Tag: recorded music

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Classical themes to TV and radio programmes

December 2025

You cannot say we do not ring the changes with our presentations: the final meeting of the autumn season was no exception.  Called ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ David Davies played a range of theme tunes to favourite TV and radio programmes.

Most were familiar although trying to match the music to the programme was not always easy especially those which are no longer broadcast.  Fauré for example provided the music to ‘Listen with Mother’ (and the title for the presentation) and the programme lasted from 1950 to 1982.

William Walton provided the theme for Cat & Dog and another English composer, Elgar’s Chanson de Matin for Norman and Henry Bones which ran for around 20 years on Children’s Hour and starred Charles Hawtry.

Bach was featured on another popular radio classic ‘Animal, Vegetable or Mineral’ on the radio. Surprisingly, it didn’t run for that long, only 7 years, but one of its starts was Mortimer Wheeler who did a lot to bring archaeology into the limelight.

Many may remember ‘Top of the Form’ which ran for many years. Initially, only between boys’ schools but girls came later. Sign of the times eh. Several themes were used including one by Debussy.

An extremely memorable theme, played on trumpets, is that for the Open University which introduced many lectures in the early years. Few might know it was composed by Leonard Salzedo who despite his name is another English composer albeit of Spanish descent. For those of us who were OU students at that time, it is an extremely evocative and a reminder of watching a lecture on physics say at 1 o’clock in the morning. A reminder.

Other extremely popular and familiar themes include those for the Eurovision Song Contest – in the news recently concerning Israel’s entry into the contest. Few will be able to name the composer who is in fact Charpentier and it is an extract from one of his settings of Te Deum.

Mozart provided the theme for the Horse of the Year Show another long-running favourite starting in 1949 no less. Talking of sport, ‘Nessum Dorma’ was much in evidence in the 1990 World Cup of course.

Most programmes seem to use existing music but from time to time new works are commissioned. An example is the music for Pride and Prejudice.  Howard Goodall was mentioned who has a long range of credit to his name including ‘Mr Bean’ and ‘Not the Nine O’clock News’. 

It is noteworthy that many themes were composed by established classical composers and it is difficult to think of much popular music used in this way.  Sopranos is an exception as are some of the themes to Scandi Noir series like ‘The Bridge’.

It is almost certainly true to say that many people’s first experience of classical music is through theme tunes. Producers have gone to some trouble to select something that matches the drama and which is memorable to the viewers. Unfortunately, if you want to know who the composer was, the credits often will not mention the actual composer but whoever it was who arranged it or added incidental music. The music for ‘Tom and Jerry’ cat and mouse capers for example were heavily influenced by Bartok and Schoenberg but their names never appeared on the credits, rather Scott Bradley.

An entertaining evening and the last of the first half of our programme.  We resume on 26 January 2026.

Peter Curbishley

Next meeting

Last meeting before Christmas

November 2025

TONIGHT

Our final meeting in 2025 will be on 1st December when David Davies will be asking “Are you sitting comfortably?” and presenting some Classical Music Signature Tunes. 

In the new year we will resume on Monday 26th January 2026 when Ed Tinline will present: “With few strings attached”,  music for wind ensembles.

We hope you will be able to join us on Monday.

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Next meeting

October 2025

Our next meeting will be at 7.30pm on Monday 3rd November 2025.
It will commence with a short Annual General Meeting followed by our Members’ Evening.  For this Robin now has almost sufficient pieces for what should be a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Any last minute ideas for possible inclusion if there is time to Robin please.

Following this on 17th November we will have a presentation entitled: “Seventh Son”  An appreciation of the work of Gordon Jacob. Written and presented by Geoff Ogram 

On 1st December at our final session before Christmas, David Davies will  present some Classical Music Signature Tunes.  To help him prepare for this, David has asked me to forward the following to members:

“The meeting on December 1 is entitled ‘Are you sitting comfortably? These words began Listen with Mother at 1.45 every weekday on the BBC Light Programme from January 1950 and on into the 60s. And every programme ended with the Berceuse from Faure’s Le Jardin de Dolly suite for piano duet. The words and the tune are still remembered fondly by a whole generation.

