| Biography | Howard Carr (1880-1960). Some of his operettas and musicals enjoyed popularity for a time: titles like Shanghai, The Girl for the Boy, The Chinese Honeymoon, The Blue Kitten, The Potter Diamond and The Master Wayfarer (the last two being incidental music), plus music for a revival in 1918 of Cuvilliers The Lilac Domino, Carrs output included also a number of separate songs, light in character, partsongs, hymn tunes and arrangements of Chanteys and Sea Songs (two sets) and works for orchestra. Apart from arrangements, these latter embraced genre pieces like The Chiffon Frock, The Jolly Roger, done at the Proms in 1917, The Crimson Fan, The Shrine in the Wood, Moorish Dance and the "Yorkshire Patrol" entitled Bah Goom (!), the overture Sir Walter Raleigh, premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in June 1940 (an appropriate piece for the time) and a few suites: Carnival of the Elements, in four movements, of course, described as a "ballet suite", the "nautical suite" On the Briny and, most interestingly, the Three Heroes suite composed at the end of the Great War, the heroes being OLeary V.C., Captain Oates (of Captain Scotts last Polar expedition), and Sub-Lieutenant Warneford, V.C., the first British pilot to bring down a Zeppelin, its subject being emotive enough at the time to justify the composer making an arrangement for piano solo. This suite received its first airing at the Proms in 1918 and it had several more in the days immediately following the Armistice; Sir Henry Wood also did the honours for The Jovial Huntsman, a rondo for orchestra, in 1919, and for the prelude The Shrine in the Wood and the symphonic march The Sun God, in 1925. |