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.
Richard Eilenberg (13 January 1848, Merseburg – 5 December 1927, Berlin) was a German composer.
His musical career began with the study of piano and composition. At 18 years old, he composed his first work - a concert overture. As a volunteer he participated in the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871. In 1873, Eilenberg became the music director and conductor in Stettin. In 1889, he decided to move to Berlin as a freelance composer, where his second marriage with his wife Dorothee started. They lived on 73 Bremer Street.
Eilenberg composed marches and dances for orchestra, harmony and military music, and a ballet The Rose of Shiras, op. 134. He also composed the operettas Comteß Cliquot (1909), King Midas, Marietta, and The Great Prince. The most notable music that he composed were his marches, including The Coronation March (for Alexander III of Russia), and Janitscharen-Marsch, op. 295.
Some of his music pieces, attributable to the salon and its entertainment, were The Petersburg Sleigh Ride op. 52 and The Mill In The Black Forest, op. 57 (1885). Eilenberg completed 350 compositions throughout his life, including ten fantasies after melodies of great masters, like Ehrenkränze der Tonkunst, op. 268-277 and the suite Durch Feld und Wald, op. 119.
His grave is located on the South-West Cemetery of the Berlin Ecclesiastical Assembly in Potsdam.
--translated from German Wikipedia
