The Spirit of Pageantry march was written in
1909 at a time when its composer, Percy Fletcher,
had still to win a position of prominence in the field
of British light music. The piece won a prize in the
competition organized that year by the Worshipful
Company of Musicians and this success played
an important part in bringing Fletcher’s name be-
fare the public. He was later to become known
particularly as a composer of choral and descrip-
tive music and also as an orchestrator of outstand-
ing accomplishment. For many year’s he was mu-
sical director of His Majesty’s Theatre in the Hay-
market and during this period was responsible for
the orchestration of “Chu Chin Chow”, the mu-
sical show whose record number of consecutive
performances still remains unbeaten.
The Cerempnial March which follows will im-
mediately be recognized at the Grand March from
the opening of Act 2 Scene 2 of that grandest of
operas Aida. It is a march composed on a scale
befitting an opera which was planned not merely
as a musical but as an international event. Aida
was , originally commissioned by the Khedive of
Egypt fot a grand performance to mark the open-
ing of the Suez canal in 1870. But international
events are subject to international pressures and,
although both the opera and the canal were com-
pleted more or less on time, the grand performance
did not take place until the following year. The
Ceremonial March is now often played in Britain
at the ceremony of the Trooping of the Colour as
the Queen inspects the line of guardsmen.
The march Lustspiel is the work of Keler Bela,
a 19th century composer of Hungarian origin who,
after brief careers as a lawyer and a farmer, studied
music in Vienna and became at the age of 35 a
bandmaster in the Austrian army. In addition to
marches he also composed a number of overtures,
dances and pieces for solo violin all of which,
however romantic in conception, still showed the
crisp brilliance of the martial music which was his
true forte.
Hi. J. Amers, the son of a north-country music
teacher, was so impressed as a young man by a
visit to the Glasgow Exhibition of 1901 that he sat
down immediately on his return home and com-
posed the Wee Macgregor Patrol in honour of the
great achievements of Scotland. He later became
the first director of the newly-formed R.A.F. Cen-
tral Band and was also for a time the conductor
of the Metropolitan Police Band.
Suppé who was born in 1819 and died in 1895
is now remembered for only a handful of works
of which, in addition to the famous Light Cav-
alry overture, “Poet and Peasant” and ‘“Morn-
ing, Noon and Night” are perhaps the best known.
In his lifetime, however, he composed well over 30
operettas. Being of Belgian descent and brought
up in Italy he was singled out in Vienna, his city
of adoption, not only as a foreigner but as a noted
eccentric. His house was always decorated with
skulls and it is said that he habitually slept in a
coffin.
John Ansell made his name as musical director
of the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square and
was one of the pioneers of broadcasting in Britain.
He was appointed conductor of the Wireless Or-
chestra in 1924 and was the first ever to hold this
post. The Windjammer Overture is on of a number
of pieces which demonstrate his powers of vivid
musical description and delineation.
Rounding off the programme is the march
Hielan’ Laddie whose melody hails from so far
back in the Scottish musical tradition that no com-
poser’s name can be assigned to it with certainty.
It finds, however, an appropriate place on this
record since it is the regimental quick march of
the Scots Guards. It here serves as a final flourish
as the band of the Grenadier Guards marches on its
way.
The regiment of the Grenadier Guards was
founded by King Charles II in 1656 as “The Royal
Regiment of Guards” and later as further guards
regiments were established in the late 17th and
early 18th centuries it became known as “The First
Regiment of Foot Guards.” Its present name was
granted by royal decree following the battle of
Waterloo “In commemoration of their having de-
feated the Grenadiers of the French Imperial
Guard upon this memorable occasion.”
Here is a reminder that the tradition of the
Grenadier Guards, and indeed of other guard regi-
ments, does not rest merely on the fine uniforms
and precision drill with which they are associated
in the public mind. They are in fact crack troops
and in the three centuries since their foundation
have always been regarded as the most loyal, most
valiant and most professional of soldiers. Not the
least of their distinctions, however, is a fine tradi-
tion of military music, for the history of such
music in Britain seems to have had its beginning in
the Grenadier Guards.
in 1685 a warrant was signed by Charles II
authorizing the maintenance of twelve hautbois in
the companies of the King’s Regiments of Foot
Guards in London and in the accounts for 1686
there are references to “liveryes for the hautoyes”
and for six drummers, their uniforms being
trimmed with silk and silver lace. By the middle
of the 18th century when such music as the marches
of Handel was being widely adopted for military
use the Grenadier Guards had an excellent band
according to Dr. Burney, the English musical his-
torian and father of Fanny Burney the diarist.
In the latter half of the 19th century the band
has as its conductor the famous Dan Godfrey and
at the beginning of the present century it began the
first of a series of tours which have encircled the
globe. The visit of the band to the United States
in 1904 represented the first occasion on which
British troops had set foot on American soil since
the revolution. Today the band clings to its pride
of place in representing the country on all great
occasions.
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