Master
of the melodic line....
A first brush with George Lloyd in concert or on record
is a surprisingly fresh immersion into an idiom that emerges
from and continues the Romantic.
Discussions of serious music, like words devoted to art and
literature, have a way of slipping into comfortable categorisation
The nature of the actual artist involved emerges only by chance if
at all. It is important, in talking of composer and conductor George
Lloyd, to set aside preconceptions. He has been pursuing a life
course that flies in the face of academia and simply begs to be
set upon by the avowed guardians of musical probity This is not
bloody-minded obstinacy or a high disregard for where music in
general is headed. but the straightforward pursuit of his love
of tunefulness and tonality.
Lloyd's is an instrumental vernacular wholesomely liberated from
all those wretched "isms" he feels have plagued. even enmired.
music in the past seven decades: neoclassicism, serialism.
minimalism, and the like A first brush with George Lloyd in
concert or on record is a surprisingly fresh immersion into an
idiom that emerges from and continues the Romantic. The man loves
"the Big Tune." as he puts it. A marvellous palette of moods and-one
does not hesitate to tap such a word with Lloyd in
mind-flavourspervades the four piano concerti, eleven symphonies, and
other works. Serenity can precede gaiety, to be followed by
sombreness, propulsive energy, whipped-cream lightness, fire,
and a resolutely positive home stretch. No main tonality usually
shouts itself to the skies, yet there is often a home key of sorts
that imposes a steady perspective within which other musical
happenings can proceed. securely supported by a sense of place,
of rightness.
This is a British, though not an English, symphonist,
so the listener should not be especially startled to encounter
modality from time to time. However, the beloved folksiness
and profusion of pentatonic cadences that imbue Flos
Campi. The Lark Ascending, and the larger Finzi orchestral
writing are essentially absent. Lloyd neither dispenses
with conventional organisation of the whole work at hand,
nor does he slavishly glue his melodic and developmental
inspirations to a rigid frame. His unbounded invectiveness
- he pens glorious tunes and has a very fortunate harmonic
facility in which his technique is never noticeable -
is highly organised, but it is because his seminal elements
in each work often derive from something as modest as
a three-note motif or pulse that he brings such fluidity
and unity to an entire work. Opening movements may give
more than a casual nod to traditional sonata-allegro form.
An inner movement - there are 3, 4, and 5-movement compositions
- might resemble a familiar scherzo, andante, adagio,
or largo without remotely following Dvorakian or Sibelian
models. Mahler's ethereally spacious development of a
movement resembles George Lloyd's, but Lloyd is tighter,
terser (as who isn't, say the Mahlerphobes), briefer infeel
and actual timings.
Lloyd is a Celt, with a hefty dollop of Welsh in him.
His native St. Ives, on the Cornish north-west coast facing
a moody Atlantic seascape. was also where he grew up.
Over a good tea his Swiss wife left in the study of his
apartment near London's Baker Street, he drily remarked
that "the Celtic mind is different than the English mind.
The Celt has an instinct that looks to please the other
person, so this may be why I know - not just
think. that the composer should be writing something the
public can grasp and like. The Englishman may not care
a damn whether or not what he does is pleasing. because
that's his way. So on he goes. according to his own light.
We Celts, on the other hand, are mindful of joy in music.
We are a different race. You know,~ he muses, "in some
Celtic tongues there is no word for no. We acknowledge
the dark but always seek the light somewhere."
A British symphonist? "People are always saying my music
is very English, but I have little sympathy for 'the English
School!.' Elgar and Ireland emphatically excepted. I learned
much from Verdi. whom I adore. Also from the Beethoven
quartets. My father [who was the librettist of his two
early operas] knew the early Italian operas. Paisiello.
Pergolesi. Cimarosa. Donizetti. Bellini. I used to go
all over Britain hearing the travelling companies do Turandot,
Puccini's best and one of the greatest works of all time.
Oh, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius were an undeniable influence
on me. too.
Health problems as a child precluded a normal education and
actually gave him a splendid chance to amass an eclectic background
in all the important areas of learning. He was able to do some
studies at Trinity College, London. where non- enrolled students
can have access to much of the academic life. The manager of the
London office of Erard. the Paris piano house. knew the musical
Lloyd family through his mother. and an introduction to great
English violinist Albert Sammons resulted in very fruitful lessons
for the budding young violinist. His compositional explorations
with Harry Farjeon freed him of technical restraints on his love
of melody and curiosity about harmony. Thus freed of constraining
"grammatical" lacks, he was able to contemplate composition.
Without the formal conservatory training deemed a sine
qua non by the establishment figures, this young
composer, born in 1913. created the corner of his field
he chose to address with the First Symphony and the operas
Iernin and The Serf. The three early
symphonies had premieres. the operas their London runs,
and then Hitler's war broke out. |
Members
of the Royal Marine Band, which he joined early in the
conflict. were gunners when not engaged in musical duties.