“But what else in radio and television (including adverts) has used classical music as a signature tune? We shall have a not-too-serious discussion on this topic, and I would appreciate your letting me know your suggestions.

You can email me at davidracheld@gmail.com
Thank you.  David Davies“

We hope you will be able to join us at these sessions.

New seasons programme

The programme for the 2025/26 season is published

August 2025

We are delighted to attach the programme for the forthcoming season starting on Monday 22 September at 7:30. You can see there is lots to interest with presentations of more familiar composers together with the less well-known. The strange but amazing music of Eric Satie has an outing and also Delius, a composer we have not featured for many years.

There are evenings on American music as well as from Iberia. Indeed, there is considerable variety in the programme. There are two members’ evenings where members bring along one or two of their favourites. The evenings are open to all we should add.

The Society is keen to explore some of the hidden corners of the repertoire, including pieces seldom heard in the concert hall.

The programmes have been printed and if you like a paper version, they will shortly (next week) be in the Library and in the Tourism Information Centre. If you want to give us a try your first visit is free.

PC

prog 2025 26Download

Memories of a clarinettist

March 2025

The presentation this month was from a retired clarinettist speaking about his life in various orchestras and more generally as a musician. Peter Jarvis started by discussing the instrument itself which is not a chromatic one so originally was quite limited in its repertoire. The instrument went through a major redesign in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Boehm system was introduced. Boehm himself had little to do with the design however. This provided a range of keys and enabled it widen its range for playing. A personal note here and that is that I was taught the clarinet and my teacher had what he termed the ‘Simple’ system (possibly a simplified German instrument) with far fewer keys but he was nevertheless an accomplished player. There are many different types, sizes and pitches of the instrument – probably around 10 in all.

The instrument has a single reed and they all come from the town of Fréjus in the South of France. Peter grew up in Oxford and was fortunate to enjoy a rich social milieu. He met the late Colin Davis (later Sir Colin) who was himself a former clarinettist (they get everywhere) who encouraged him. Thence to the Royal Academy of Music. The first piece to be played was by Gerald Finzi, a movement from his Clarinet Concerto. This is Finzi’s most performed work.

Peter left the Academy to become the principle at Royal Saddlers Wells, a real accomplishment. He described how they toured a lot and a large amount of travelling was involved since performances were arranged up and down the country. In the orchestra pit in an opera house he said, the wind instruments are under the stage, unable to hear the singers which does make timing and coordination difficult. On tour by contrast, they were on the same level in front of the stage and actually see and hear what’s going on.

Touring posed its own problems because for some mysterious reason, the instrumentalists were the last to hear where the next performance was to be held. This often meant all the available accommodation was already taken. Desperate to find somewhere to sleep in Leeds, he asked the police for help and was taken to an address where he was provided with a bed. In the morning there was knock on the door and a young lady came in with a cup of tea. Next morning, the same thing happened with a different young lady. Could get use to this Peter thought, but then he discovered – it was a brothel.

The second piece was the final movement from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. What was special was that it was a recording made in the barn adjacent to Peter and his wife Jane’s house in the South West of France. The recording – despite being recorded on a cassette recorder – was of excellent quality. The composition was written for his friend the clarinettist Anton Stadler, as was Mozart’s last instrumental composition the Concerto, who were both members of the same Viennese lodge. The score was lost but was later believed to have been pawned by Stadler. It was written for another member of the clarinet family the Basset horn which is longer and slightly lower pitched. The ‘horn’ refers to the curved nature of the instrument’s mouthpiece. [I have heard the concerto played on this instrument at the Proms and it is significantly different experience].

Peter described his later career playing with the Liverpool Phil and in a variety of West End shows. He described working to produce what are called ‘library albums’ and these are where freelance musicians compose and record music for use in films, TV shows and advertisements. Further pieces were Mozart’s Wind Quintet, and Matthew Arnold’s Divertimento.

It was a truly interesting evening because although presenters can all play music from CDs, here was someone who was part of the CDs, who has actually created music and who’s life was about producing it for us to enjoy. We even had a short piece composed by him. The mixture of music and anecdote was a joy and must be fairly unique to the Society.

