Elizabethan Serenade is a light music composition by Ronald Binge. When it was first played in a 1951 radio broadcast by the Mantovani orchestra, it was titled "Andante Cantabile", although the original orchestral manuscript parts in Ronald Binge's own hand show the title "The Man in the Street" (possibly the title of an early television documentary). [1] The name was altered by the composer to reflect the post-war optimism of a "new Elizabethan Age" that began with the accession of Queen Elizabeth II in February 1952. [2]
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You may hear Elizabethan Serenade by Ronald Binge as performed by Annunzio Mantovani and the Mantovani Orchestra in 1971 Here on archive.org |
The piece won Binge an Ivor Novello award and also had chart success in Germany (recorded by the Günther Kallmann Choir in 1962) and South Africa. A version with lyrics by poet Christopher Hassall called "Where the Gentle Avon Flows" was released, and the work also had lyrics added in German, Czech, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Danish and French. The piece was used as the signature tune to Music in Miniature on the BBC Light Programme. [3]
In 1968, a reggae version titled "Elizabeth Reggay" by Boris Gardiner & the Love People was released. [4] It was re-issued as "Elizabethan Reggae" with a different b-side in 1969 (This version was initially erroneously credited to the track's producer, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires). [5]
In 1982, Louise Tucker recorded a different vocal version entitled "Only For You" on the album Midnight Blue .
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Ronald Binge was a British composer and arranger of light music. He arranged many of Mantovani's most famous pieces before composing his own music, which included Elizabethan Serenade and "Sailing By".
Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera. Some of his light operas, especially Merrie England, are still performed.
Victor August Herbert was an American composer, cellist and conductor of English and Irish ancestry and German training. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
Einojuhani Rautavaara was a Finnish composer of classical music. Among the most notable Finnish composers since Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), Rautavaara wrote a great number of works spanning various styles. These include eight symphonies, nine operas and twelve concertos, as well as numerous vocal and chamber works. Having written early works using 12-tone serial techniques, his later music may be described as neo-romantic and mystical. His major works include his first piano concerto (1969), Cantus Arcticus (1972) and his seventh symphony, Angel of Light (1994).
Serenade to Music is an orchestral concert work completed in 1938 by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, written as a tribute to conductor Sir Henry Wood. It features an orchestra and 16 vocal soloists, with lyrics adapted from the discussion about music and the music of the spheres from Act V, Scene I from the play The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Vaughan Williams later arranged the piece into versions for chorus and orchestra and solo violin and orchestra.
"Strangers in the Night" is a song composed by Bert Kaempfert with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. Kaempfert originally used it under the title "Beddy Bye" as part of the instrumental score for the movie A Man Could Get Killed. The song was made famous in 1966 by Frank Sinatra.
Boris Gardiner is a Jamaican singer, songwriter and bass guitarist. He was a member of several groups during the 1960s before recording as a solo artist and having hit singles with "Elizabethan Reggae", "I Wanna Wake Up with You" and "You're Everything to Me". One of his most notable credits is bass on the influential reggae song "Real Rock".
"Sailing By" is a short piece of light music composed by Ronald Binge in 1963, which is used before the late Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4. A slow waltz, the piece uses a repetitive ABCAB structure and a distinctive rising and falling woodwind arpeggio.
John Valmore Pearson was a British composer, orchestra leader and pianist. He led the Top of the Pops orchestra for sixteen years, wrote a catalogue of library music, and had many of his pieces used as the theme music to television series.
The BBC Radio 4 UK Theme is an orchestral arrangement of traditional British and Irish 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 Syncopated Clock" is a piece of light music by American composer Leroy Anderson, which has become a feature of the pops orchestra repertoire.
Sun Valley Serenade is a 1941 musical film directed by H. Bruce Humberstone and starring Sonja Henie, John Payne, Glenn Miller, Milton Berle, and Lynn Bari. It features the Glenn Miller Orchestra as well as dancing by the Nicholas Brothers. It also features Dorothy Dandridge, performing "Chattanooga Choo Choo", which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1996, and was awarded the first Gold Record for sales of 1.2 million.
Light music is a less-serious form of Western classical music, which originated in the 18th and 19th centuries and continues today. Its heyday was in the mid‑20th century. The style is through-composed, usually shorter orchestral pieces and suites designed to appeal to a wider context and audience than more sophisticated forms such as the concerto, the symphony and the opera.
"Lara's Theme" is the name given to a leitmotif written for the 1965 film Doctor Zhivago by composer Maurice Jarre. Soon afterward, the leitmotif became the basis of the song "Somewhere, My Love". Numerous versions, both orchestral and vocal, have been recorded, among the most popular was the version by Ray Conniff Singers.
"Romance Anónimo" is a piece for guitar, also known as "Estudio en Mi de Rubira", "Spanish Romance", "Romance de España", "Romance de Amor", "Romance of the Guitar", "Romanza" and "Romance d'Amour" among other names. It is composed in the style of parlour music of the late 19th century in Spain or South America,
"Goldfinger" is the title song from the 1964 James Bond film of the same name. Composed by John Barry and with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, the song was performed by Shirley Bassey for the film's opening and closing title sequences, as well as the soundtrack album release. The single release of the song gave Bassey her only Billboard Hot 100 top forty hit, peaking in the Top 10 at No. 8 and No. 2 for four weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart, and in the United Kingdom the single reached No. 21.
By the Sleepy Lagoon is a light-orchestral valse serenade by British composer Eric Coates, written in 1930. In 1940 American songwriter Jack Lawrence added lyrics with Coates' approval; the resulting song, "Sleepy Lagoon", became a popular-music standard of the 1940s.
Ronald Charles Douglas Hanmer was a British conductor, composer and arranger of light music, who spent his latter years in Australia. He was best known for his themes to the Adventures of P.C. 49 and Blue Hills, and is also noted for his large oeuvre of light orchestral and brass band compositions, as well as his arrangements of popular stage musicals. During the 1950s and 1960s he directed his own Latin-American percussion ensemble called "The Marimberos" on BBC radio and was, for a while, conductor of the Sydney Thompson Old-Time Orchestra for the programme "Take Your Partners".