion programme, My Music, ran from 1967 to 1993. Imperial Echoes by Arnold Safroni introduced Radio Newsreel. It started on the Overseas Service in 1940 and transferred to the Light Programme in 1947. The domestic edition ended in 1970 but the overseas editions continued for 18 more years. During the war US and Canadian stations also carried the programme. Related page Trevor Hill remembers the wartime overseas editions of Radio Newsreel broadcast from 200 Oxford Street.

Between 1939 and 1949 there were over 300 episodes of It's That Man Again (often called simply ITMA), a comedy show credited with making a considerable contribution to public morale during the war years. The title referred to a newspaper headline about Hitler. Tommy Handley starred and other performers included Jack Train, Clarence Wright, Deryck Guyler, Joan Harben and, late in the run, Hattie Jacques. The show made much use of catchphrases. Mrs. Mopp's 'Can I do you now, sir?' and Colonel Chinstrap's 'I don't mind if I do' were known and often quoted by much of the population. Some more comedy show openings Hancock's Halfhour An early example of British situation comedy (1954-9) starring Tony Hancock and written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Other regulars were Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams. In addition to the radio shows there were seven TV series, ending in 1961. Ray's a Laugh Running from 1949 to 1961 Ray's a Laugh featured Ted Ray with Kitty Bluett as his wife.

It was a domestic comedy with musical interludes. The cast at various times included Patricia Hayes, Kenneth Connor, Jack Watson and Peter Sellers. Take It From Here Written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden (except for the final series), TIFH ran from 1948 to 1960. It starred Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley and Joy Nichols. Alma Cogan and June Whitfield joined after the departure of Nichols in 1953. Like many shows of the period it was structured in three parts separated by musical interludes, one of which was provided by The Keynotes. The final segment was a sketch featuring the Glums - a long engaged couple Ron (Bentley) and Eth (Nichols and later Whitfield). Edwards played Ron's father. The Navy Lark The Navy Lark followed the adventures of the crew of HMS Troutbridge and ran from 1959 to 1976. Cast regulars included Leslie Phillips, Jon Pertwee, Stephen Murray, Richard Caldicot, Ronnie Barker and Heather Chasen. The writers were Laurie Wyman and George Evans.

Fred Vintner, of the Navy Lark Appreciation Society, supplies this note: Back in the days of a British Film industry and new TV stations (regional as well as national) young composers were desperate for a break into the big time. This meant a company like Barry Music (there were others) would record copyright free material and send the discs to broadcasters to sift through at leisure and if a tune was played, a royalty would follow. A young 'Dwight Barker', real name Tommy Reilly, recorded six 78s of incidental music which varied in length from 5 seconds to 80 seconds in 1958. The library discs were BM 118, 201, 251, 252, 253, 254 which all got transferred to a single LP later. The Navy Lark was commissioned in late 1958 and as the writing side of things was being started by Laurie (later Lawrie) Wyman, Alastair Scott Johnston was firming up in his mind, with the help of his secretary Evelyn Wells, how the sound of the show should be.

He wanted nautical references and to this end Evelyn plundered the BBC library and despite two and half days listening to stock recordings nothing 'worked' until the Tommy Reilly interludes were played, and both Alastair and Evelyn were smitten by the narrative in the music and its independent style. Thence on all Navy Lark recordings were based on this collection of recordings. I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again Originated from a Cambridge University Footlights revue ISIRTA ran from 1964 to 1973. It featured John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie, David Hatch (who later became Controller of Radio 4), Jo Kendall and Humphrey Barclay. The sig, referred to as The Angus Prune Tune, was vocalised by Oddie at the end of the show. In this section Eric Coates Eric Coates Composer 'Eric Coates was a gentle and quietly spoken man but his music crackled with enthusiasm and vitality. He could write tunes and clothe them in the most attractive musical colours . . .

Someone once said that the marches of Sousa would make a man with a wooden leg step out; a man would have to have a wooden heart not to respond to the music of Eric Coates.' Sir Charles Groves Born in 1886, Eric Coates was the youngest son of five children. His father was a local doctor whose home and surgery were on Tenter Hill, Hucknall. As a child Eric would lay awake at night listening to the Hucknall Old Brass Band practising in the nearby Plough and Harrow Inn, and when he was six he became the proud owner of a violin. His mother was a fine pianist, his father played the flute, and they formed an orchestra that included Eric and his three sisters. By the age of ten, Eric was first violin and within two years was writing in a part for any player who unexpectedly turned up for orchestral rehearsal, no matter what the instrument was - violin, double-bass, cello or woodwind. When not practising his music, young Eric would chase rats around the stable with his father's bulldogs. Always smartly dressed with a scarf around his neck to protect his chest, he was described by everyone as a gentleman.

Royal Academy He studied violin and composition in Nottingham until, at the age of twenty, he gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London. There he studied composition under Frederick Corder, and the viola under the well-known virtuoso Lionel Tertis. Already there were signs of health problems. A prey to colds, he succumbed to pneumonia, and became aware of a numbness in the fingers of his left hand - neuritis, or 'that gnawing ache', as he called it. To supplement his income, Eric played in theatre orchestras for 6 shillings a night before touring South Africa with the Hambourg String Quintette. It was the age of ballad concerts at which song ballads were sung by such singers as Gervase Elwes and Nellie Melba and the poet Fred E. Weatherley agreed for Eric to set his poems to music. The outcome was the rousing baritone song, Stonecracker John, inspired, rhythmically at least, by the jolting of a bus. It started a vogue for this type of song. Sir Henry Wood After leaving the Royal Academy, Eric secured a position as viola player with the original Beecham Symphony Orchestra.

Later he joined the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood at ï¿½2 10s a week. He sent home to Hucknall for his bicycle so he could explore London. Brilliant sight-reading ability made up for the pain in his left hand and Eric became principal viola with Sir Henry Wood from 1911 to 1919. While attending a concert at the Academy, he fell in love at first sight with Phyllis Black (pictured right), an attractive girl of sixteen. 'Too young!' her parents said, and there was a two year wait before they married in 1913. She wrote lyrics and helped him in everything he did. Not fit for service in the 1914-18 war,Coates wrote Four Songs of the Air as testimony to the RFC. By July 19, troubled by neuritis in his left hand and arm, he had to give up the viola and devote himself to composing and conducting performances of his own music.