Peter Curbishley

Next meeting on 7 April and is on the music of Francis Poulenc

Next meeting

February 2025

The next meeting is on Monday 24th as usual starting at 7:30. It is called A Walk in the Woods which may sound bucolic but it is a programme of music focusing on woodwind. Wind instruments, based on vibrating reeds, add colour and texture to an orchestra and composers gradually added them to their compositions.

In the nineteenth century, there were many improvement to their design with more keys added to enable the range to be widened and more fluid playing.

The second half of the season has got off to a brilliant start. At our first meeting in January, Peter Horwood delved into the Polish music scene and came up with a number of hidden gems few of whom any of us had heard before.

Last meeting was given by Ute Schwarting who focused on Brahms and related his music to her life story. Two fascinating talks with quite different themes.

PC

Christmas Quiz!

Next meeting will be our Christmas quiz

November 2024

Our next meeting on 2nd December will be our last before Christmas, and we will be holding our Christmas Quiz.  This will be our second such classical music Quiz and, as previously, conducted again by Ruth Barlow  So don’t be put ORFF, come BACH for more!                                  

In the New Year we will resume on Monday 27th January 2025 when Peter Horwood will present “Polish Panorama” – a summary and brief survey of Polish composers from Medieval times to the 21st Century. 

We hope to see you on 2nd December, and in the New Year. 

Recent meetings

November 2024

The Society’s two recent meetings on 21 October and 4 November had a range of interesting music. The first was a members’ evening where members bring along pieces which have interested them or they have discovered for themselves.

This was preceded by our agm which went smoothly enough. The Society is holding its own at present with adequate funds and a healthy programme of events. Indeed plans are afoot for the 2024/25 season with some potentially interesting ideas. The Chair of the society said in the context of reduced funding for the arts that ‘we were keeping the flame of great music alight’.

Members brought a range of pieces one of which was an extract from Gloria Coates’ Symphony number 14. Gloria was from Wisconsin but spent a great deal of time in Europe. She died last year.

Gerald Finzi is a somewhat neglected British composer and few of his works appear on the repertoire these days. One composition which gets an outing now again is his clarinet concerto the first movement of which – an allegro – was played.

The Argentinian violinist Manfredo Kraemer performed an unusual Peruvian piece on the viola di gamba.

One most surprising piece was a Beethoven string quartet played on saxophones by the Sinta quartet. This really worked and shows that compositions can work in different genre and provide fresh insights.

We ended with a performance of a movement from Bruckner’s Symphony No 8. There are many recordings of this great work but this was by von Karajan dating from 1944. Many of these recordings disappeared into the Soviet Union after the war after prolonged negotiations, many have tricked out. As ever with a von Karajan it is a remarkable rendition all the more remarkable bearing in mind the circumstances in Berlin at the time. The recording is incomplete.

4 November

Due to the speaker being unwell, this was a change to the published programme. We were fortunate that Jeremy Barlow stepped into the breach and provided a programme which was both erudite and enjoyable. Entitled Theme and Variations, he explained the importance of variations in the musical world and gave examples of different types.

The standout recording was the chaconne from the partita for violin by Bach played by Victoria Mullova. You may be familiar with this piece but as Jeremy said, the phrasing of her playing made this an outstanding performance. It is thought that it was composed following Bach’s return home to find his wife had died during his absence.

Another piece was the Adagio from Beethoven’s quartet in E minor which has six variations (I think!) some of the breaks between them difficult to spot.

Other pieces included Brahms’s variations on a theme by Paganini, a composition by William Byrd and a movement from Vaughan Williams’ 6th Symphony.

It was an extremely interesting evening and members were grateful to Jeremy for putting it together at short notice.

The next meeting is on 18 November.

Peter Curbishley

Meeting tonight

The Society’s penultimate meeting takes place tonight, Monday 29th April, and is entitled The curse of the ninth. Some symphonic composers have reached nine but not quite managed, or finished, a tenth. Alan Forshaw examines the myth that of why nine composers couldn’t or wouldn’t write a tenth symphony.

Starts at 7:30 as usual.