Music Man

The death last month of Ernest Tomlinson has robbed us of one of the ever dwindling number of composers of English Light Music,  This is a genre somewhat confined to these islands - don't know why this should be so, but no other country has produced this type of music in any notable quantity. So what is it?  Well it's been described as music which is too low-brow for Radio 3, but too high-brow for Radio 2.  You know it when you hear it - Coronation Scot, The Devil's Gallop (theme to Dick Barton),  By The Sleepy Lagoon (theme to Desert Island Discs) - you get the idea.  It had its hey-day in the middle of the last century, but as radio gave way to television so what you saw became more important than what you heard and the character of "entertainment music" changed.  If you're interested in looking further into it, try the music of Eric Coates, Ronald Binge, Ron Goodwin, Haydn Wood et al.