Composer The masterpiece The Merrymakers Overture was followed by a series of Phantasies on nursery stories: The Selfish Giant ; The Three Bears, based on his own little family - his only son Austin was born in 12; Cinderella; and Snowdrop and the Seven Dwarfs which anticipated the famous Walt Disney film by several years. The Morning Post wrote: 'Something about Mr. Eric Coates himself, as well as his music, suggests a spirit of perennial youthfulness.' He and his wife were untiring dancers, mastering all the new steps, and he began to embrace the syncopating styles of the Jazz Age in his music. One of his best-loved tunes, By the Sleepy Lagoon, later became a favourite on American juke boxes and still introduces Desert Island Discs on the radio every week. Coates loved the city of his adoption and set London to music, portraying Convent Garden, Westminster and Knightsbridge in his London Suite. He didn't forget Nottinghamshire, often saying that the motivations for many of his pastoral works were inspired by his childhood love for his native Nottinghamshire. His suite From Meadow to Mayfair traced his itinerary from his birthplace in Hucknall to his flat in Baker Street.

In Town Tonight The movement Knightsbridge March from his London Suite with its traffic noises, street cries and fanfares was chosen to introduce the BBC's new radio feature In Town Tonight. Thousands of listeners rang the BBC to request the title of the tantalising few bars they had just heard and 20,000 letters descended on the BBC asking the composer's name. Gramophone records of the march could not be made fast enough. Like his favourite poet, Byron, Eric Coates woke up one morning to find himself famous. In Town Tonight ran for 27 years and Eric Coates became England's best known composer at home and abroad. His melodies were whistled in the streets as well as sung in concert halls. The music of Eric Coates was always typically English, whether he was capturing the English village atmosphere in the Countryside Suite, or the familiar scenes of his beloved London in London Suite. What he 'had to offer, was memorable melody, foot-tapping rhythm and clear orchestration.' He used to say that in his early days, he had to play so many dull viola parts that he made up his mind that every instrument should have an interesting part, and that is what makes his orchestrations so colourful.

The Dambusters Eric didn't scorn other schools of music and was probably the first to use the dance band trick of syncopation in serious music. One of the few composers to use the saxophone as a solo instrument in serious music, his Saxo-Rhapsody was written for alto-saxophone and orchestra. His wife Phyllis became a Red Cross worker at the outbreak of war and inspired Eric to write Calling All Workers which the BBC adopted for as the signature tune its the new Music While You Work programme in 1940. The music became one of the war's most potent symbols and his Eighth Army march matched the turning point of the war with the Battle of El Alamein. The Three Elizabeths Suite, completed while enemy 'doodle bugs' were falling around him in London, received a first performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra on Christmas Eve, 1944. Parts of the it, Halcyon Days, opened and closed BBC Television's serialisation of The Forsyte Saga in the 60's.

A march he wrote especially for the Nottingham City Police Band in 1953 was called Men of Trent - strangely, it seemed, within a few hours of a request, tunes would come into his head. His concert waltz Sweet Seventeen was inscribed 'for my beloved Phyl', and shortly after, when he was approached to write something for the new film The Dambusters, he replied: 'I think I finished it yesterday.' A suitable march had already been penned and it proved a winner. It made the Top Ten in 1955, remained there for over a year and was even adapted as a hymn tune. Audience Cheered On a Saturday night in August 1956 at a Promenade Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, Malcom Sargent conducted a work by Tchaikovsky and then brought Eric on with a flourish to conduct his own Four Centuries Suite. The orchestra was tired after the demanding Tchaikovsky work and the difficult violin solo was fluffed. The audience laughed when the tenor saxophone came in, and laughed again when the trumpet played 'into the hat'. At the end though, the audience stood on their feet cheering and yelling while Eric took two calls.

In defiance of BBC rules - the concert was being broadcast - Eric took up his baton and conducted the fourth movement again. This time the orchestra produced a perfect performance and was greeted by an even greater deafening uproar. Eric took two more calls and then said: 'Now, I'm going home and so must you.' The audience cheered him out of sight. Eric Coates died of a stroke aged 71 on December 21, 1957, at the Royal West Sussex Hospital. Within hours the BBC was announcing throughout the world the death of 'the uncrowned king of light music.' The funeral took place on Christmas Eve at the Golders Green Crematorium where the service was attended by some of the country's leading musicians. For almost fifty years Eric Coates had brought pleasure to millions with his gay lilting tunes, bright orchestrations and witty musical portraiture. Sir Malcom Sargent: 'Here we had a professional musician who did his own orchestrations, who was an expert, who had that rare quality, a melodic gift, which hardly exists in modern music.

He was a charming and most lovable person.' Sir Adrian Boult: 'He was a master of charm and gentle beauty in music, while at the same time able to compose rousing marches. He has given a great deal of pleasure to a great number of people, the author of the kind of music that makes people happy.' SoundStage! Hi-Fi | SoundStageHiFi.com - The Truly Definitive Eric Coates SoundStage! Hi-Fi | SoundStageHiFi.com Share page to other media g+ Written by Richard Freed Richard Freed Category: Richard Freed's "Keepers" Richard Freed's "Keepers" Created: 01 November 2013 01 November 2013 Nimbus -- on its new companion label Nimbus Alliance -- has brought out something as grandly appreciated as it was totally unexpected, under the heading “The Definitive Eric Coates,” a set of seven CDs (NI 6231) comprising all the recordings Coates made of his own music, in a generous and resourceful presentation that fully justifies the adjective affixed to it.

Eric Coates (1886-1957), whose name used to be much more familiar to American listeners than it is today, was an outstanding composer of a very distinctive kind of what may be conveniently classified as “light concert music,” the sort of thing that has rather disappeared from our concert life, as subscription programs have taken a more exclusively serious turn and the “pop concert” has taken a similarly counterproductive one in the opposite direction. His podium activity was more or less limited to authoritative performances and recordings of his own distinctive, well-crafted works, and Nimbus has given us all of those he is known to have made, together with an assortment, on the final disc, of “Contemporary Recordings by Other Conductors.” This is something that will be gratefully welcomed by many old-time collectors, and could be a source of delightful discoveries for later generations of listeners. Coates, a native of Nottinghamshire, completed his musical training in London and began his career there as a violist, but in 1919 he gave up the viola in favor of full-time attention to composing.

