This Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of American composer, arranger and conductor Leroy Anderson. You may not recognize his name, but his light classics and orchestral miniatures pervade our popular culture. If you are old enough to have watched "The Late Show" on Channel 2, you would know his piece called "The Syncopated Clock", which served as the theme song for this television show. If you ever went to a school concert, chances are good that you heard his "Bugler's Holiday". During the Christmas season, his ubiquitous "Sleigh Ride" serves as an enticement to shop.
Anderson was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he studied piano and organ with his mother and Henry Gideon, and double bass with Gaston Dufresne. His undergraduate years were spent at Harvard where his composition teachers were Walter Piston and George Enescu. Anderson followed his exuberant instincts by conducting the Harvard Band and playing accordion. His unusual arrangements of Harvard University's songs were heard by the young conductor of the Boston Pops Arthur Fiedler, who had him orchestrate and compose original works for the Pops. His 1938 pieces "Jazz Pizzicato" and "Jazz Legato," became hits and were followed by more than 50 other light classics like "Governor Bradford March", "The Typewriter", "Blue Tango", "The Penny-Whistle Song", etc. His specialty of light classical music calls to mind Franz von Suppe's operetta overtures and songs, Antonin Dvorak's Slavonic Dances and Johann Strauss's waltzes and polkas.
Among the honors posthumously bestowed upon him were a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1976 for his contribution to the recording industry, a bandstand dedicated it to him on Woodbury Connecticut's North Green in 1986, election to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988, the naming of Harvard University Band headquarters In 1995 and the dedication of the corner of Chatham and Crawford Streets as Leroy Anderson Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 31, 2003.