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Frank Tapp (1883-1953), is an almost forgotten figure
in British light music, yet in some ways he was an almost
classic light music man and sixty years and more ago his music
was played a lot. He is credited with composing a symphony
but much of his output was light orchestral. Relatively early
in his career he directed the Bath Pump Room Orchestra (1910-1919)
when that ensemble was larger than it is now. I suspect that
his two light concert suites are worthy of revival. One, English
Landmarks, comprising a waltz "Ascot", "Tintern
Abbey" and the march "Whitehall" is topographical
in inspiration like so many of those suites were; the other,
Land of Fancy, whose three movements are "A Swing
Song at Morn", "Sprite’s Lullaby" and
"The Pixies’ Parade" is indeed more fanciful.
Of Tapp’s single movements, most substantial
is the overture Beachy Head, one of several maritime
ones in the English repertory; others include the entr’acte
A Wayside Melody, Woodland Echoes (for Bosworth,
as was Land of Fancy) and the library miniature, yet
again for Bosworth, Fighter Command (1942), cheerful
and encouraging rather than heroic – and thus, though
similar in subject, a good contrast with the almost contemporary
Spitfire Prelude by Sir William Walton. Tapp was not
of course, a purely orchestral composer. His Waltz Idyll
a la Viennoise (1938) was published for piano solo and
examples of his song output were The Green Lanes of England
and, from 1934, Highgate Hill.
Philip Scowcroft
This biography first appeared in ‘Journal
Into Melody’, December 2010.
Two compositions by Frank Tapp are available on Guild Music’s
‘Golden Age of Light Music’ CDs:
GLCD5107 Beachy Head Overture
GLCD5164 Fighter Command
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