Archive on 4: The Light Music Festival

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The Light Music Festival

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Paul Morley explores the rise and mysterious fall of light orchestral music.

Music journalist Paul Morley explores the rise and mysterious fall of light orchestral music in Britain in the 1950s. From 2011.

Although many of us grew up tuning in to light orchestral music on the radio, it's now largely been forgotten. 

Most of us will be still be familiar with at least one very famous piece of light music: 'By The Sleepy Lagoon' - better known as the theme tune to the BBC's 'Desert Island Discs' and composed by Eric Coates.

When BBC Radio was much slimmer than it is today - made up of just the Home Service, the Light Programme and the Third Programme - listeners tuned in to hear a live concert for the Festival of Light Music. It began in 1953 and was broadcast every June. 

With the disappearance of the Light Programme in 1967 when it split into BBC Radios 1 and 2, light music began to disappear from the airwaves. Eventually its only home was a single slot 'Friday Night is Music Night'. 

So why did such a popular style of music fade away?

Music journalist and broadcaster Paul Morley uses BBC archive to explore light music at its peak, including interviews with some of the major composers of British light music - Eric Coates, Ronald Binge and Ernest Tomlinson. He traces its decline, and looks at its possible resurgence in 2011, with events like the 'Light Fantastic Festival'.

Paul travels to Preston to meet Ernest Tomlinson and takes a tour around the Light Music Society's remarkable archive of thousands of pieces of light music - all rescued by Tomlinson and his daughter Hilary after the BBC and music publishers threw it away.

Paul also meets Christopher Austin at the Royal Academy of Music and the young conductor John Wilson, who is passionate about light music: for him, this music is not about nostalgia but beautifully written miniatures of orchestral music.

Producer: Nick Holmes

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2011.

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