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.
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (10 August 1889 – 12 May 1960)
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (10 August 1889 – 12 May 1960) was a prolific and versatile English composer, best known for his output of songs. Gibbs also devoted much of his career to the amateur choral and festival movements in Britain. He attained a high level of popularity, for instance the work 'Dusk' was requested by Princess Elizabeth (the future queen of England) on her eighteenth birthday.
Gibbs was born in Great Baddow, a country village near Chelmsford in Essex, England on 10 August 1889. His maternal grandfather, a Unitarian minister who wrote a number of songs in spite of being musically untrained, was his closest musical relation. His father, David Cecil Gibbs, was the head of the well-known soap company D & W Gibbs, founded by C. A. Gibbs’s grandfather. Gibbs’s musical talent appeared early in life: an aunt discovered that he had perfect pitch at age three. He was also improvising melodies at the piano before he could speak fluently and he wrote his first song at the age of five. He continued his studies at Cambridge in music through 1913 studying composition with Edward Dent, Cyril Rootham and Charles Wood.
WIKIPEDIA
VIDEO: The atmospheric slow waltz 'Dusk' is probably the best-known orchestral piece by the English composer Cecil Armstrong Gibbs. This performance comes from a 'Light Music' concert given in 2011 by the BBCSO under the highly versatile conductor John Wilson.
