Ronald Binge (1910-79)
The YouTube footage is scenes of Dublin. Very attractive. To avoid confusion, Binge was English (born in Derby); he was also Mantovani’s arranger, cascading strings and all. (Elizabethan Serenade makes me cry!)
Ronald Binge’s delightful if poignant Elizabethan Serenade, recorded in 1953 by his eponymous Orchestra, and performed perfectly.
It makes me cry too! Don’t know why – it is so gentle and simple-minded….Idyll of a time that never was, except in the imagination.
I love classical music and have listened to many symphony’s..but…the Elizabethan Serenade is in a class of its own. I love it above all…simply…it’s beautiful!!!!
Thanks for this fresh and gentle breeze, Colin. Consummate craftsmanship, so open-hearted, and so open-heartedly played. Ah, Monica, that time surely did exist, and to hold nostalgia within ourselves – if we can balance that with at least some appreciation of what’s good during these ridiculous and alarming times – is the best way I can think of to retain sanity.
I don’t quite get this collage of war and peace in a foreign land in contrast to the idyllic sounds we hear.
It doesn’t really work for me alas.
The music deserves to be heard on its own as a deserving little pastorale that reminds us all of an England now largely gone.
I tend to agree, Edward, but this is a recording of ES to cherish, I suggest, and eyes can always look away. Colin
A very beautiful Classic & Melody music & choir when I first heard it on radio during the mid 1960 in Singapore. I bought the 12inch Vinyl record album. It is very relaxing & soothing song for my modelcraft works
It’s a classic of British Light Music and is often used as background music in film, radio and TV documentaries. That and Sailing By, Binge’s other classic piece, still get aired very often but now films and TV have their own composers of new music. I used to listen to Paul Temple on the radio just to hear Vivian Ellis’s Coronation Scot. There were many other examples of British Light Music being used for radio such as Puffin’ Billy for Children’s Favourites, In Party Mood for Housewives’ Choice, By the Sleepy Lagoon for Desert Island Discs (still in use), Knightsbridge March for In Town Tonight, Marching Strings for Top of the Form, Horse Feathers for Meet the Huggetts, and of course, Barwick Green for The Archers which is still used, although the Sunday omnibus edition in a folk music arrangement of Arthur Wood’s tune doesnt sound like British Light Music to me.
Thank you, Colin, for another gem; and I hope you are feeling much better now. More touching for me, oddly, is ‘Vanity Fair’ by the great Sibelian Anthony Collins. A more powerful tear-jerker for me is V W’s Prelude in his music for the Powell/Pressburger film ’49th Parallel’. Perhaps link this posting back to the wonderful Armstrong Gibbs ‘Dusk’ that you posted on February 11th?
Yes, I meant to. Consider it done.
OK.
Here’s an ‘uber-geek’ quiz question. When I was a little boy, we had in the house a 10″ Columbia 78 of Vivian Ellis’s Coronation Scot – isn’t it a gorgeous tune? Sidney Torch conducted the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra, and Haydn Wood’s splendid ‘Horse Guards, Whitehall’ was on the other side. On the 78, Coronation Scot ended engagingly, softly, with three little dischordant wind and pizzicato chords, a train-whistle disappearing down the track. Every recording I’ve heard since, even a remake by the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra presumably at around the same time, has the piece ending with a banal ‘chugga-Chugga-CHUG’ rhythm. Even the original Paul Temple programme used this ending. I wonder can anyone enlighten me why the more charming end played on that Columbia 78 was subsequently discarded?
I shall hang up my anorak (now) for the present.
Thanks Andrew, I must add the Haydn Wood. Colin
On a similar ‘note’, I got to know the Binge from a recording where about 30 seconds in (and at returns of that tune) there is a single note on the glockenspiel; once heard, the piece sounds odd without it (like the fanfares at the end of LA MER! Debussy not Trenet). It is missing or inaudible on the uploaded version. Yet playing all the cds I could find at home, none had it. On youtube I think the clearest examples are the two recordings by Charles Gehardt and it is on one (but not all) of Ron Goodwin’s and by the RTVE Sinfonica under Asencio
pjl, on this uploaded recording, the composer’s own, there is the faintest hint of a glockenspiel at strategic points. Colin
thank you; I only have tiny speakers on the computer so it did not register…