Light music is orchestral music, which originated in the 19th century and continues until the present day. The style is a less "serious" form of Western classical music, featuring usually shorter orchestral pieces of mood music or concert music. Light music is often grouped with 'Easy Listening". On our stations playlist you will hear a mix of instrumental light music and excerpts from traditional forms of music. (beautifulmusic.uk, beautifulinstrumentals.com and classicalmusic.network)
the music
Before Late Romantic orchestral trends of length and scope separated the trajectory of lighter orchestral works from the Western Classical canon, classical composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Joseph Haydn won as much fame for writing lighter pieces such as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as for their symphonies and operas. Later examples of early European light music include the operettas of composers such as Franz von Suppé or Sir Arthur Sullivan; the Continental salon and parlour music genres; and the waltzes and marches of Johann Strauss II and his family. The Straussian waltz became a common light music composition (note for example Charles Ancliffe's "Nights of Gladness" or Felix Godin's "Valse Septembre"). These influenced the foundation of a "lighter" tradition of classical music in the 19th and early 20th centuries...from the likes of Binge and Coates to Farnon.
Procida Bucalossi (1832-1918) and his son Ernest Bucalossi [photo] (1859-15 April 1933) were British-Italian light music composers and orchestral arrangers. It is difficult to differentiate their compositions and arrangements, which are often simply credited as Bucalossi.
Procida Bucalossi is primarily known for his dance arrangements (Lancers, Polka, Quadrille, Waltz) of Savoy Operas, particularly those of Gilbert & Sullivan. As a composer, Procida had success with a comic operetta Les Manteaux Noirs (The Black Cloaks) which ran at the Avenue Theatre between June and December 1882. Other compositions attributed to Procida include "Ciribiribin", the "P&O Polka" and songs titled "The Midnight Hour" and "Love, I Will Love You Forever".
Ernest Bucalossi went to work for the D'Oyly Carte company in the early 1880s and succeeded his father as conductor at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1881. Until 1928, he was musical director at a variety of London theatres. Ernest is today best known for his "Grasshopper's Dance", and the rest of his compositions have slipped into obscurity. He primarily composed dances and descriptive pieces for light orchestra: the waltzes "Queen of the North", "Pastorella", "La Gitana" and "Valse-Berceuse" amongst others, the march "Pennon and Plume", a barn dance "The Careless Cuckoos", the polka "Midnight Chimes", the descriptive piece "A Hunting Scene" and incidental music to A Kiss for Cinderella.
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