By the Sleepy Lagoon

From Wind Repertory Project
Eric Coates

Eric Coates (arr. Dan Godfrey)


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General Info

Year: 1930 /
Duration: c. 4:00
Difficulty: III (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Orchestra
Publisher: Chappell
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - £49.95


Instrumentation

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Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

By the Sleepy Lagoon is a light-orchestral valse serenade by British composer Eric Coates, written in 1930. In 1940 American songwriter Jack Lawrence added lyrics with Coates' approval; the resulting song, Sleepy Lagoon, became a popular-music standard of the 1940s.

Eric Coates was inspired to compose By the Sleepy Lagoon in 1930 while overlooking a beach in West Sussex. His son, Austin Coates, later remembered:

It was inspired in a very curious way and not by what you might expect. It was inspired by the view on a warm, still summer evening looking across the "lagoon" from the east beach at Selsey towards Bognor Regis. It's a pebble beach leading steeply down, and the sea at that time is an incredibly deep blue of the Pacific. It was that impression, looking across at Bognor, which looked pink -- almost like an enchanted city with the blue of the Downs behind it --that gave him the idea for the Sleepy Lagoon. He didn't write it there; he scribbled it down, as he used to, at extreme speed, and then simply took it back with him to London where he wrote and orchestrated it.

The piece is a slow waltz for full orchestra that lasts roughly four minutes. Michael Jameson observed that the piece is "elegantly orchestrated" with "a shapely theme for violins presented in the salon-esque genre entirely characteristic of British light music in the 1920s and '30s".

- Program Note from Wikipedia


Media

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State Ratings

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Performances

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Works for Winds by This Composer


Resources