He understood the orchestral idiom as an insider, having performed in orchestras under Sir Henry Wood (who made him principal viola in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra and gave the premiere of one of his compositions) and Sir Thomas Beecham, and found his distinctive style in creating music that was light in character yet by no means lacking in substance. For the most part he found inspiration for his frankly descriptive or evocative pieces in city life, country scenes, fairy tales and legends, and clear-eyed yet heartfelt patriotic pride. Pretentiousness in any form was simply not his style, and realistic self-awareness combined with unfailing taste and sense of proportion to keep him from attempting the grand epic or anything resembling monumentalism or bluster. He preferred professionalism and directness. His music is a true reflection of his own personality and his sound musicianship, and even now it identifies itself instantly and unmistakably as his and no one else’s. While there is an essential warmth of heart in Coates’s works that makes it fitting to compare them with those of the Viennese Strausses, his music is without exception a clear, unveiled representation of his own time, his own setting, and his own personality.

Photographs of him suggest an urbane, debonair figure, and these qualities are present in his compositions in a way that balances ideally, rather than to any degree conflicting with, that unfeigned warmheartedness. His phantasy (that’s the spelling he preferred) The Three Bears was composed at the request of his young son, and the lively motto tune fits “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” -- just as the more expansive phantasy Cinderella is graced with a motif that clearly fits the heroine’s name, as well as a phantastic march episode, and a waltz that’s almost as fetching. (That march tune appears to have been subsequently adapted and expanded as Oxford Street, the march that opens the suite London Again, the follow-up to the celebrated London Suite whose concluding movement is the famous march Knightsbridge.) Knightsbridge and the postwar march The Dam Busters are the best-known of Coates’s numerous marches, and indeed rank among the finest marches composed in the 20th century.

Apart from the march movements in his various suites Coates composed free-standing ones with such titles as London Bridge, Calling All Workers, London Calling, Television March, The Eighth Army, and Salute the Soldier (the last two with fanfares composed specifically to precede them). Some, as their titles indicate, were created as morale-boosters during World War II; some are simply expressions of good-hearted bonhomie; all show a complete mastery of this durable form, by a composer who managed to define it on his own terms. Coates did not compose quite as many waltzes as he did marches, but he achieved considerable distinction in this form as well. There are waltzes in his ballet scores and in his concert suites, and, again, some that are self-standing. All are eminently danceable, and it happens that Coates, like Mozart before him, was a man who loved to dance. He and his wife enjoyed dancing to the music of London’s celebrated dance bands -- several of whose leaders returned the favor by taking up his compositions, and sometimes inviting him to conduct them.

Moreover, like the Viennese Waltz King himself, who was a friend of Brahms and respected by Wagner, Coates was admired by some of the greatest of his “serious” musical contemporaries: Sir Edward Elgar not only complimented him on his compositions, but left a standing order with EMI for delivery of every recording Coates made of his own music, as soon as it became available. “Definitive,” as already noted, is a good label for this set. The excellent notes, by Coates’s biographer Michael Payne, mention that, “Along with the likes of Edward Elgar, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Albert Ketèlbey, Eric Coates was one of the first composers to have left a significant recorded legacy.

His ascent to popularity as a composer ran concurrently with the surge of interest in the gramophone and the enormous boost it received following the adoption of electrical recording in 1925.” Apart from the obvious difference in genre, Coates is set apart from the heavyweights mentioned here, in that (a) his music has had far less attention, both live and in recordings, since his death, and (b), in conspicuous contradistinction to recordings of Strauss, Stravinsky, et al., by the greatest conductors active in their own time and since, hardly any subsequent conductor of Coates’s music achieved a conviction or authority that came anywhere near the composer’s own. Most of Coates’s recordings were made on one or another of EMI’s labels -- mainly English Columbia and His Master’s Voice, two or three with Parlophone -- though there were some for Decca and for Pye. The orchestras were chiefly the London Philharmonic and secondarily the London Symphony Orchestra, both of which appeared pseudonymously for some time as simply “Symphony Orchestra” or “Concert Orchestra.” He recorded four of his suites with the New Symphony Orchestra for Decca.

Although his last recordings were made as late as August 1957, none seems to have been made in stereo. All the recordings on the final disc were made without Coates’s participation but during his lifetime, and nearly all of them are titles Coates himself never recorded. Exceptions are the sung version of Bird Songs at Eventide (Coates’s own recording of which is without the sung text); the suite Joyous Youth (which Coates did record, but before the electrical process replaced the old acoustical horn); the phantasy The Selfish Giant (Coates’s own recording of which was with Jack Hylton’s dance band), and a band recording of the march The Dam Busters (which is superior to Coates’s contemporaneous orchestral recording, and was far more significant in establishing the work’s position among his compositions). Coates’s waltzes are quite different from those of the Strauss family: they are shorter, less elaborate, and, one might say, simply reflect their own time and place.

He labeled them all with the French term, valse, and in a stylistic sense they might be regarded as being more French than Viennese -- though what one really notices is that they are still more in the individual style of Eric Coates. It is a valse that represents the 19th century in his suite The Four Centuries. Another, Mayfair, is the concluding movement of the suite London Again. Among the freestanding ones are such titles as Dancing Nights and Footlights, and there is a waltz episode in Cinderella. The most celebrated of his waltzes (though really by no means the best) is the one he designated a “valse serenade” when he composed it, in 1930, under the title By the Sleepy Lagoon. Although the music definitely fits the exotic image conjured up in that title, Coates’s actual inspiration was the view from his seaside cottage at Selsey, in West Sussex. That spot now is marked by a plaque identifying it as the inspiration for the piece, but By the Sleepy Lagoon did not attract much attention in its first ten years, even though Coates recorded it in 1935.

It was early in 1940 that Jack Lawrence, an American writer of texts for popular songs, happened to see the score of the piano arrangement, and had an inspiration of his own, which was to change the status of the piece dramatically When Lawrence took his text to the New York office of Coates’s British publisher, he was dismissed with the remark that it was unauthorized and the composer would only be displeased, if not downright offended. Lawrence was stubborn enough, however, to find Coates’s personal address and send his proposed text to him -- and the composer was absolutely delighted with it. “You have set the words to my music so cleverly,” he wrote to Lawrence, “that one would never suspect that the music had been written first!” At his suggestion, the song version was promptly published, listing himself and Jack Lawrence as its collaborative creators: its success was instantaneous, enormous, and remarkably enduring. Harry James and his band were the first to record Sleepy Lagoon (as the song version was titled), to be followed quickly by Xavier Cugat, Dinah Shore, Fred Waring, Glenn Miller, David Rose, and many others.

