Billy Mayerl (1902-1959) In the same way that it has always seemed appropriate for a composer like Benjamin Britten to have been born on St....
Billy Mayerl (1902-1959)
In the same way that it has always seemed
appropriate for a composer like Benjamin Britten to have been born on St.
Cecilia's Day, it is rather fitting that William Joseph (Billy) Mayerl was born
within yards of London's Tin
Pan Alley, in Tottenham Court
Road, on 31st May 1902, the son of violinist Joseph Mayerl,
and his wife Elise Umbach. Although the violin was his first instrument, the
piano soon took over from the age of three. At seven years' old, he won a
scholarship to Trinity College of Music, and a year later, with the help of an
Italian piano teacher, gave a recital at the Queen's Hall, which included one
of his own compositions. By the age of twelve he was appearing there again in
the Grieg Concerto, while, less "publicly", accompanying
silent films.
During further years of study, Billy Mayerl
realised that his career lay on the lighter side of music, and by 1918, he was
beginning to earn his living as a professional. His first variety show
appearance came two years later, and in 1921, he joined the Savoy Havana Band
at the famous London hotel, under the American saxophonist, Bert Ralton, and at
a very generous salary. With this band he took part in the George Robey revue You'd
be Surprised at the Royal Opera House in 1923, and in 1927, Shake
Your Feet, at the Hippodrome and Lew Leslie's revue, White Birds, a
selection from which he recorded. (His recordings for EMI companies started
here, lasted some twenty years, and sold in their tens of thousands.)
In 1925, he gave the first British
performance of Rhapsody in Blue with the Savoy Orpheans under Debroy
Somers, at the Queen's Hall in the presence of Gershwin himself, who praised Mayerl's
interpretation highly. The two became close friends thereafter, and if there is
a source for Mayerl's favourite stylistic fingerprint of having his melodies
doubled in fourths, then one need look no further than Gershwin's own Novelette
in Fourths.
Mayerl's ability to make idiosyncratic
arrangements of the popular songs of the day went hand in hand with his desire
to popularise ragtime, jazz and syncopated piano playing generally. In 1926, he
opened his own School of Modern Syncopation at the Steinway Hall, and published
a tutor, all in the cause of the style of piano playing he had championed. This
extended to correspondence courses, and the school's setting up of branches in
Germany. Holland, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. Most famous
amongst his thousands of "pupils" Mayerl could count the future King
George VI. The music they were expected to play at the end of such a course
fell into two categories - the up-beat pieces derived from ragtime, and those
of a more lyrical nature that have their roots in the music of such
contemporaries as Coates, German, Ireland, Delius, and even Frank Bridge.
Mayerl's multi-faceted career continued
unabated throughout the 1930s, and by the outbreak of World War II, he found
himself in charge of music at the Grosvenor House Hotel. After hostilities, and
a nervous breakdown, he joined the BBC Light Music Department in an
administrative, rather than creative capacity, as his music, like that of so
many of his contemporaries, quietly became unfashionable. He had established,
like many of them, a particular style, and rarely deviated from it throughout
his career, so that whether a piece dated from the 1920s or the 1950s, the
musical language was largely the same, within given parameters. However, within
these self-imposed confines, he displayed a consummate artistry both in his
compositions and in his performances of them. His death in 1959 closed a page
in the history of music-making to which few could, or would wish to, add even
the briefest of footnotes.
[1] Marigold (1927)
Billy Mayerl's signature tune and
best-seller (it sold over 150,000 copies of sheet music in its first twenty
years of life) all but swamped his other compositions in the mind of the
public, particularly in the 'wilderness years' following his death. Like so
many of his pieces, the title came from a pictorial source in his everyday life
-in this case, a bowl of flowers on a table in his home. After the success of
the piece, it is not surprising that he named his Hampstead home. Maricold
Lodge.
[2] A Lily Pond (1929)
Away from the distinctive syncopated piano
novelties, Mayerl had a more romantic, pastoral turn of phrase. This example
shows him, perhaps, contemplating a quiet pool of water that he would later
reproduce at his Hampstead home. Whereas the Aquarium Suite is decidedly
'indoor' music, here we are definitely outdoors, taking the air.
