George Lloyd, anyone?

[ardcarp]

From my standpoint of complete ignorance, it's hard to believe he was born in the same year as Britten.

[vinteuil]

... joy of joys, next week we escape from the ghastly mediocrity of this "British" music month...

[ahinton]

From my standpoint of complete ignorance, it's hard to believe he was born in the same year as Britten.

...and Lutosławski - but that's all an illustration of the sheer diversity of approach to composition to which we're now well accustomed, surely?...

[Nick Armstrong]

... joy of joys, next week we escape from the ghastly mediocrity of this "British" music month...

"...please do not ... post messages which are designed to be provocative..."



In mischievous, sweeping mood today, vinbritannique?

[Serial_Apologist]

From my standpoint of complete ignorance, it's hard to believe he was born in the same year as Britten.

Prompted by others here with whom I am usually in accord in terms of musical tastes I have been trying to get to grips with his music. On the one hand I can't help but sympathise following his terrible WW2 experiences, as outlined today; on the other his musical gestures were based in an earlier era so much more imaginately and evocatively covered in their own time by Bax and Moeran. Is/was he really as tuneful as is being made out?

[vinteuil]

In mischievous, sweeping mood today, vinbritannique?

.. o, just looking forward to next week, when I see we have a grown-up composer, Ravel, as Composer of the Week

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm soooo looking forward to Edgeley Rob and teamsaint getting home from work....

[Serial_Apologist]

.. o, just looking forward to next week, when I see we have a grown-up composer, Ravel, as Composer of the Week

Les Apaches. a group around Ravel, actually - possibly the composer equivalent of Les Nabis, a contemporaneous group of Post-Impressionist painters? Music by Delage I haven't heard before, Inghelbrecht, de Severac and Ladmirault - names only to me, Jean Absil, a Belgian I think, Schmitt, Stravinsky (who was in the group for a while) and of course Maurice R. Should be one of the most interesting COTWs ever.

[Nick Armstrong]

Les Apaches. a group around Ravel, actually - possibly the composer equivalent of Les Nabis, a contemporaneous group of Post-Impressionist painters? Music by Delage I haven't heard before, Inghelbrecht, de Severac and Ladmirault - names only to me, Jean Absil, a Belgian I think, Schmitt, Stravinsky (who was in the group for a while) and of course Maurice R. Should be one of the most interesting COTWs ever.

Agreed - it will be fascinating. But so is the George Lloyd series this week

[EdgeleyRob]

I remember reading a George Lloyd quote somewhere "I write music that I have to write" or something like that,saying he had an compelling urge to write the music he did,whether or not there was any chance of it being performed.
To me his music is unique,fresh sounding,maybe unashamedly tonal but none the worse for that.
The 'epic' middle period Symphonies and the Symphonic Mass I find quite moving.
This music has been part of my life for many many years and will continue to be so.
Remember,if we all liked the same stuff it would be a very dull world.

[pastoralguy]

I remember reading a George Lloyd quote somewhere "I write music that I have to write" or something like that,saying he had an compelling urge to write the music he did,whether or not there was any chance of it being performed.
To me his music is unique,fresh sounding,maybe unashamedly tonal but none the worse for that.
The 'epic' middle period Symphonies and the Symphonic Mass I find quite moving.
This music has been part of my life for many many years and will continue to be so.
Remember,if we all liked the same stuff it would be a very dull world.

Bravo, Sir. Well said. And remember, if you don't like his music, there are plenty of alternatives. No one is forcing anyone to listen to his music.

[Stanfordian]

I remember reading a George Lloyd quote somewhere "I write music that I have to write" or something like that,saying he had an compelling urge to write the music he did,whether or not there was any chance of it being performed.
To me his music is unique,fresh sounding,maybe unashamedly tonal but none the worse for that.
The 'epic' middle period Symphonies and the Symphonic Mass I find quite moving.
This music has been part of my life for many many years and will continue to be so.
Remember,if we all liked the same stuff it would be a very dull world.

Greetings EdgeleyRob, Yes I like to hear George Lloyd's music from time to time. The Symphony No.4 'Arctic' is the one that I play most often. I also enjoy hearing the 10th Symphony 'November Journeys' for brass. As I mentioned in an earlier post I saw Lloyd conducting several of his works with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester around the time he made these recordings.

[ardcarp]

Can you describe his conducting, Stanfordian? Was he functional (Adrian Boult-sh), florid, expressive, more than just competent? I'm rather fascinated by composers' conducting of their own work. I've seen Britten in the flesh (operas) and there's that wonderful film of Stravinsky doing Firebird. I suppose Boulez must be the master. Pity Mahler was pre-movie-with-sound. Anyone else have first-hand experiences?

[Pabmusic]

I have enjoyed Lloyd's music since the first few recordings appeared on Lyrita. The most affecting thing of all, I find, is the slow movement of the Seventh Symphony. It is a shame that such music can attract the number of snobbish comments that it does, or that those who like it feel the need to justify liking it.

[ahinton]

I have enjoyed Lloyd's music since the first few recordings appeared on Lyrita. The most affecting thing of all, I find, is the slow movement of the Seventh Symphony. It is a shame that such music can attract the number of snobbish comments that it does, or that those who like it feel the need to justify liking it.

I find that his capacity to disappoint rather than wholly engage is rather too prevalent. I agree with what you say about the 7th symphony, but then this work as a whole strikes me as his finest (or certainly the finest symphonic work that I have heard from him); it seems somehow to fulfil more convincingly what he seemed to be striving for in his 4th which, whilst clearly deeply felt, seems to me to end up overstating its case, especially as it moves towards its close. His importance in keeping the English symphonic torch alight in the 1930s cannot be ignored and there's little doubt that his early works showed more than mere promise, but too often since then he seems to me to promise rather more than he delivers.

I have no patience for the George Lloyd snobbery either; it is as unnecessary as it is unhelpful.

His mastery of orchestral means is rarely in doubt and the 8th symphony is perhaps as fine a testament to the sheer brilliance of his orchestral skill as any. I have to admit to being less familiar with his post-9th symphony onwards, so I suppose that I should really get to grips with his last period before making up my mind too much but, so far, I find that the 7th symphony plumbs depths found nowhere else in his work that I have yet encountered. I don't have a particular problem with his adherence to a tonal language or with the diatonicism of his melodic writing; if that's what made him George Lloyd (and clearly it was), he'd have let his audiences down by doing anything else. It's what you say within a language that surely counts more than the language in which you say it. In the light of that, his rejection by BBC and others at one time was reprehensible treatment, as is now perhaps more widely properly appreciated than was the case a the time (Rubbra and others had not dissimilar problems during the Glock era, though somehow Arnold seemed largely to escape these).

All that said, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...hypnotist.html gives some otherwise less familiar insights into the kinds of ways in which Lloyd's creative juices got going and, I think, might help to restore some balance in the ways in which some people think of him.

Curiously, his move to Dorset coincided more or less with that of Sorabji in the early 1950s; more curiously still, Lloyd moved to London some two decades later to spend the rest of his life in an apartment in the same block in Regent's Park from which Sorabji had moved to Dorset. I have no evidence that the two ever corresponded, let alone met and I don't think that either knew of the other's work.

Lloyd certainly deserves his place as a British symphonist of note and the reassessments of his work in his centenary year are welcome. I just happen to feel that the polarities of viewpoint surrounding him remain rather too great and it would be a good thing if the reappraisals of his music this year help to weaken them.