William Rimmer (music)

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William Rimmer (d. 1936) was a Lancashire composer and conductor of brass band music who was particularly well-known for his marches.

Rimmer was born in Southport in 1862 into a musical family. His father was bandmaster of the Lancashire Volunteer Rifles, and encouraged both William and his brother Robert in their musical studies. At the age of 15 William joined the Southport Rifle band as a side-drummer and then moved onto the cornet, eventually becoming the bands principal cornet soloist. As a young man he made himself into one of the finest cornet players in the country under the eye of Alex Owen at Besses o’ th’ Barn. His prowess on the instrument became well known, and he was engaged as a soloist by many of the best bands of the day. He eventually gave up playing to concentrate on training and conducting bands, and at the height of his fame conducted every winning band at both the Crystal Palace and Belle Vue competitions between 1905 and 1909.

In 1908 he created Fodens Motor Works Band. Only one year later they won the Crystal Palace Championship together. Twenty years on, in the hands of Rimmer's best pupils, the Mortimers, Fodens became the most admired and successful band of all.

Like Owen, Rimmer was a prolific arranger. Unlike Owen, who composed little, he created a vast catalogue of brass band music ranging from marches, waltzes and solos to great selections from the masters. The latter formed an essential element of band programmes as late as 1950. Sadly, with today's easy availability of wall-to-wall classics they have fallen into disuse. Paragons of band scoring, delighting players and audiences equally, they await re-discovery.

Rimmer was a private man who disliked the limelight; a rare disposition for a conductor. His players loved him. To those who played for him - and they were still to be found at Fodens in the fifties - he was Mister Rimmer always; a unique figure of admiration, respect and affection.

Always more interested in music than in prizes, Rimmer gave up contesting after his miraculous win with Fodens in 1909. Competitively, anyway, there was nothing left to achieve. Thereafter until his death in 1936 his contributions to the world of the brass band were in writing and teaching. Both proved vitally important to the band's of the future.

Harry Mortimer was Rimmer's finest disciple, and it was for HM that one of the pieces here included was written; the unusual Les Zephyrs. This solo apart, the present disc contains a collection of pieces often heard on the bandstands of the first half of the century.

Conventional? Yes, but each displaying the restrained musical taste which was Rimmer's personal mark and his permanent contribution to banding everywhere.

For many, Rimmer is The March King. His marches are wonderful pieces, every one with its own unique personality. None has the routine formality, the writing to a formula, which we find in the works of other pretenders to the title. Here are included some we know, like the brilliant Cossack - written for Fodens and faithfully preserved by them to this day - and Slaidburn, equally famous for its tuneful simplicity. Unveiled too is the forgotten but no less wonderful Salome, in a recording which will surely renew that lady's popularity. Others equally fine pieces include the likes of Punchinello and the much loved Ravenswood.

The present disc begins with the Patriotic Overture Rule, Britannia, simple music, based on two tunes, one well known and one less so, Arne's Come if you dare! It contains a really extraordinary curiosity; a cadenza for tenor horn. With Les Zephyrs among the solos we have Hailstorm - much played by Mortimer with Fodens, though rarely in as complete a form as here - the likeable Arizona Belle and for the Euphonium the Jenny Jones variations. A rare performance, this, played complete for the first time in many years. The solo playing is everywhere fine, and the two cornet polkas are notable for their tempo Howarth has here returned the form to its danceable original. One can hear the notes, that is always useful.

None of this music is difficult. Here it is given dedicated performance by band and conductor; bandsmen of today and tomorrow who remember with gratitude an enormous debt to a great bandsman of the long past.

On 29th July 2007, Phillip Hunt devoted his weekly "Sounds of Brass" radio programme on BBC Radio Devon to Rimmer and his works.