Four Aces Suite (1933)
[3] Ace of Clubs
[4] Ace of Diamonds
[5] Ace of Hearts
[6] Ace of Spades
One of several extended works in his
output, which reflect his penchant for cards. The Four Aces Suite was
dedicated to Bill Evans, the managing director of Challen & Co. whose
pianos Mayerl preferred to all others. He used the various aspects associated
with the different suits to produce a set of strongly characterized pieces;
music linked to games seems to have been en vogue at this time since
four years later Bliss produced Checkmate and Stravinsky Jeu de
Cartes.
[7] From a Spanish Lattice (1938)
The first word of the title From a Spanish
Lattice is particularly apposite, in the same way that it is in Delius' On
Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. Here is a Spanish scene observed at a
distance, by a very un-Spanish viewer. For there is frankly little Spanish
about the music itself, apart from a decorative triplet in the central habanera.
Mayerl stays very much on his own ground and in his own style, the Spanish
colour coming mainly from the added ethnic percussion.
[8] Minuet by Candlelight (1956)
In the outer sections of Minuet by
Candlelight, Mayerl flirts here with the 'olden style', seeing it through
twentieth century eyes (or ears), but is unable to resist bringing us totally
into the present century in the central section - hence the carefully
constituted title. This is candlelight, not out of mundane necessity, but for
romantic effect.
Aquarium Suite (1937)
[9] No. 1 Willow Moss
[10] No. 2 Moorish Idol
[11] No. 3 Fantail
[12] No. 4 Whirligig
After his tribute to one obsession - cards
- Mayerl wrote his Aquarium Suite most likely to celebrate the building
of a fishpond in the garden at Marigold Lodge.
[13] Autumn Crocus (1932)
After Marigold, it must have seemed
natural to pick a few more flowers for titles. This idyll, as he called
it, Autumn Crocus, is just one of his many botanical pieces, amongst
them, Hollyhock (1927), White Heather (1932), Mistletoe (1935),
and those within the two matching suites, In My Garden - Wintertime (1946)
and In My Garden - Springtime (1947).
[14] Bats in the Belfry (1935)
Along with Green Tulips, Bats in the
Belfry represents a collaborative enterprise between Mayerl and Austen Croom-Johnson
(affectionately known as 'Ginger') with Johnson writing the opening theme and Mayerl
doing the rest. The two men recorded both pieces as duets on piano and
harpsichord. Johnson left for America soon after the pieces were published, and
pioneered the musical commercial, most notably for Pepsi-Cola.
Pastoral Sketches (1928)
[15] No. 1 A Legend
[16] No. 2 Lovers' Lane
[17] No. 3 A Village Festival
The 'outdoor' Pastoral Sketches, belying
nothing of the style of the famous piano novelties, must have fitted well into
the Boosey Light Music catalogue of the time, overseen for so many years by
Frederic Curzon. The orchestration was by Arthur Wood, best known to British
radio listeners through his Barwick Green, the theme for the highly
popular series, The Archers, and itself a stalwart of the same Boosey
catalogue.
[18] Fireside Fusiliers (1943)
Despite its title, its date and its mock
fanfares, there is little of the military proper in Fireside Fusiliers - rather
of the military at a distance, or perhaps off-duty.
[19] Parade of the Sandwich-Board Men
(1938)
Parade of the Sandwich-Board Men, a syncopated novelty, is very much a hark back to ragtime, and
might, in more 'elevated' circles, be described as a little rondo.
[20] Waltz for a Lonely Heart (1956)
Despite its date, there is a nostalgic
flavour in Waltz for a Lonely Heart that places it a good twenty
years earlier, but its honesty is unquestionable, and it displays Mayerl as a
master of melody, mood and colour.
[21] Busybody (1956)
The last item in this album has a
self-explanatory title, and might be a mocking portrait of a particular
acquaintance. It surely cannot be the composer who is mocked gently in the
introductory passage to each appearance of the theme, since Stravinsky (here in
Petrushka guise) was one of Mayerl's favourite composers.
© 1994 Philip Lane