Leroy Anderson
Leroy Anderson is one of America’s most successful and best known composers of light orchestral classics. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 29, 1908. His early musical training took place at the New England Conservatory, after which he studied the bass and organ with private teachers. In 1929 he was graduated from Harvard magna cum laude, and one year after that he received there his Master’s degree in music on a Naumberg Fellowship. For the next few years he served as organist and choirmaster in Milton, Massachusetts; as a member of the music faculty at Radcliffe College; and as director of the Harvard University Band. In 1935 he became a free-lance conductor, composer and arranger in Boston and New York. As orchestrator for the Boston Pops Orchestra, for which he made many orchestral arrangements over a period of several years, Anderson completed his first original semi-classical composition, Jazz Pizzicato, successfully introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1939. Since then the Boston Pops Orchestra has introduced most of Anderson’s compositions, many of which proved exceptionally popular in concerts throughout the country and on records. Anderson has also appeared frequently as guest conductor of important American symphony orchestras and has conducted his own compositions with his orchestra for records. In 1958, his first musical comedy, Goldilocks, was produced on Broadway.
Beyond possessing a most ingratiating lyric invention and a consummate command of orchestration, Anderson boasts an irresistible sense of humor and a fine flair for burlesque. He is probably at his best in programmatic pieces in which extra-musical sounds are neatly adapted to and often serve as a background for his sprightly tunes—ranging from the clicking of a typewriter to the meowing of a cat.
Blue Tango is the first strictly instrumental composition ever to achieve first place on the Hit Parade. For almost a year it was the leading favorite on juke boxes, and its sale of over two million records represents Anderson’s healthiest commercial success. Scored for violins, this music neatly combines an insistent tango rhythm with a sensual melody in a purple mood. Bugler’s Holiday is a musical frolic for three trumpets. A Christmas Festival provides a colorful orchestral setting to some of the best loved Christmas hymns, including “Joy to the World,” “Deck the Halls,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Silent Night,” “Jingle Bells,” and “Come All Ye Faithful.”
Fiddle-Faddle is a merry burlesque-escapade for the violins, inspired from a hearing of Paganini’s Perpetual Motion; this, then, is a modern style “Perpetual Motion.” In Horse and Buggy, the music nostalgically evokes a bygone day with a sprightly, wholesome tune presented against the rhythms of a jogging horse. The Irish Suite was commissioned by the Eire Society of Boston, and is a six-movement adaptation of six of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. They are: “The Irish Washerwoman,” “The Minstrel Boy,” “The Rakes of Mallow,” “The Wearing of the Green,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Jazz Legato and Jazz Pizzicato are studies in contrasting moods and dynamics. The Jazz Pizzicato consists of a jazz melody presented entirely by plucked strings; its companion piece is a broader jazz melody for bowed strings. Plink, Plank, Plunk also makes effective use of pizzicato strings, this time attempting to simulate the sounds suggested by the descriptive title. Saraband brings about the marriage between the very old and very new in musical styles. The old classical dance in slow triple time and accented second beat is exploited with a quickening of tempo and with modern rhythmic and melodic embellishments.
In Sleigh Bells, jangling sleighbells and the sound of a cracking whip, provide a delightful background to a jaunty tune that has the bite and sting of outdoor winterland. This piece has become something of a perennial favorite of the Christmas season. In The Syncopated Clock, the rhythm of a clicking grandfather’s clock, presented by percussion instruments in a modern rhythm, is placed against a bouncy, syncopated melody. This number has become popular as theme music for the CBS-TV “Early Show.” The Trumpeter’s Lullaby is a sensitive melody with the soothing accompaniment of a lullaby.
The Typewriter permits members of the percussion section to imitate the incisive, rigid rhythm of a functioning typewriter, punctuated by the regular tinkle of the bell to provide the warning signal that the carriage has come to the end of a line. Against this rhythm moves a vivacious message in strings. The Typewriter was played in the motion picture But Not for Me, starring Clark Gable, released in 1959. In The Waltzing Cat, an imaginary cat dances gracefully to a waltz melody made up mainly of meows.