Decline and Resurgence
During the 1960s, the style began to fall out of fashion on radio and television, forcing many light composers to refocus their energy on writing more serious works or music for film. Robert Farnon completed several symphonies in the later part of his life, as well as composing for television, for example Colditz. The light composers' skills of classical orchestration and arrangement were appreciated by composers such as John Williams, with both Angela Morley and Gordon Langford asked to help orchestrate his film scores for Star Wars and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial amongst others.
Many orchestras specialising in playing light music were disbanded. Small palm court orchestras, once common in hotels, seaside resorts and theatres were gradually lost in favour of recorded music. The BBC began to discard its archive of light music, much which was fortunately saved by composer Ernest Tomlinson and is now kept at his Library of Light Orchestral Music. However, the genre was kept in the public consciousness by its use in advertisements and television programmes, often used as a nostalgic evocation of the 1940s and 1950s.
During the 1990s, the genre began to be re-discovered and original remastered recordings by orchestras such as the Queen's Hall Light Orchestra were issued on compact disc for the first time. This was followed by new recordings of light music by orchestras such as the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, the New London Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as continued public concerts by orchestras such as the Cambridge Concert Orchestra, the Scarborough Spa Orchestra and Vancouver Island's Palm Court Light Orchestra. The style also found a new home on BBC Radio 3 on Brian Kay's Light Programme, although this programme was discontinued in February 2007. In 2007, BBC Four broadcast an evening of light music as part of a themed evening celebrating British culture between 1945 and 1955, which included Brian Kay's documentary Music for Everybody and a televised version of Friday Night is Music Night.
In the UK, U.S. and Canada, light music can still be heard on some of the radio channels that specialise in classical music, for example Classic FM and XLNC1. A nationwide participatory festival of light music called "Light Fantastic" was organised by BBC Radio 3 in June 2011 as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the 1951 Festival of Britain. This included events in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow, from both professional and amateur ensembles, including a live revival of Music While You Work from a factory in Irlam near Manchester, several light music concerts from the Southbank Centre and a number of documentaries about the genre.
Light music is also frequently used as incidental music in radio and television programmes, for example Charles Williams' "Devil's Galop" (once famous as the theme to Dick Barton: Special Agent) is now often used in spoofs of 1950s action programmes, such as Mitchell and Webb's The Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken-Caesar sketches.
Read more about this topic: Light Music
Famous quotes containing the words decline and, decline and/or resurgence:
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“By now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone’s attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the ‘70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed wide recognition and honor. This was not exactly the case.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)