Robert Farnon: Holiday Flight

I was always envious of my aunt who had flown out to Mallorca (or as we called it then Majorca) in the late 1950s with her girlfriend. Although tourism had begun in the 1920s and 1930s, it was not until the post-Second World War era that mass British holidaymaking began there. Back then, boarding a Vickers Viscount or a de Havilland Comet was a sophisticated ritual, involving Sunday best suits and the hum of turboprops. Greater prosperity and cheaper air travel made Mallorca a mainstream destination, with visitors enjoying the sun, beaches, and easy-going life. And then, of course, there was the cheap booze.

Robert Farnon’s miniature Holiday Flight epitomises this social shift. It was composed around 1958 during the post-war golden age of British light music. It reflects the optimism and glamour of commercial air travel during this period. Enthusiastically, it presents flying as adventurous, novel, and stylish. It is a quintessential example of light orchestral writing that distils Farnon’s melodic appeal and cinematic sweep into a small, evocative piece that functions like a musical postcard, capturing mood and imagery with effortless clarity.

Although there is some musical onomatopoeia in this piece, it is more a celebration of the possibility of air travel rather than a actual description. Farnon avoids the literal roar of engines, choosing instead to replicate the feeling of soaring above a layer of stratocumulus clouds. It opens mid-flight rather than taking off or landing. The mood is buoyant and propulsive, with sweeping strings, but sometimes pizzicato, smart woodwind figures and muted brass. Yet in the concluding bars there is a definite sense that the plane is landing, with all the pleasure of a sun-soaked holiday lying ahead.

My only memento of my aunt’s holiday is a small drum with a picture of a toreador on it, a pair of castanets and a pack of Spanish stamps (these last sadly long disappeared.) These mementos were (for me) the exotic spoils of a new era, brought back from a world that felt impossibly far from 1950s Glasgow. It would be some fifty years later that I would arrive at Palma, Mallorca, on board a cruise ship.

Listen to Robert Farnon’s Holiday Flight on YouTube, here. The composer is conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.