George Lloyd

Started by Thom, April 14, 2007, 12:37:44 PM

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amw

From the limited amount of description his music has received here, plus a few comments made by co-workers, Lloyd's music sounds like it is completely the opposite of anything I might be remotely interested in. Derivative, longwinded, bombastic, garish, high-calorie, Wagnerian, Mahlerian, ... like Bax minus the taste. (Not that Bax has very much of that in the first place ;D)

...So I've checked out Symphony No. 7 from the library. (Curiosity will kill me someday.) Will report back eventually.

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: amw on December 07, 2014, 01:02:13 AM
...So I've checked out Symphony No. 7 from the library. (Curiosity will kill me someday.) Will report back eventually.

I hope you survive your encounter with Lloyd  ;D  I just re-listened to the Seventh. I'm afraid the Agitato movement will be a problem for you unless you can, like you did with Bruckner 8, listen to it as an alternative score for Star Wars (it would work nicely, I think). I see cilgwyn agrees with me  8) Lloyd's music is cinematic, stylistically kin to classic Hollywood scores.

Quote from: cilgwyn on June 26, 2013, 08:28:48 AMAs a teenager,Lloyds Seventh was a fun work out for my cd player,at full volume,with mega bass boost on full!! The Finale with it's VW (Walton?) meets Korngold meets Star Wars climaxes,each one louder,noisier and more spectacular than the one before it,was just grrrree-aat!

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

vandermolen

Quote from: amw on December 07, 2014, 01:02:13 AM
From the limited amount of description his music has received here, plus a few comments made by co-workers, Lloyd's music sounds like it is completely the opposite of anything I might be remotely interested in. Derivative, longwinded, bombastic, garish, high-calorie, Wagnerian, Mahlerian, ... like Bax minus the taste. (Not that Bax has very much of that in the first place ;D)

...So I've checked out Symphony No. 7 from the library. (Curiosity will kill me someday.) Will report back eventually.

Let us know what you think.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Sergeant Rock

#63
Listened to Lloyd's Sixth this evening. To continue the Star Wars' theme, the Adagio would fit the Tatooine sunset. Surely this is one of the most beautiful Lloyd movements, moments.



Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

cilgwyn

"Derivative, longwinded, bombastic, garish, high-calorie, Wagnerian, Mahlerian, ... like Bax minus the taste."

Makes you want to hear his music,doesn't it?!! ;D I recall thinking that parts of the finale of his Seventh sounded like something out of the 'Empire Strikes Back'! Each climax bigger and louder than the one before it. Great fun with the volume full blast and lots of bass! The opening and ending of the symphony is,however,anything but garish or bombastic. In fact it has one of the loveliest openers of any British symphony I have heard.

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: cilgwyn on December 08, 2014, 12:17:21 PMThe opening and ending of the symphony is,however,anything but garish or bombastic. In fact it has one of the loveliest openers of any British symphony I have heard.

And the "epilogue" (the last five minutes or so of the last movement) is breathtaking.

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

cilgwyn

It's a long time since I heard it,Sarge. I do seem to recall now that it ends in the same way,as mysteriously and enigmatically as it began. A lovely slow movement too and allot of skilful,colourful,exciting orchestration on the way. I wouldn't mind having it in my collection again,but the postman think I'm a crackpot already with all the cds he's had to stuff through my letterbox over the last couple of weeks! (He probably approaches my letterbox with hypodermic in hand........just in case!! ??? ;D)
I also remember the Fifth had a hauntingly,beautiful slow movement. I taped the symphony off the radio at the time! The re-discovery of George Lloyd created a minor stir back then!

Maybe next May,after the election?! An avalanche of George Lloyd cds!

Brian

Listening to the Seventh for the first time now. Thanks, YouTube! The slow movement has just begun...the first had this interesting structural arc of beginning and ending in the mysterious fog and rising by degrees so gradually I never felt the gears shifting.

cilgwyn

Oh good it's at YouTube. I won't have to frighten that postman (with more cd packages!)  Thanks for that post,Brian! :)

amw

So, Lloyd 7. I found it uneven and ramshackle. There are lots of passages that break immersion by being strongly reminiscent of something else (usually either Vaughan Williams or Bax/Delius, occasionally film scores). Even without those, it seems to have the Mahler problem of trying to do everything, at the expense of coherence. And yes, the Agitato movement frequently borders on melodrama, which images of Luke Skywalker piloting his space fighter into the Death Star could only slightly alleviate. At the same time, there are some lovely moments, particularly the opening of the slow movement (which has a reflective character not too far off from a lot of British 'pastoral' music, but in a unique voice), the overall concept of the first movement (who opens a symphony with a scherzo? that takes some labia to pull off) and several passages in the finale's descent into the depths. The xylophone solos are also an unexpected touch, even though I suspect they were cribbed from Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

A point of comparison that came to mind was Walton, whose music is quite similar in feel and derivation, though Walton always sticks close to classical forms. One might compare Walton in turn to Hindemith post-1938, and Lloyd to Hindemith pre-1918. As it happens I enjoyed Lloyd's symphony better than either of Walton's, not that that's saying much, but Walton was clearly the more disciplined composer with Lloyd coming across more as a 'talented amateur'.