Virtually every pop singer and bandleader performed it, not only in the US but everywhere. In 1942 the Harry James recording was on the Billboard list of best-selling records for 18 weeks, and in first place for part of that time. In the same year, the original work, with the sound of seagulls added, became the theme music for the long-running (but then brand-new) BBC Radio program Desert Island Discs. A memorable recording by the Platters was issued in 1960, and as recently as last year a new arrangement of the original piece became the theme music for the “Aquanura,” the fountain spectacle of the Dutch theme park Efteling. Sleepy Lagoon was not the first instance of Coates’s publisher’s making a poor judgment, or of the work involved becoming the signature tune for a new and successful BBC Radio show. In large part, Michael Payne's altogether fascinating notes show recording sessions as significant markers in an absorbing mini-biography, and none matched the importance of the first recording of the London Suite (a set of three movements representing specific districts of the city and given the subtitle “London Every Day”).

When Coates composed that work, in 1932, his publisher only heaped criticism on it, and particularly on its concluding march, advising that putting it in print would be an unjustifiable expense. Coates pitched the new suite to Arthur Brooks, the recording manager for EMI’s Columbia label, but when Mr. Brooks heard the broadcast premiere he told Coates flat out that he didn’t care for the suite, either. Finally, though, since Coates had a recording session scheduled for March 1933, Brooks agreed to allow him to record the London Suite if the works already scheduled left time for it (offering this gesture only because he was confident there would not be time). Even then, however, the publisher had to OK the recording, and still didn’t have much enthusiasm for the music. The suggestion was made that since the middle movement, Westminster, was the most substantial part of the work (by what earthly form of judgment?), both the concluding march and the opening tarantelle Covent Garden would be abridged, and only Westminster be recorded uncut, so the recording would fit on a single 12" 78rpm disc.

At the actual session, on March 7, 1933, Coates had the orchestra so well in hand that they did finish the scheduled material early, leaving just enough time to record the suite -- but, in defiance of the publisher’s ruling, with the first two movements mercilessly cut, and the Knightsbridge March taken down in full. Even then, there were snags, and it was only with the enthusiastic agreement of the musicians that the session went into a very short unpaid overtime to complete the recording -- which proved to be a great deal more than merely successful. Just after that recording was issued, in the fall of the same year, the BBC introduced a new show made up of interviews and comments of entertainers and other popular figures, called In Town Tonight. On November 18, the day of the initial program, it was noticed with some alarm that no one involved with the new program had selected music that would introduce and identify it. A frantic search for recordings of music with the word London in the title led to Coates’s new disc of his London Suite, and the Knightsbridge March was put on the air just in time.

It proved to be the most striking feature of the program, provoking more than 20,000 inquiries about what it was and whether a recording was available. In short order, that 78 became the best-selling item ever issued on the Columbia label; both the record company and the publisher were hard put to keep up with demand, and Coates’s reputation was firmly established. From that point on, there would be no more questions about whether a work of his was fit to be published or recorded, but only about how quickly he could turn out more bestsellers. Both the Knightsbridge March and By the Sleepy Lagoon were followed up by at least one more Coates work chosen by the BBC as signature tune for a popular radio program. The march Calling All Workers, composed in 1940, was promptly pressed into wartime service as theme music for Music While You Work, a show broadcast as frequently as three times a day during World War II.

(It might be noted also that Halcyon Days, the opening movement of Coates’s suite The Three Elizabeths, served as theme music for the television series The Forsyte Saga.) In any event, as events faded into history, and musical tastes changed over time, the magic of Knightsbridge has not faded. If any music Coates left us may be regarded as “timeless,” this is surely it. The piece has everything: fine tunes, a clear personality of its own, and, by no means incidentally, some of the most imaginative scoring to go into any example of its genre. In terms of sheer musical inventiveness, this march shows Coates at a level of inventiveness which he never surpassed. First of all, there is that sense of occasion invoked by the portentous opening gesture. Following the brief introduction of both of the contrasting themes, the first one establishes an air of jaunty vitality and then fanfares make way for a more sinuous statement of the second theme, which serves as “trio” for the piece. Neither of these infectious tunes is laden with any ceremonial gesture: both are characterized by the confidence and spontaneity that mark all of Coates’s best inventions.

In this instance, the first theme might be said to reflect the vigor of the city’s everyday life, while the second, on a somewhat more personal level, might suggest something like the title of the middle movement of Coates’s suite The Three Men, which he called The Man About Town -- but both themes take on unimagined expansions of their original character before the piece is over, and there is a marvelous surprise (even after countless hearings) in the middle of the piece. Following a reprise of the first theme there are more elaborate fanfares than before, leading to a single well-placed thwack on the bass drum, and then one of the most remarkable episodes in any of Coates’s works: when the trio comes round for the second time it is with an emphatic ostinato punctuation from the brass, bringing an effect of crisp syncopation against the fluid statement of the second theme. To some listeners, this unexpected effect calls up the image of a banjo, while to others it suggests a hurdy-gurdy or barrel organ. Regardless of any suggested imagery, or the absence thereof, this is a masterstroke -- but one that has been astoundingly overlooked by a great many conductors and recording producers.

The point of this imaginative stroke is that both elements have to be heard: neither the brass nor the rest of the orchestra can be permitted to overwhelm the other. Coates himself, in that edge-of-their-seats, now-or-never premiere recording in 1933, showed exactly how he wanted this to go, but even he, in his four subsequent recordings of the piece (two more as part of the London Suite on LP and without cuts in the first two movements), and two more on its own (but one of these with a substantial cut), the effect is rather muffled, and in the last three the bass drum thwack is either omitted or simply inaudible. Among recordings of the great march by other conductors -- even Morton Gould and Frederick Fennell, both of whom would have been expected to understand what Coates intended -- the brass is shoved way, way to the back and the effect is lost.

