Marigold: The Music of Billy Mayerl [Hardcover]

Peter Dickinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2000

Billy Mayerl, as pianist-composer-celebrity-educator, was a unique figure in British music from the 1920s to the 1950s. While known to several generations as the composer of Marigold, Mayerl's accomplishments were amazingly varied. One of the most significant contributors to the genre of novelty piano, which succeeded ragtime and overlapped with early jazz, he also wrote more contemplative pieces belonging to the English pastoral tradition. Between the wars he became a familiar figure in the music halls, playing two pianos at once and taking requests; meanwhile he was composing for musical comedies involving some of England's best-known stars. He also started the Billy Mayerl School in 1926 to teach syncopated piano playing and branches opened across England and abroad. This book--which includes a full CD of Mayerl's historic playing--is the first detailed study of his work and should ensure a permanent place for Mayerl and his music.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`there is enough here to keep the most avid devotee enthralled for quite some time.' Mike Harth, The Billy Mayerl Society Journal no 12, December 1999

`comprehensive and definitive volume ... Dickinson has produced a highly-readable biography of a man who became a national institution. Happily, he has also avoided too much technical jargon thus making the text accessible to the layman as well as the academic connoisseur ... deserves a place on the shelves of all discerning musicologists and students of social history.' This England, Spring 2000,

`recognition of Mayerl has been taken a stage further by this fine new book - the first to do him full justice ... The book's title suggests that this is a study of the music; but it is every bit as much a detailed biography, eloquently set against the social history of the time ... Not the least attraction of the book is a superbly produced CD of his own recordings of his music in chronological sequence ... in producing this admirable survey of a unique musician, Peter Dickinson has done a great service not just to Mayerl, but to the wider field of British music in all its manifestations.' Andrew Lamb, Gramophone, March 2000

`Essential contribution to the safe garnering of that vast harvested swathe of twentieth-century music, the entertainment tradition... a good model for the critical analysis of light music... we have here the authoritative account of a figure who deserved one.' Stephen Banfield, The Musical Times, Summer 2000

`The book is a fitting memorial to a unique man.' The Stage, 5th Oct. 2000.

`the most telling details are of the time itself, making the book, among other things, a fascinating work of social history.' Alan E.Williams

About the Author

Peter Dickinson, Head of Music, Institute of United States Studies, University of London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198162138
• ISBN-13: 978-0198162131
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,291,091 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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