Who composed the music used in The Fish-Slapping Dance?

The music used in The Fish-Slapping Dance was composed by Edward German.

The sketch uses “Merrymakers’ Dance,” a piece from German’s Nell Gwyn suite. Sir Edward German was an English composer active from 1862 to 1936, best known for light orchestral and theatrical music. His buoyant, old-fashioned orchestral style gives the sketch a deliberately formal setting for its increasingly ridiculous violence.

That contrast is central to the joke. Michael Palin performs a repetitive, almost ceremonial dance while slapping John Cleese with small fish. The elegant music suggests a traditional folk or stage dance, but the routine ends when Cleese uses a much larger trout to knock Palin into the water.

The music is sometimes confused with John Philip Sousa because Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” is the famous opening theme of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It is also easy to mistake other classical composers in the show’s musical catalogue for the composer of this sketch’s accompaniment. Here, the specific source is German’s “Merrymakers’ Dance,” not the programme’s opening march.