Malcolm Nabarro, conducting his East of England Orchestra in the entire London Suite and other Coates works on an ASV CD issued in 1991 (with the backing of Coates’s devoted son Austin and sympathetic production under Michael Woolcock), made a noble effort, but the one fully realized account -- and, considering both performance and sound quality, the most completely satisfying recording ever made of the piece -- came out a couple of decades earlier, also as part of the entire London Suite: the conductor was James Walker, the orchestra was the Royal Philharmonic, and the ideally focused, wide-open recording was made for Reader’s Digest, as part of a collection of miscellaneous works involving various conductors, under the heading “Light Classical Gold.” James Walker is remembered primarily as a recording producer -- he is credited with many of the great Ansermet recordings of the 1950s and ‘60s, and many of Decca’s other showpieces -- and the two sectors of his career must have equipped him exceptionally well for understanding both what the composer intended and how to realize those expectations in a recording.

It is simply not possible to overpraise what he achieved on Coates’s behalf in his account of the London Suite, and it is pointless to compare it with any recording that preceded or followed it. It may be had as a download from Amazon.com for only $2.67 (89 cents for each of the suite’s three movements), and I cannot think of a better bargain in the entire realm of recorded music. But Coates’s own recording remains important and enjoyable in its own right, not only because of its importance in establishing his status as a composer, but for the enduring pleasure it continues to provide in that celebrated premiere version. Understandably enough, Coates made a greater number of recordings of the Knightsbridge March, either by itself or as the finale of the London Suite, than any of his other works, and all of them are included in the Nimbus set, but none is a match for the first one. The Dam Busters, the one march that might be regarded as being in the same class as Knightsbridge, was recorded only once by Coates himself -- in 1955, when the piece was new.

It is definitely not one of his better recordings, as it was cut awkwardly to fit on a 10” 78 for Pye-Nixa, a label barely represented in his discography, and it was not issued in the US. It is in the Nimbus set, but so is another recording of the piece, the one made for EMI in the same year by the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, conducted by Wing Commander A.E. Sims. It too was cut, but more judiciously, and it was enormously popular: its sales simply overwhelmed those of Coates’s own recording. It appears at the very end of the Nimbus set, as the last track on the disc made up of recordings by Coates’s contemporaries -- such conductors as Joseph Lewis, Charles Williams, Clarence Raybould, Sidney Torch and Robert Farnon -- and some chamber music ensembles. When it comes to recordings of The Dam Busters, the piece belongs, perhaps in perpetuity, to Sir Adrian Boult, who recorded several of Coates’s works. He recorded this one at least three times, and chose it for his own 80th-birthday concert.

His 1968 recording of it, with the London Philharmonic for American Columbia, is his best; it is not included here, as all the recordings that are were made during Coates’s own lifetime (a few going back to pre-electrical days), but it circulated fairly recently as part of a budget-priced collection of Great Marches on Sony SBK 63052, and a 1973 remake, again with the LPO and nearly as persuasive, is included in Boult’s Coates collection on Lyrita SRCD.246. Boult understood, as too few of today’s musicians do, but which the great ones of the past did, that “light music” simply cannot be sight-read. It is specifically because it is less substantial than a Beethoven symphony that it must be at least as meticulously prepared.

Ask an actor or a stage director, and you will be assured that comedy requires a good deal more preparation and attention to detail than straight drama: it’s rather the same with “light music.” The temptation to ramble in discussing this material is virtually irresistible, but sooner or later it becomes necessary to get back to the issue at hand, and in this case to give an enthusiastic recommendation to “The Definitive Eric Coates.” Nimbus has issued the seven CDs in two multi-disc jewel cases: one contains three CDs and Michael Payne’s 25-page detailed biographical essay, already mentioned, which was the source of much of the information given here. There is a great deal of interesting, sometimes really fascinating detail packed into those pages, and not a single phrase that might be dismissed as superfluous. A separate booklet gives the track lists for the seven discs, with fastidious discographical details for each item and a note by Alan Bunting, who compiled, restored and remastered the recordings, explaining his approach in laying out the respective CDs. By no means incidentally, his transfers strike me as being at least the equals of any other restorations of this material I’ve heard.

Coates’s early recording of his London and London Again suites, and of Cinderella and the rest of his works, were by no means “sonic showpieces,” even for their time, but they were clear enough to register that marvelous episode in Knightsbridge, and to enable all the composer’s similar subtleties and grand gestures to register their full effect. Over the years since the appearance of the CD, virtually all of Coates’s own recordings have been revived in large or small assortments, but Nimbus’s new collection is the first truly complete one -- as well as the most scrupulously and delightfully annotated one -- and that is quite a substantial difference. Now, if only someone would give us new recordings of Cinderella and London Again to match what James Walker achieved for the London Suite . . . . . .

Richard Freed RADIO WIRELESS THEME MUSIC INFO : slw : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive RADIO WIRELESS THEME MUSIC INFO Item Preview Share or Embed this Item EMBED <iframe src="" width="560" height="384" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe> EMBED (for wordpress.com hosted blogs) [archiveorg RADIOWIRELESSTHEMEMUSIC width=560 height=384 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] This information piece accompanies the upload entitled, RADIO WIRELESS THEME MUSIC RADIO/WIRELESS THEME MUSIC I EXPLAINED Theme music was created to give identity and mood to a particular Radio show or Wireless programme. Easily recognized being repeated before and after each broadcast they quIckly became ingrained into listeners subconsciousnesses. II RADIO/WIRELESS: THE GOLDEN AGE, AND TODAY During the Golden Age of Radio/Wireless, great care was given to the orchestration of these pieces. In The United States and to a certain extent The United Kingdom, that era has long passed.

In the United States, transcriptions of shows were made by the major networks only to prove that a commercial was transmitted and most often destroyed. Audio tape replaced the fragile transcription discs. Due to financial considerations, they were wiped, reused over and over again. By the 1950's the availability of less expensive home recording devices made it possible for almost anyone to preserve their favorites. Collectors of OTR/W, Old Time Radio/Wireless shared, traded and sold copies that they had made. In our Digital Age, fans of Old Time Radio/Wireless, are able to listen at their leisure, via The Internet reliving those exciting days of yesteryear! Radio 7 and now, Radio 4 Extra rebroadcast programmes from the BBC archives. Sit back, shut your eyes, open your ears, and listen to see how many of the Themes you remember! III HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY UNITED KINGDOM WIRELESS THEMES THE ARCHERS "Barwick Green" is the theme music to the long-running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers.

