The London Suite, also known as London Every Day, is a suite of orchestral music by the English composer Eric Coates.
The Suite was completed in 1933 when Coates was 47.[1]
It consists of three movements:
The work was extremely popular when it was first published, no doubt helped by part of the third movement, Knightsbridge, being used as the theme tune for a BBC Radio chat show programme called In Town Tonight which was broadcast initially on the National Programme from 1933 and then switched to the Home Service in 1939 where it continued until 1960. The BBC received such a large number of requests for the name of the piece by post that they had slips of paper printed specifically to help with the demand.[1]
Gerrard Williams arranged the military band edition of the suite for Chappell's Army Journal. Paul V. Yoder also arranged the march for Chappell & Co.
The London Suite is scored for:
Such was the popularity of the London Suite that in 1936 Coates wrote a sequel to it called the London Again Suite; the title pre-empted critics that he was writing about "London again".[2][3] The movements are as follows:
The second movement references the composer's close association with the BBC, being based on a B♭B♭ C motif; this movement quotes the "Knightsbridge" March made famous by In Town Tonight and concludes with the chimes of Big Ben which closed down broadcasting for the day.[3] The work received its premiere by the BBC Theatre Orchestra under Stanford Robinson.[3]
|
| |
|---|---|
|
 | This article about a classical composition is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