Lloyd, like far too many fellow Britons. was subjected
to the unbelievably hazardous conditions of the Arctic
convoys keeping the USSR supplied with war material. In
1942 at the height of German destruction of naval merchant
shipping on the Murmansk run, George Lloyd underwent severe
shell shock and became one of the innumerable institutionalised
maritime victims of the worst period sailors have known.
He and his wife travelled to Switzerland at war's end. There. he
painfully embarked on the decades-long road to integration back
into a peaceful working world. Composition was neither easy nor
quick. as it had been so many years before. but the Fourth Symphony
slowly sprawled onto paper and was graced with its double bar by the
end af 1946. Its next sibling was the Fifth. which took shape while
the Lloyds occupied rooms above a barn's spacious lower threshing
floor. tucked on the shore of the Lake of Neuchatel. The return to
England that had been inevitable plunged the renascent composer and
his determined spouse into the mushroom business. They lived just
south of Sherborne Abbey, in Dorset.
The struggle to return to full creative effectiveness
lasted years. "They were invisible years for me. Charles
Grove started a commemorative project for the City of
Liverpool. then scratched it. I sent scores off to the
BBC. They came back. usually without comment. Then a young
firebrand of a pianist. right at his artistic peak John
Ogdon took an interest in me and had me write 'Scapegoat',
the First Piano Concerto. performed it splendidly with
the BBC, and things started to happen. I should add that
it took his and my wife's determined efforts to interest
me in that instrument.~ There are another three concerti
for it, so his former anathema for the keyboard may have
softened just a bit. "My wife egged me on, prodding me
to understand and feel for the piano. This started a new
facet of my revival you know, doing something difficult
like that."
A return to public exposure placed Lloyd back on the podium. too.
He is a highly communicative conductor who savours the character of
an orchestra. The body of musicians emerges as a clear amalgam of
personalities. with a corporate presence and vitality the man knows
how to draw out of them. He revels in this aspect of his work. All
the reviews to date indicate that he is singularly successful in
putting across his points in his own and others' music.
This brings us to the question, 'Why the need for a Romantic at
this rather late date' A sizable chunk of the music world shed the
requisite tears when Romanticism as a mainline phenomenon mercifully
flickered out with the deaths in the 1940s of Richard Strauss.
Rachmaninoff, and pianists of Emil V. Sauer's generation. One
reason may be that Lloyd fills a gap, and a huge one. He is highly
original. There are suggestions of the more aggressive Walton
hallmarks. or of Howard Hanson's Romantic surge. Mahler, Sibelius,
Puccini (Cristantemi notably), Elgar's most lean textures, Bruckner
without God weighing his shoulder down. and Bax's ability to
scintillate all come through. and yet....
As mentioned, he is original. And tonal. He pulls off transitions from
limpid grace to Iyric simplicity, thrusting merrily into sprightly
tunes and orchestrations that give a clue to his Celtic make-up.
Tempestuousness in a Lloyd work is no end in itself, but often the
preparation for a resolution into great calm and expansiveness. The
British fondness for the woodwind choir emerges, but never at the
expense of a thoroughly engaging textural freshness and springiness.
The music is accessible, pleasing, and colourful. To the listener's
delight. a second hearing, often a paler experience, unearths new
structural solidity, finely wrought detail. and a marvellous sense
that this is music to hear again, then look forward to further. Iater
encounters There is no mistaking one symphony for another, nor does
the Lloyd vernacular pale.
This season, radio and concert audiences will hear what the Chicago
Symphony and Orchestra Hall have to say about Mr. Lloyd and his work.
One cannothelp but wonder, with some amusement, if the situation that
happened in Britain, as his works were introduced in the mid
seventies, will be repeated - whether the concert-goer will have
his reaction and the critic, as is his wont, will proceed to fill
the appropriate pages of the dailies and monthlies with a polyglot
jumble of assessments, judgments, and "eurekas' It happened the
other side of the big pond, and appears about to happen here as
well.
The happy trove of recordings now available - some dozen major
pieces. with others coming - will be more accessible to the buyer
of compact discs than to the vinyl buyer, as there are more CDs than
records. Lyrita. Trax, and Conifer in the UK and America's relatively
new Albany Records have been exploring the Lloyd warehouse of
manuscripts Lloyd and Edward Downes conducted nearly all of them
There is a marvellous symphony, the Tenth, for thirteen brass
instruments; this work greatly enhances a large but regrettably
spotty brass ensemble repertoire. As pianists battering their
heads against the Grieg and Tchaikovsky log jam discover Lloyd's
concerti. the public will benefit, should a few champions of these
works emerge.
All in all, the Chicago premiere of the Lloyd Seventh is a logical
step Not one we could have waited for, once having heard it and its
sister symphonies. Let us see what happens as the country discovers
this satisfying, Living Romantic, a man whose time has indeed
come.
Christopher Greenleaf owns Classic Masters, a small
label and writes for Audio and Ovation.
Reprinted from Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Brochure 1988/1989 Season.
|