It is a "maypole dance" from the suite My Native Heath, written in 1924 by the Yorkshire composer Arthur Wood, and named after Barwick-in-Elmet in Yorkshire's West Riding. The familiar opening 7 notes are echoed in the pizzicato in Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, written in 1934. The recording used between 1950 and the 1990s was played by Sidney Torch and his orchestra. Sidney Torch recorded a commercial release of "Barwick Green" in the 1950s, but it was not used on The Archers itself. wiki The familiar jingle 'dum di dum di dum di dum...' was relegated into the vaults of history. After several decades, the popular theme tune was refreshed and updated. == DESERT ISLAND DISCS Desert Island Discs was created by Roy Plomley in 1942. Plomley originally wanted the sounds of "surf breaking on a shore and the cries of sea birds" to open and close each programme. But Leslie Prowne, the head of popular record programmes at the BBC, was concerned that it lacked definition and insisted that music would also be used.

Plomley and the series' producer Frederic Piffard selected "By the Sleepy Lagoon", composed by Eric Coates (who appeared on the show in 1951). The tune has been used since the first transmission in 1942. The sound of herring gulls has accompanied the music except for a period of time in 1964 when tropical bird sounds were used. The format is simple: a guest is invited by Kirsty Young to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. wiki == THE LATE SHIPPING FORECAST "Sailing By" is a short piece of light music composed by Ronald Binge in 1963. A slow waltz, the piece uses a repetitive ABABC structure and features a distinctive rising and falling woodwind arpeggio. "Sailing By" is played every night on BBC Radio 4 at around 00:45hrs before the late Shipping Forecast. Its tune is repetitive, assisting in its role of serving as a signal for sailors tuning in to be able to easily identify the radio station.

It also functions as a buffer — depending on when the final programme before closedown finishes, Sailing By (or part of it) is played as a "filler" as the shipping forecast starts at 00:48hrs precisely. wiki Stormy future for BBC Radio 4's shipping forecast? "It has been a British institution for years, but it looks as though the shipping forecast's days may be numbered. Peter Jefferson, who read the forecast for 40 years, has warned that the famous BBC Radio 4 broadcast may face stormy seas ahead. Speaking at the Radio Times Festival at Hampton Court, he highlighted the plight of the long-range mast at Droitwich Transmitting Station in Worcestershire, saying: "It's very old and it's falling over ... its days are numbered, perhaps." As FM radio can only reach around 12 miles (19km) from the coast, this would put the shipping forecast - which currently reaches as far as south-east Iceland on long-wave radio - in peril. The transmitter is old and expensive to maintain and, as radio goes digital, Mr Jefferson warned that the service - dating back to 1911 - may be under threat in the future. . .

." .bt.com What if they failed to broadcast the programme!?! It happened in 2014... Newspaper headlines read: BBC fails to air Shipping Forecast for first time in more than 90 years Nation's morning thrown into chaos when Radio 4 accidentally fails to broadcast shipping forecast for the first time in history: #ixzz47ExOaS1G Radio 4 accidently skips Shipping Forecast leading to mild confusion, apocalypse fears Country's morning routine thrown into disarray as BBC Radio 4 forgets to air Shipping Forecast #ixzz47FrOj1AB == BBC WORLD SERVICE 'Lilliburlero', is generally considered to be the signature tune of BBC World Service. Preceded by the announcement "This is London", it is played on the BBC World Service before the five-minute World News bulletins. The current version was arranged by David Arnold, who has composed most of the new themes for the World Service, and has been recorded in digital format to replace the previous version, which was in use for over 30 years. Included here is an audio compilation I created from several sources.

== THE BBC RADIO 4 UK THEME An orchestral arrangement of traditional British airs compiled by Fritz Spiegl and arranged by Manfred Arlan. It was played every morning on BBC Radio 4 between 23 November 1978 and 23 April 2006. The piece was used as the signature theme to introduce the daily beginning of Radio 4's broadcasting following the early morning handover from the BBC World Service. The theme was immediately followed by the Shipping Forecast. In 2006, the decision by Mark Damazer (Controller of Radio 4 at the time) to drop the Radio 4 UK Theme to make way for a "pacy news briefing" caused much controversy in the United Kingdom, including extensive discussion in the British media and even in Parliament. wiki ==30===slw 4/16 The Life and Music of Eric Coates free ebook download The Life and Music of Eric Coates free ebook download Views: 159 Description: Click to see full description Eric Coates (1886-1957) is perhaps the most familiar name associated with British light music. Sir Charles Groves said that 'his music crackled with enthusiasm and vitality.

He could write tunes and clothe them in the most attractive musical colours'. Coates won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, and from 1912 to 1919 he was principal viola of the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. He also played under such conductors as Elgar, Delius, Richard Strauss, Debussy, and Beecham. It was, however, as a composer of orchestral music that he found his greatest success. Beginning with the Miniature Suite, written for the 1911 Promenade Concerts, he forged an enviable reputation as a composer. By the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular and highest-paid British composers, with a string of popular works flowing from his pen. Coates' music has become indelibly entwined with such popular radio programmes as the BBC's "In Town Tonight", which was introduced by the 'Knightsbridge' March and "Desert Island Discs" whose signature tune for the past forty years has been "By the Sleepy Lagoon". Perhaps his most memorable work was his march for the "Dam Busters" film.

Michael Payne traces the changing fortunes of the career of the man who composed some of Britain's best-known music. In many ways, Coates' story is the story of British light music, and Payne's study offers a fascinating insight into the heyday and decline of the British light music tradition. Links Table The Life and Music of Eric Coates eBook by Michael Payne - 9781317025627 | Kobo Show more Show less Eric Coates (1886-1957) is perhaps the most familiar name associated with British light music. Sir Charles Groves said that 'his music crackled with enthusiasm and vitality. He could write tunes and clothe them in the most attractive musical colours'. Coates won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, and from 1912 to 1919 he was principal viola of the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. He also played under such conductors as Elgar, Delius, Richard Strauss, Debussy, and Beecham. It was, however, as a composer of orchestral music that he found his greatest success.

Beginning with the Miniature Suite, written for the 1911 Promenade Concerts, he forged an enviable reputation as a composer. By the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular and highest-paid British composers, with a string of popular works flowing from his pen. Coates' music has become indelibly entwined with such popular radio programmes as the BBC's In Town Tonight, which was introduced by the 'Knightsbridge' March and Desert Island Discs whose signature tune for the past forty years has been By the Sleepy Lagoon. Perhaps his most memorable work was his march for the Dam Busters film. Michael Payne traces the changing fortunes of the career of the man who composed some of Britain's best-known music. In many ways, Coates' story is the story of British light music, and Payne's study offers a fascinating insight into the heyday and decline of the British light music tradition. Buy the eBook Robert Farnon Society - Eric Coates Eric Coates Comment It was the sound of bustling Piccadilly Circus at the heart of Thirties’ London.

