Today is the centenary of the birth of Ernest Tomlinson (1924–2015), the prolific Lancastrian composer of light orchestral music. He deserves to be remembered not only for his own elegantly-crafted and uplifting music, but for his defence of the entire genre of light music when in the 1960s it fell, or was pushed, so emphatically out of fashion. The story of his rescuing of music scores thrown out wholesale by the BBC as the Corporation of the time rushed headlong to follow new trends, and of his subsequent foundation of the Library of Light Orchestral Music in a barn on his farm at Longridge in Lancashire, contributed to my own decision to train as a professional archivist. Having steered the Light Music Society through the lean years of the late twentieth century — during which, for some decades, there was no light music at all on BBC radio, despite, or perhaps because of, its former ubiquity — he lived to see something of a revival in its fortunes. This remains visible not least in the continued thriving of the Light Music Society (whose membership I have enjoyed for nearly a decade), and the Library’s recent move from Longridge to the Victoria Hall in Bolton.
(There are more details of Tomlinson’s battle for light music in this biography, and also this tribute that I wrote shortly after his death in 2015).
His music helped me through the revision for my final university exams, and having written to him to tell him this, I received a very warm letter in reply, which I will treasure always.
On Friday 27th September, BBC Radio 3’s ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ will be a celebration of his music, along with others of a similar style — including Ruth Gipps!
‘Miranda’, from an adaptation of The Tempest
