George Lloyd, anyone?

[amateur51]

Stephen many thanks for copying that and for your comments, thought-provoking. I'm still working out what I think of GL's music. Need to catch yesterday's and today's COTW...

I'm with Stephen Whitaker - George Lloyd's music just isn't sufficiently memorable for me.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm with Stephen Whitaker - George Lloyd's music just isn't sufficiently memorable for me.

I guess if I were told the music had been composed by a British composer in the 1920s I would feel better disposed towards it, even though it would have been conservative even back then. I'm not surprised to discover from the Heffer article above that Lloyd was a Tory.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why must composers be expected to write in a particular style simply because the people around them are doing so?
I do realise that the human race is descended from sheep rather that apes, but we still have minds of our own?

[amateur51]

Why must composers be expected to write in a particular style simply because the people around them are doing so?
I do realise that the human race is descended from sheep rather that apes, but we still have minds of our own?

I'm not sure that it's a matter of expectation but more a possibility that if there is a style development going on, then it might be anticipated that a contemporary composer would 'have a go' and either keep going or reject that experiment.

[ahinton]

I guess if I were told the music had been composed by a British composer in the 1920s I would feel better disposed towards it, even though it would have been conservative even back then. I'm not surprised to discover from the Heffer article above that Lloyd was a Tory.

Heffer's comment, like most of its type, says far more about Heffer than it does about Lloyd and still less about his music. I am not inclined to believe that Lloyd's political allegiances made any material impact on the manner in which he wrote music and, as for Lloyd's remark about lack of a need for any subsidy for composers, I think that it was both ill-judged and taken out of context by Heffer; Lloyd made precious little money from his music until the 1980s and, whilst he certainly had it in him to be quite a shrewd and skilled businessman, growing carnations and mushrooms didn't make his music small any better or even result in its mushroom growth. It's also worth remembering that he made far more money out of timely selling of his market garden business than he did out of running it because land prices had suddenly trebled (I knew a farmer who did the same with his farm near Bristol at around the same time, i.e. made far more from selling it for housing development than he ever did from running it as a business); don't get me wrong, I'm glad tht Lloyd was able to do this, because that is largely what gave him the freedom to return to composition thereafter at a time when he was still unable to depend upon royalties and commissions to keep him going. I also appreciate Stephen's posting of the Heffer piece although, whilst not without its truths, it is nevertheless quite badly flawed.

[ahinton]

Why must composers be expected to write in a particular style simply because the people around them are doing so?
I do realise that the human race is descended from sheep rather that apes, but we still have minds of our own?

They aren't but, at the time that Lloyd, Rubbra and other British composers were finding themselves sidelined by BBC and others on the grounds of perceived anachronism and antediluvianism, there was a far more widespread perception that this was what was expected of composers; I see this problem as having been an unfortunate and perhaps unforeseen outgrowth of the need for Britain to catapult itself into the 20th century and come to terms with developments in music in central Europe and elsewhere - something on which Humphrey Searle was focusing even before the Manchester School seized the day. Undue swinging of that particular pendulum was perhaps an almost inevitable consequence.

What interests me about Lloyd but about which I have scant knowledge (and there's precious little biographical literature on Lloyd to help here) is his relationships with and position vis-à-vis some of his other somewhat better known contemporaries and compatriots who continued to write tonal music and of whom some passed through "Cheltenham symphony" territory; I'm thinking here principally of Vaughan Williams, Brian, Bax, Bush, Rubbra, Walton, Berkeley, Tippett, Rawsthorne and Jones before him and Arnold, Simpson and Hoddinott after him and wonder what they thought of his work and he of theirs.

[Roehre]

The "problem" with the appreciation of George Lloyd's music is simply that he's a good composer, a well trained craftsman who also shows he learned his trade well, knows the ins and outs of instrumentation and orchestration and composed tuneful music, but he is not a great or original composer.

The difference between good and great is defined here by Lloyd's stylistic development, or rather, the nearly complete lack of it. There is hardly any noticeble difference in the way his symphonies (e.g.) sound between the very first and his twelfth (or for that matter, between the 1st and 4th piano concertos). Having heard the complete series a couple of times I am afraid I still haven't found real Lloydian fingerprints in his music. And: Tuneful as it most of the time is, how many really big tunes are there in his works, and which particularly and unmistakingly Lloyd?
No stylistic development noticeable therefore. He didn't musically renew or re-invent himself.

As a composer he lived through and should have noticed high romanticism, expressionism, impressionism, neoclassicism, dodecaphony, serialism and post-modernism, but: there aren't many (if at all) musical influences noticeable. I like to point out that the way the two violin concertos are orchestrated -one with strings only, one with winds only as orchestral accompaniment- may mean Stravinsky (piano concerto) or Berg (Kammerkonzert) did influence him in orchestral thinking, but this is AFAIK the exception defining the rule, and he did not use or develop this any further .
Great composers adapt in one way or another, Lloyd hasn't done so IMO.

