In A Chinese Temple Garden Concert Band - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1433990

Albert William Ketèlbey (1875-1959) was an English composer, conductor and pianist, best known for his short pieces of light orchestral music. He was born in Birmingham and moved to London in 1889 to study at Trinity College of Music. After a brilliant studentship he did not pursue the classical career predicted for him, becoming musical director of the Vaudeville Theatre before gaining fame as a composer of light music and as a conductor of his own works. One of his earliest works in the genre, 'In a Monastery Garden' (1915), sold over a million copies and brought him to widespread notice; his later musical depictions of exotic scenes caught the public imagination and established his fortune. Such works as 'In a Persian Market' (1920), 'In a Chinese Temple-Garden' (1923), and 'In the Mystic Land of Egypt' (1931) became best-sellers in print and on records; by the late 1920s he was Britain's first millionaire composer. Ketèlbey's popularity began to wane during the Second World War and his originality also declined; many of his post-war works were re-workings of older pieces and he increasingly found his music ignored by the BBC. In 1949 he moved to the Isle of Wight, where he spent his retirement, and he died at home in obscurity. On the last night of the 2009 Proms season, the orchestra performed his 'In a Monastery Garden', marking the fiftieth anniversary of Ketèlbey's death—the first time his music had been included in the festival's finale. This arrangement of 'In a Chinese Temple-Garden' has been created with the modern concert band in mind and is sensitively cross-cued for smaller ensembles.