Frederic Bayco, sometimes spelt Fredric Bayco (1913 – 1970) was an English organist and composer of light music,Sydney Organ.com, accessed 16 November 2010 best known for his Tudor pastiche Elizabethan Masque.Peter Gammond, The Oxford Companion to Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 1991) p.345Hyperion Records, list of recordings, accessed 16 November 2010 Born in London (as Frederick James Baycock) he attended Brighton School of Music, took lessions from organist R H Timberley and composer Eric Thiman, and attained his ARCO.David Alan Simmons, Who's Who in Music and Musicians International Directory, (Hafner Pub. Co., 1962), p.16 He was later made a fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO).Organ biography, accessed 16 November 2010
Before the war Bayco was a cinema organist (at the Gaumont, Union Street in Plymouth and on the Gaumont theatre circuit)Western Evening Herald, 28 October 1999, p. 10 and began to perform frequent theatre organ recitals, often broadcast by the BBC, at the Dominion Theatre in Tottenham Court Road, London and elsewhere.Radio Times, Issue 686, 22 November 1936, p. 81 After war service in the Royal Air Force he became organist and director of music at Holy Trinity Church, Paddington, and also taught organ and musical appreciation at St Gabriel's College, London from 1948.Biography, Hyperion Records He was Chairman of the Light Music Society in the 1960s.
Elizabethan Masque, a piece looking back on the ceremony and etiquette of the first Elizabethan era in the early years of the second, was composed in 1957. The 'pastorale' In Olden Times for piano (1958) takes similar inspiration. Other pieces that became well known include Lady Beautiful (1954), and his marches Royal Windsor and Marche Militaire.Recorded on A Rifles Bandstand: The Band and Bugles of the Rifles, SRC Records (2009) A Scherzo for organ was published by Edwin Ashdown in 1951.
Like many composers of the light music genre, he contributed a number of pieces to music libraries, such as KPM.For instance, Quality Street and Two Period Pieces, Group Forty Orchestra, KPM 060 (196) (These were sometimes written under pseudonyms, including Frederick Boyce, Guy Desslyn, Peter Keane and William Field). As a result, his pieces Inferno and Finger of Fear have ended up being frequently used in programmes such as Count Duckula, The Ren & Stimpy Show and SpongeBob SquarePants.Fredric Bayco at the Internet Movie Database, accessed 16 November 2010, accessed 16 November 2010 Many of his KPM library compositions have a historical or martial feel, for example the mock-heroic Joust.KPM Music , accessed 16 November 2010 Other pieces appear to have unusual titles, for example Bear in a Buggy.Philip L Scowcroft, Music and Road Transport music, a Fourth Selection, accessed 16 November 2010
Bayco was married to the contralto Rosina Verne. In the 1950s they were living at 85 Woodlands, London NW10.Who's Who in Music, Shaw Publishing, 1950 edition, p. 15
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