Motor cars honked their horns, music played, and the voice of a flower-seller could be heard repeating her familiar street cry: "Violets, luvly sweet violets!" followed by a newsboy calling "In Town Tonight! In Town Tonight!" Then, above all the noise, a policeman’s voice suddenly shouted "Stop!", and, as if by magic, the traffic was brought to an immediate standstill. After a short pause, having captured everybody’s attention, the voice of authority continued: "Once again we silence the mighty roar of London’s traffic to bring to the microphone some of the interesting people who are In Town Tonight!" That was the dramatic, attention-grabbing introduction to a BBC radio programme which, for nearly 30 years, was a national institution. Broadcast at 7.30 on Saturday evenings, "In Town Tonight" featured interesting interviews with celebrities from the world of stage, screen and music, but also, more unusually, with a colourful gallery of curious and quirky individuals.

Over the years, these included tramps, gypsies, a lady chimney sweep, and larger-than-life characters such as the "Chocolate Lady of Kensington Gardens", the "Toffee Apple Queen of Roman Road", and famous racing tipster Prince Monolulu. The programme was also loved by millions of listeners because of its catchy signature tune. Indeed, when "In Town Tonight" went on air for the first time on 18th November, 1933, more than 20,000 people wrote to the BBC asking for the title of the tune and the name of its composer. In order to deal with such an avalanche of mail, the hard-pressed BBC staff had to have special slips of paper printed. These informed listeners that the piece of music was called the Knightsbridge March and the name of its composer was Eric Coates. Although largely unknown to the people of England when his magnificent Knightsbridge March burst on the scene, since then there can be few people in this country who haven’t been touched in some way by the music of Eric Coates. Who could forget the stirring Dam Busters March used to accompany the exciting 1954 film which depicted one of the great exploits of the Second World War?

How many thousands set to with a will to the strains of Calling All Workers, which the BBC adopted during the war as its inspiring signature tune to "Music While You Work"? As a child, you might have listened in to the Overseas Children’s Programme for which Coates wrote the march London Calling as a theme tune. In fact it is hard to imagine how the BBC could have managed without Eric Coates. Completed at very short notice in 1946, the Television March was written for the re-opening of BBC Television after the war and was the first music to be heard over the new service. In similar vein was his jaunty Music Everywhere, a piece specially commissioned for television in 1949. The long-running Radio 4 programme, "Desert Island Discs", also owes its theme tune, By the Sleepy Lagoon, to Eric Coates. Although these are probably the best-known of Eric Coates’s compositions, he wrote many more memorable pieces in a variety of styles. Today he is rightly regarded as "England’s Master of Light Music".

Eric Francis Harrison Coates was born in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, on 27th August, 1886, the youngest of five children of the local doctor, William Harrison Coates, who was held in high regard by the mainly mining community. His mother, Mary Jane Gwyn Blower, came from Wales originally and was a talented singer and pianist. Eric remembered her as the kindest mother any boy could wish for. Eric Coates had a happy childhood. His father was a keen amateur photographer and would often take Eric with him on expeditions to local places of interest such as Southwell with its splendid Minster. The boy’s love of music became apparent at an early age. After hearing music on a gramophone he began composing his own tunes, and by the time he was seven years old he was studying the violin and arranging music. When he was 12 he began being taught in Nottingham by George Ellenberger, who had himself been a pupil of the great virtuoso Joseph Joachim. He progressed well and was soon receiving lessons in harmony from the respected teacher, Dr. Ralph Horner, and playing the viola in local orchestras.

As a break from his musical activities Eric liked to explore the Trent Valley on his bicycle. His parents had intended Eric to pursue a career in banking, but in 1906 reluctantly allowed him to take up a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. Here his talents were moulded by Lionel Tertis, an outstanding exponent of the viola. He also came under the influence of the composer Frederick Corder and the grand old man of Scottish orchestral music, Sir Alexander Mackenzie. The days at the Royal Academy were to mark a turning point for the young musician. In fact, so confident was Mackenzie in the young man’s future that he said: "Ye’ll start as a viola player, but ye’ll end up a composer!" How true that prophecy proved to be! While still a student, Coates toured South Africa as a viola player in the Hambourg String Quartet. He also gained tremendous practical experience through the many evenings he spent playing in London theatres. Eric Coates had to fight against poor health: the weak chest he had suffered as a child, and neuritis in his left arm which was aggravated by his viola playing.

He longed for the day when he could give up performing for good and concentrate on composing and arranging. In his entertaining autobiography, Suite in Four Movements (Heinemann, 1953), Coates recounted how he plucked up the courage to write to Frederic E. Weatherly, asking the great lawyer and lyric writer if he had any words that an unknown composer might use. Weatherly invited the young man to visit him at his London home, and Coates wrote a vivid description of their meeting: "As I sat by his side listening to him read his latest verses, I felt as if I might have been writing music for years, for he did not ask me what I had done but merely enquired as to what kind of lyric I wanted. It appeared that he always composed his poems to a tune or rhythm of his own, and when reading his verses to you he would adopt a listening attitude and croon his lines in the most extraordinary manner. If the words were particularly moving he would frequently break down with emotion and have to wait until he could compose himself sufficiently to continue.

His knack of painting pictures with his poems ("word-pictures", he called them) was uncanny, for with a few delightfully chosen words he could conjure up a scene which it would have taken anyone else a whole page to describe..." Eric came away with the words of a West Country song in his pocket entitled Stonecracker John. On his way home, bumping along on the top deck of a horse-bus, a tune came into his head which he managed to scribble down. A few days later, he played it to Arthur Boosey, owner of the famous firm of music publishers. Although Stonecracker John was not published right away, when it did appear a year later in 1909 and was sung with such great effect by the famous bass, Harry Dearth, copies of the sheet music sold in their thousands. It was Eric Coates’s first great song writing success and marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship and fruitful musical collaboration with Fred E. Weatherly. Highly recommended by the Royal Academy, in 1910 at the age of just 23, Coates obtained a position as sub-principal, then principal, of the viola section of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra.