Of course there are the influences on his music of the terrible ordeals (physically and mentally) he went through, but as such that doesn't define him a great composer.

IMHO Lloyd as composer is in a similar position as all those composers we know of and appreciate from the Baroque, the Classical era, the Romantics and a host of 20C composers who didn't make it to the top or even the second league.

Good music, tuneful, enjoyable certainly. Great? Doubtful.

[ardcarp]

he's a good composer, a well trained craftsman who also shows he learned his trade well, knows the ins and outs of instrumentation and orchestration and composed tuneful music, but he is not a great or original composer.

That more or less sums it up Roehre. At least part of being 'great' is to do something a bit different from what has gone before. Even Elgar and Strauss (who could hardly be said to be modernists) had an original voice. There are several first-rate composers who have also eschewed both serialism and the downright weird (one could cite Lennox Berkeley. Joubert and Rubbra) whose oeuvres are far more original (and IMHO just better) than George Lloyd's...but they still haven't quite acquired the status of 'great', whatever that might mean.

But there's lots of good, non-great music which we can listen to, perform and enjoy.

[Roehre]

But there's lots of good, non-great music which we can listen to, perform and enjoy.

...and which puts the great music in perspective too

[ahinton]

It's one of those discussions that comes around every ten years.


"Simon Heffer on the composer George Lloyd, who died five years ago.
The Spectator
| July 05, 2003 |....

IMHO there's a lot of special pleading here which doesn't stand up to scrutiny. "His own analysis of their distaste was that, in an age where atonalism was de rigueur, he had the temerity to write tunes", rather overlooks the fact that in the era of the "Cheltenham Symphony" atonalism was far from de riguer in the UK and the "Establishment" composers like Britten, Bliss and Walton were writing tonal tunes all over their scores.

I've listened to the Mass recently and feel that the tunes aren't really that memorable and are not matched to the text in a very meaningful way.

Very many thanks for posting this. Let's look at bits of it.

He was England's last romantic composer, and he suffers in death for that label just as much as he did in life. Although his recordings have a large following, and the rare concerts of his music are packed out by devotees, his name is very little known just now. All composers seem to endure a period of unpopularity after their demise: Lloyd's admirers trust that his will not prove permanent.
What a roller-coaster of truths and half-baked assumptions this is! Who says that he was England's last romantic composer and on what evidential grounds? With such a following in the near-aftermath of his death, how could his name have been so little known? Composers do indeed often go out of fashion after their deaths; look what happened to Tippett and even more so what became of Joseph Marx.

He was a patriot and a Tory, who despised composers who sought subsidy to allow them to write self-indulgent and unpleasant works, which is perhaps part of the reason why the musical establishment came to hate him. His own analysis of their distaste was that, in an age where atonalism was de rigueur, he had the temerity to write tunes.
As I have written elsewhere, Lloyd's political allegiances hardly impacted upon his music and, for what it's worth, Alan Bush likewise continued to write tonal music, including symphonies and operas, throughout his life yet was a devout Communist. I have no idea how common or otherwise patriotism of any kind is among British composers of the past century and a half, but I do not imagine Lloyd was a particularly notable exception in this regard or indeed, again, that his patriotism affected the nature of his music.

As I have also written elsewhere, Lloyd's remark about composer subsidy was, I believe, ill-judged and is here minsunderstood, misremembered or both and accordingly taken out of context by Heffer in any case; did Lloyd accept the need for composers to be subsidised if instead of writing "self-indulgent and unpleasant works" (did Lloyd really say that?) they wrote like he did, or was he against composer subsidy per se? What IS such subsidy anyway? - commissions and royalties, being forms of composer remuneration, are arguably "subsidies" of a kind and, in any case, Lloyd got precious few of either until quite late in his career, so how was he supposed to survive and compose? - in other words, did he see it as vital that composers should have very good business heads and generate incomes from founding and running businesses outside of the world of music as he did for a not insubstantial part of his mid-life?

The "musical establishment", as Heffer calls it, did not "hate" Lloyd, it sidelined him - unfairly, perhaps, but one has to ask why it did not particularly sideline Arnold, an only slightly younger English composer who wrote tonal music including symphonies. Did Lloyd really believe, as Heffer seeks to persuade us, that this "establishment" rejected him purely because he did not write atonal music and wrote tunes? He wasn't the only one to suffer under the Glock régime by any means, so there may well be some truth in such a belief if that's what it was, but there's surely far more to it than just that?

