Lloyd Webber

English family of composers and musicians.

(1) William (Southcombe) Lloyd Webber

(2) Andrew Lloyd Webber [Lloyd-Webber; Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton]

(3) Julian Lloyd Webber

CALLUM ROSS (1), JOHN SNELSON (2), MARGARET CAMPBELL (3)

Lloyd Webber

(1) William (Southcombe) Lloyd Webber

(b London, 11 March 1914; d London, 29 Oct 1982). Composer and organist. By the age of 14 he was well known as an organ recitalist. He won an organ scholarship to Mercer’s School and subsequently to the RCM (FRCO 1933), where his teachers included Vaughan Williams, among others. Although World War II interrupted his compositional development, the conclusion of the war marked the beginning of his most prolific years. His works from 1945 to the mid-1950s include the oratorio St Francis of Assisi (1948), the orchestral tone poem Aurora (1951) and the Sonatina for viola and piano (1951). Writing in a style firmly embedded in the Romanticism of such composers as Rachmaninoff, Sibelius and Franck, he became increasingly convinced that his music was ‘out of step’ with the prevailing climate of the time. Rather than compromise his approach, he virtually stopped composing, turning instead to academic music. He taught at the RCM and in 1964 became director of the London College of Music. Shortly before his death, a sudden flourish of creativity produced the Missa sanctae Mariae Magdalenae (1979), among other works.

WORKS

(selective list)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Wolz: Review in American Organist, xxv/2 (1991), 58–60

A. Green: Review in The Independent (27 Oct 1995)

Lloyd Webber

(2) Andrew Lloyd Webber [Lloyd-Webber; Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton]

(b London, 22 March 1948). Composer and producer, son of (1) William Lloyd Webber.

1. Life and works.

He was educated at Westminster School and the RCM. From an early age he wrote incidental music for shows with his toy theatre; at Westminster he wrote music for school revues. In the April of 1965 he met the lyricisttim Rice with whom he wrote the unperformed musical The Likes of Us and some pop songs. Their first success came with the commission to write a choral work for Colet Court School; the resulting pop cantata, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, was gradually extended to a full-length show and has become a constant of both amateur and professional repertories. They released the concept album for Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), which became one of the bestselling albums of that time in both the UK and USA; it was then developed for stage and opened in New York (1971). After the failure of the book musical Jeeves (1975), Lloyd Webber decided that in future works the music would lead the plot and consequently, apart from the revision By Jeeves (1996), has not yet returned wholly to book musicals. Also as a result of Jeeves, he began the annual Sydmonton Festival at his Berkshire home, Sydmonton Court, in order to test future ideas more fully before staging them commercially. In 1976 a concept album was released for Evita, a musical based on the life of Eva Peron, and all his works since have been given workshop performances at Sydmonton. In 1977 he first presented at Sydmonton his Variations for solo cello and rock band, written for his brother (3) Julian. Recorded in 1978, it also provided for many years the signature tune to London Weekend Television’s long running ‘The South Bank Show’. In the same year Evita was staged in London and marked the last major collaboration between Rice and Lloyd Webber; a virtual compendium of their styles, it has achieved wide acclaim and remains one of Lloyd Webber’s most dynamic scores.

He began collaborating with lyricists other than Rice, notably withDon Black for the dramatic sequence of songs Tell me on a Sunday (1979) and later for Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard. Along with Variations, this work was combined into the successful Song and Dance (1982). The adaption of T.S. Eliot’s poetry for Cats (1981) was an unexpected international success, and produced the now standard ballad ‘Memory’. His next musical, Starlight Express, a collaboration with the writer Richard Stilgoe, gained a popularity in part associated with the dramatic and technological staging that has become a hallmark of many of his shows. He divorced his first wife in September 1983, and the following year married the soprano Sarah Brightman, who sang the soprano solo for the première of his Requiem, with its hit single ‘Pie Jesu’. In The Phantom of the Opera (1986) Brightman created the role of Christine, written to exploit her individual light soprano sound. They were divorced in November 1990.

In 1993 he opened a musical version of the classic film Sunset Boulevard in London, choosing Los Angeles rather than New York for its American première. The planned Broadway opening of Whistle Down the Wind was cancelled after its Washington, DC, previews (1996), but the show was revised for the West End (1998). The cover version of its song ‘No Matter What’ by the pop group Boyzone was a number one chart success, and a complete album of cover versions of further songs from the show by established performers such as Tom Jones, Sounds of Blackness and Meatloaf was also released. Lloyd Webber formed these strong links between studio recording and stage with his first works: the concept albums of Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Evita (1976) were released before staging, and the creation of advance public and commercial interest has continued with nearly all of his later shows, most noticeably with single releases including ‘Love changes everything’ (Aspects of Love) sung by Michael Ball.

