A programme of favourite songs with words written by EDWARD LOCKTON
SOPHIE ROWLANDS (soprano)
FRANK TITTERTON (tenor)
KENNETH ELLIS (bass)
Compere, EDWARD LOCKTON
MR. LOCKTON, who is the person mainly concerned in this broadcast, is the author of the words of all the songs which are about to be sung. The writer of lyrics for setting to music rarely gets the credit for his work as he deserves. The flowing lyrics to which ballad singers are accustomed, have, to be successful, to be put together with a complete understanding cf the demands of the music, the singer, and the audience, and a rare and special technique has to be brought to their construction.
Mr. Lockton, who, by the way, writes also under the name of Edward Teschemacher, is one of the most successful lyric writers of recent times. More than eighteen hundred of his lyrics, including eighty song-cycles, have been set to music and published, and a very large number owe at least some of their success to him. A list of his better-known songs have become world-famous; for example, 'Because', 'Where My Caravan has Rested', 'Down Vauxhall Way', 'Until', 'I know a lovely Garden', 'Shipmates o' Mine', 'O Lovely Night', and 'Tommy Lad '. These and others belong to an imposing list of composers, Tosti, Sir Frederic Cowen, Leoncavallo, Sir Landon Ronald, Montague Phillips, Eric Coates, Haydn Wood, Teresa del Riego, Wilfrid Sanderson, Easthope Martin, Frances Allitsen, Hermann Lohr, Herbert Oliver, W. H. Squire, Guy d'Hardelot, Evelyn Sharpe, and many others. The artists who have sung naturally include many of the greatest; for example, Caruso, Santley, Clara Butt, McCormack, Melba, and others. He is still writing, being set, and being sung.
This, however, is not the full extent of Mr. Lockton's contribution to song. A great number of Lieder, those of Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt, for example, have been translated into English by him, and even opera and oratorio have received his attention. Brahms's Requiem has been done by him into English, and the most difficult of all, Wagner's Parsifal.