Heffer then claims that Lloyd told him that BBC returned his scores to him accompanied by "vicious" replies; my understanding was that BBC returned them unopened with no replies whatsoever. The truth of this will become obvious only if such replies as he received from BBC were to be published but, in the meantime, I take leave to doubt that Lloyd, a man of considerable integrity, would have given one story to Heffer and another to others.

Heffer is right to single out Ogdon for credit for having pushed Lloyd's work with BBC. He is largely right when writing that there is "nothing cheap, tawdry or amateur about his music", to the extent that, even when sailing, as he (Lloyd) was on occasion wont to do, uncomfortably and embarrassingly close to the end-of-pier English-light-music "tradition" or to the kind of jingoistic gesture that is a colossal blot on the landscape of his otherwise fine Fourth Symphony, his work is rarely less than skilfully written - but is that enough? There is also some truth in Heffer's claim that Lloyd did not "fit in with the prejudices of the contemporary musical establishment, a body too much motivated by snobbery and cliquism", though this is, I think, less of an issue today and was at the time Heffer wrote this than it had been during the middle part of the composer's life.

I didn't know about the French station broadcasting an 80th birthday programme of his work; that was quite an achievement for any English composer!

Anyway, that's enough about Heffer! Yes, special pleading; it all too often rears its less than handsome head when views about a composer become as trenchantly polarised as is the case with Lloyd, Brian and a few others. I have encountered such reactions in my work with the music of Sorabji, where an acolytic attitude of "Sorabji can do no wrong" can find itself seated uncomfortably adjacent to "Sorabji's all just overlong, overwritten self-indulgent rubbish"; more sensibly critical (and I use the term here in its literal rather than pejorative sense) appraisal goes out of the window too often.

I find most of Lloyd that I've so far heard to lack sufficient individuality but, that said, he's no where near the kind of third-rate composer as which some still seek to portray him. Is the Fourth Symphony his "masterpiece", as Heffer (using the term in a way in which it shouldn't be but in which it is most widely understood today) would have us believe? With a more convincing rather than desperately disappointing conclusion, it might well be up there among his most important creative achievements but, for me, nothing but nothing of his that I've yet heard comes close to the Seventh Symphony.

Anyway, after all that - Happy Birthday, George!

[ahinton]

That more or less sums it up Roehre. At least part of being 'great' is to do something a bit different from what has gone before. Even Elgar and Strauss (who could hardly be said to be modernists) had an original voice. There are several first-rate composers who have also eschewed both serialism and the downright weird (one could cite Lennox Berkeley. Joubert and Rubbra) whose oeuvres are far more original (and IMHO just better) than George Lloyd's...but they still haven't quite acquired the status of 'great', whatever that might mean.

But there's lots of good, non-great music which we can listen to, perform and enjoy.

Good points (as indeed ae Roehre's) - but Strauss not a "modernist"? Ever? Can you imagine how Salome and Elektra would have gone down when their ink was still drying on their illustrious pages in the decade before Lloyd was even born?!...

[ardcarp]

Good point, ahinton, but The Four Last Songs? Glorious....but not deserting his tried and tested harmonic language.

[ahinton]

Good point, ahinton, but The Four Last Songs? Glorious....but not deserting his tried and tested harmonic language.

Yes, of course - and much else besides - but Strauss arguably courted a kind of avant-gardism for a while from the age of around 40 that, like Schönberg's, grew naturally from what he'd been doing previously, with which those magnificent songs are far from incompatible; the young Strauss apparently once said that he would begin as an iconoclast and end as an old master, then proceeded to do just that (give or take) and, although he described himself as one of the best second-rank composers, his finest work is strongly suggestive that the evidently percipient self-knowledge of his youth let him down rather on that.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I've always struggled with George Lloyd, I was encouraged quite a number of years ago to try hos music by an enthusiast. I borrowed a CD of the 4th Symphony and was to say the least distinctly unimpressed. Though I've listened to that work quite a few times since, my initial impression hasn't changed. There are some movements and even the odd work which I can respond to,the 1st Symphony I find an impressive work for a such a young composer, the 7th Symphony has some good sections as do the 11th and 12th Symphonies and the Piano Concerti, but taken as a whole the music is pretty anonymous and the ideas often lack real distinction. I was listening to part of the Symphonic Mass from today's COTW and though it started ok, the music became horribly inflated at the end and concluded in music I can only described as banal, and which was dragged out One of Lloyd's weaknesses for me is that he doesn't know when to conclude a movement or section and keeps blustering away in empty gestures.
I really do wish I could find more in his music, but as a Symphonist I just cannot put on a par with composers such as Rubbra, Bax or Arnold, let alone Simpson and RVW.

[EdgeleyRob]

Some marvelous and wonderfully informed postings on here,thanks folks.
GL has maybe gained one or two more fans,but clearly many people still can't connect to this music,but such is life.
Suffolkcoastal,I can't agree that the Symphonic Mass is banal btw.