In those days The Queen’s Hall was the equivalent, in terms of standing, to the modern Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. Its conductor was also a solid institution of London musical life: the great Sir Henry Wood, founder of the Proms. In the seven years that followed his appointment, Coates and his fellow orchestral musicians played under the greatest composers of the day. The Queen’s Hall programmes read like a roll-call of honour, with names such as Richard Strauss, Sir Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst. Coates was exposed to some of the greatest works of the entire repertoire, and the richness of this music undoubtedly laid the foundation for the stream of composition that would soon flow from his pen. Occasionally, as light relief and to supplement his income, he played in London theatre orchestras, enjoying the tuneful wit of Gilbert and Sullivan. Following the success of Stonecracker John, Coates’s song writing began to take off and in 1911 hisMiniature Suite received the rare honour of a Proms encore.

That year was important to Eric Coates for something else which had nothing to do with music: he met and fell instantly, head-over-heels in love with a pretty young student called Phyllis Black. It was a whirlwind romance which, despite the initial opposition of her parents (she was only 17, he was 24 and a struggling musician), resulted in their wedding on 3rd February, 1913. Their life together was blissfully happy, and although, in the early days, the young couple struggled to make ends meet, matters improved when Phyllis became a successful actress and could supplement Eric’s irregular income. When the First World War broke out, Eric was declared unfit for military service, so the couple continued to live in London. It was always a struggle to get his music performed and heard but he was helped enormously in this by the formation, in 1916, of the New Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra under the baton of Alick Maclean. In 1919 Eric Coates finally gave up playing, although he often conducted his own works.

In 1920 his suite, Summer Days (with its well-loved last movement, At the Dance) received its first performance, which did much to enhance his reputation. Two years later, the lively overture The Merrymakersarrived on the concert scene. Coates wrote The Three Bears fantasy in 1926 for the fourth birthday of his only child, Austin. Sir Edward Elgar was an early admirer of Coates, placing a standing order with a record shop in Oxford Street for every new Coates recording. In contrast, the music press largely ignored his work and he was treated shabbily by those who believed light music was inferior to what they considered "serious" work. Although Eric Coates loved the countryside, and during his life owned two cottages by the sea — at Selsey and Sidlesham in Sussex — he found it easier to compose amidst the bustle and intensity of London. He was fascinated by the scenery, customs and everyday life of London, and there was nothing more musically inspiring for him than the sight of a red London bus rolling proudly through the packed streets of England’s capital. The city was then the heart of the Empire.

Big Ben sounded above London town, the BBC broadcast to the world, and the Thames was alive with shops, barges and the wealth of nations. Coates wrote this spirit of London into The London Suite, with each movement describing some part of the metropolis. The first movement conjures up a day in the life of Covent Garden market, with a bustling tarantella, including the traditional vendors’ call "Cherry ripe, cherry ripe", once heard in the streets of the capital. The middle movement is a flowing melody that creates the impression ofWestminster in the moonlight. However, as described earlier, it was the third movement that made the composer’s name: the grand Knightsbridge March. Coates had walked around London, composing this piece in his head. Before long the Knightsbridge March was being played everywhere and by everyone: orchestras, brass bands and dance bands added it to their repertoires; you could even hear it being played on barrel organs and mechanical pianos in the street.

In fact so well known did the theme tune to "In Town Tonight" become, it was reported that a passenger on the London Underground, unable to remember the name of the station he wanted to get to, but aware of its association with this popular piece of music, solved his problem by humming the first few notes of the march to a booking- clerk. Without a moment’s hesitation, the clerk gave him a smile of recognition — and handed him a ticket for Knightsbridge! There was no end to the stream of popular music produced by Sir Henry Wood’s one-time lead viola. The monarchy was celebrated in The Three Elizabeths Suite, complete with a swash-buckling evocation of the heroism of Drake and Raleigh. This was written during bombing raids in 1941 after Coates received a letter from the Reverend Arthur L. Hall, vicar of Barnes, suggesting that he should write a suite based on the Three Elizabeths of English royalty: Elizabeth Tudor, Elizabeth of Glamis (now our Queen Mother) and Princess Elizabeth (our present Queen). Eric and Phyllis remained in London throughout most of the Second World War.

They loved the night-life of the West End and spent many enjoyable hours dancing to the music of Carroll Gibbons at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. In 1940, Phyllis asked her husband to compose a march to which she and her fellow workers could operate their sewing machines as they made hospital supplies for the Red Cross. The result wasCalling All Workers which the BBC chose as the signature tune to their radio programme, "Music While You Work". This stirring march was played thousands of times during the war years, and it is easy to imagine the scene in a great munitions factory somewhere in England: workers tirelessly churning out the guns, bombs and instruments that would lead the nation to victory as the factory wireless blasts out Eric Coates’s high-spirited accompaniment. Coates was a craftsman who imbued his music with a personality of its own, with melodic invention, gaiety and charm and with true English character. He worked with great method and purpose, arranging all his own music and building up a vast library of orchestral suites and songs.

People remember him as a smart, very tidy man, unable to start work until he had donned his best tweed jacket and silk tie, the perfect English gentleman and quite different from many of his bohemian musical contemporaries. With the ending of the Second World War, Coates continued to write music with undiminished energy. His ability to produce music to order was demonstrated by the jaunty Television March he composed in 1946 to celebrate the new world of television. In 1954 he produced yet another masterpiece, a musical score for The Dam Busters, a British war film about Barnes Wallis and his "bouncing bombs" which starred Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd. Coates’s music complemented the action on screen perfectly. Apart from being a composer and conductor, Coates was very active in encouraging younger talent and was a founder member and director of the Performing Right Society. Eric Coates died at Chichester in Sussex on 21st December, 1957, aged 71, but his very English music lives on and is currently undergoing something of a revival.

It is popular in many countries, yet its roots lie in the heart of England — a land where bright young things would drive off into the country, their bullnose Morris cars carrying them From Meadow to Mayfair. It is a land in which the air was filled with the sound of military bands, country dances, and the voices of English people. As the world becomes a more complicated, more uncertain place, so the meaning of his music takes on a greater significance. Reproduced by kind permission of This England magazine. Read 10280 times

Question: Composed by Eric Coates, what is the title of the signature tune of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs?
Answer: BY THE SLEEPY LAGOON