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(from: http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/5th.htm)
Raymond Loughborough was primarily a song composer of the "superior ballad" type and while his date is not readily to hand, his "floreat" period was from around 1925 to around 1955.
Loughborough's songs, of which I have discovered a note of more than 40, covered a fair range. Their publication dates span the period 1922 (Captain Danny) to 1952 (Snowfall). Most popular were At Sundown, The Homing Ship and The Lover and The Song. A Song in the Night had a violin obbligato; it was aired by the great baritone singer Topliss Green in Doncaster in 1934. Many titles have a feel of the sea: The Tune the Bos'un Played, My Haven, Mortenhoe, The Little Ships, inspired, as were so many British composers at the time, by the Dunkirk evacuation, and the four song sequence Old Ships. Like so many others at that period he turned to making arrangements of 18th Century English songs. A few choral songs like The Farmer's Lad (AATB) appeared and the BBC Catalogue includes some orchestral works by him, though all of it, like the Jevington Suite, Passing Shadows, Sea Dreams and Summer Noon (for violin, saxophone, cornet and orchestra) is actually orchestrated by other hands: Sidney Baynes, Arthur Wood and H.M. Higgs, perhaps from piano originals in each case. Loughborough also dabbled in the light genre piece for chamber ensemble, Mirage and Song of Sunset, both for piano trio, appearing in 1927 and 1938 respectively. |