Another thing that struck me was how old this music sounds, compared to the 4-movement Bruckner 9 I was listening to the other day. Harmonically, formally and hermeneutically Bruckner is more adventurous than Lloyd, even if Lloyd's music might be more 'up-to-date' in terms of compositional techniques—it sounds like he would have been a lot more comfortable being a student of Joachim Raff, whereas Bruckner's true place would be as the Germanic counterpart to Olivier Messiaen. But maybe that's a bit far-fetched.

I didn't hate it, but I'm not sure I'm that interested in listening to the other 11 Lloyd symphonies (+ a Mass of some kind) the library has collected. At least not in the next three months or so. Maybe if I ever get into Mahler.

Jo498

Never even heard of Lloyd, but
What do you mean with "hermeneutically adventurous"?
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

cilgwyn

I agree with some of this 'analysis'. Although I seem to recall that this was what made it such fun! It is along time since I heard it though,and I was allot younger then!! I seem to remember that Khatchaturian was on allot!

vandermolen

Before Lloyd is written off completely try Symphony 4. 
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Brian

Quote from: vandermolen on December 10, 2014, 06:08:18 AM
Before Lloyd is written off completely try Symphony 4.
I've heard 4, 5, 7, and 8, and 4 and (especially) 5 are my favorites. 5 is probably the most explicitly/deliberately old-fashioned, since it is so loyal to romantic ideals and harmonies and the classical sense of "balance". I also think 5 has the least "fat", because it has the most structure. (The 20-minute finale to 7 is fun, but it just kept going and going.) That said, what on earth are those five movements doing in the same symphony? And why on earth does it work?

cilgwyn

I like the way Lloyd pulls out all the stops in the finale of the Seventh. Each climax bigger and louder than the one before. I thought the Star Wars intrusions were Fun! But then there is that mysterious opening and epilogue that Sarge enjoys so much. I do agree that there is something ramshackle about it and a magpie quality about it all,but it's so unbuttoned and as vandermolen says,how it all hangs together is,if you do groove with it (to use hippy terminology) a minor wonder! I do find myself scratching my head at what exactly the myth of Persephone has to do with the technicolor tumult of the Finale? This is the bit where Luke Skywalker pops into the underworld with his light sabre. Why not? But just what was Lloyd thinking of?!! ??? ;D

vandermolen

Quote from: cilgwyn on December 10, 2014, 01:30:29 PM
I like the way Lloyd pulls out all the stops in the finale of the Seventh. Each climax bigger and louder than the one before. I thought the Star Wars intrusions were Fun! But then there is that mysterious opening and epilogue that Sarge enjoys so much. I do agree that there is something ramshackle about it and a magpie quality about it all,but it's so unbuttoned and as vandermolen says,how it all hangs together is,if you do groove with it (to use hippy terminology) a minor wonder! I do find myself scratching my head at what exactly the myth of Persephone has to do with the technicolor tumult of the Finale? This is the bit where Luke Skywalker pops into the underworld with his light sabre. Why not? But just what was Lloyd thinking of?!! ??? ;D

Nice post.  :)
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

cilgwyn

After making the momentous decision not to buy any more cds until next May at the earliest (bar the Testament & Dutton Brian releases) I was taken a-back to spot a s/h Albany cassette of George Lloyd's Seventh on ebay. My new self imposed rule not applying to cassettes what could I do? I had to buy it!! ;D
I also bought a Chandos cassette of Harty's Irish Symphony & Comedy Overture......because it was there and I think I might like it?!
In case anyone is wondering,my trusty old downstairs cd player is getting dodgy so I have an excuse (Some old musicassettes are getting hauled out. Now I'm glad I kept them!!)

cilgwyn

I'll have to manually turn the cassette over for the Luke SkyWalker finale! ??? Oh,the sweat &  toil! :( ;D

vandermolen

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on December 08, 2014, 12:43:37 PM
And the "epilogue" (the last five minutes or so of the last movement) is breathtaking.

Sarge

I agree. Listened to no.7 today having not played it for a couple of years. I didn't find it bombastic at all and found the slow movement both poetic and moving, along with the epilogue. I found that the atmosphere of the piece stays with me and I enjoyed the Greek mythological inspiration.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

cilgwyn

I haven't heard it in fourteen odd years and yet it's stayed with me! It would be very exciting to see all  that battery of brass and percussion in action in the concert hall,too! Oh,well!!
Khatchaturian's Second Symphony is another one that is often cited as being bombastic. Again,I hadn't heard it for years,but it 'stayed with me',as you put it. Hearing it again in the Jarvi Chandos recording (surely one of his best) it came across as a very poweful wartime symphony. Even those memorably very loud bits towards the end (you know the ones! ;D) sounded just right. The culmination of all the boiling ,seething drama and tension that is always,even in the most lyrical,tender,'Gayaneh' like moments,just waiting to break out.
His third symphony? Now that is bombastic! But possibly fun,if you're in the right mood for some!! ;D