In 1977, in a move to retain both artistic and managerial control over his and Rice’s works, the Really Useful Company was founded. As successive works achieved commercial success, Lloyd Webber bought the Palace Theatre in the West End (1983) and in January 1986 the increasingly powerful company was floated as the Really Useful Group on the London Stock Exchange, an indication of the growing global importance of the organization (London VII, 6 (iii)). Bought back into the private control of Lloyd Webber in 1990 (but not bought back outright until 1999), the company’s interests extended to continental theatres dedicated to performances of Lloyd Webber musicals, such as that at Bochum, Germany, for Starlight Express and licensed productions of Cats and Phantom of the Opera in Hamburg. Along with the producer Cameron Mackintosh, with whom Lloyd Webber has sometimes collaborated, and the marketing strategies of the Really Useful Group, he has led the development of a world market in ‘mega-musicals’, and productions of Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love have run simultaneously in London and on Broadway. Through the record-breaking length of runs of his musicals, many now exceeding a decade, Lloyd Webber has been responsible for raising the cultural and commercial profile of the musical worldwide through the 1980s and 90s.

He was awarded an FRCM (1988), a knighthood for services to the arts (1992) and a life peerage (1997). He received the Richard Rodgers Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre (1996), and has gained six Tony awards, five Olivier awards, three Grammy awards (including that of Best Classical Composition for Requiem, 1986) and, along with Rice, an Academy Award (1997) for the song ‘You must love me’, written for the film version of Evita (1996).

2. Style.

The long periods of development and frequent overlapping of projects, along with the regular recycling of previously discarded material, blunts any clear demarcation between different stages in Lloyd Webber’s style. Certain features have remained constant. His use of familiar styles has been particularly effective in creating the sense of an individual sound world for each of his shows, for example Phantom of the Opera uses opera, while the contrasts between angular and aggressive rock-based sections in Evita and Cats are far removed from the film-style brooding opening of Sunset Boulevard. Although his early rock opera successes of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita are essentially episodic in their construction, Lloyd Webber has concentrated on developing the sung-through narrative musical. Recitative and arioso sections are effectively used in Phantom but reach their most laboured in Aspects of Love, where repeating motifs often contribute more to the musical character rather than a precise highlighting of dramatic moments. With subsequent works he has included a more clearly defined structure and spoken narrative.

Lloyd Webber has consistently drawn on three main elements: pastiche, the rock riff and the lyric ballad. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat established the role of pastiche as a major stylistic feature through such numbers as the French chanson ‘Those Canaan Days’, the ‘Benjamin Calypso’ and the Elvis Presley-inspired rock and roll number, ‘Song of the King’. Later examples have ranged through ragtime (‘King Herod’s Song’, Jesus Christ Superstar), country and western (‘U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D.’, Starlight Express) and gospel hymnody (‘The Vaults of Heaven’, Whistle Down the Wind). Beyond these examples of deliberate pastiche, Lloyd Webber has demonstrated a consistent ability to embrace popular and classical music vocabularies, recombining their elements to create remarkably popular works. The blurring of these boundaries has sometimes led to melodies with an apparent pre-existing familiarity: ‘I don’t know how to love him’ (Jesus Christ Superstar) has a melodic profile similar to the second movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, while ‘On this Night of a Thousand Stars’ (Evita) is reminiscent of Louigy’s Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White. Whether these similarities are conscious reworkings or simply the constant absorption of a wide range of musical sources into an already eclectic style has aroused some debate (Walsh, 13–14; Coveney, 197–200).

The riff-based element of his style draws on a strong melodic motive underpinned by equally affirmative chord sequences, further defined by a rhythmic pattern which is also subject to intense repetition rather than development: the early title chorus of Jesus Christ Superstar, ‘Love’s Maze’ (By Jeeves) and Hosanna from the Requiem are striking examples of this. This technique is at its most effective when developed, as with the displacements of melodic and rhythmic cells across the bar-line in ‘Take that look off your face’ (Tell me on a Sunday). The Variations (1977) uses the theme of Paganini’s A minor caprice and redefines its formal construction in terms of the rock riff, notably in Variation no.7. A fondness for introducing irregular metres into these repetitive sequences, particularly 7/8 as in ‘And the money kept rolling in (and out)’ (Evita) also adds to their memorability.

Lloyd Webber’s ballads point to a fundamental lyricism that runs through all his works. Early examples used the limited vocal range of the pop song (‘Close ev’ry door’, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), but he gradually adopted a wider melodic range, in Cats drawing on the upper extremes of both the musical theatre ‘belt voice’ in ‘Memory’ and the vernacular ballad singer in ‘The Ballad of Billy McCaw’. With Phantom of the Opera he used a more expansive lyricism suited to the operatic setting, as in the wide melodic leaps of the romantic duet ‘All I Ask of You’, the Puccini-influenced ensemble ‘Prima Donna’ and ‘Music of the Night’, which exploits the drama of vocal extremes for a single voice. Although frequently heard outside their original contexts, Lloyd Webber’s ballads have been particularly effective when allied to strong dramatic moments, as with ‘High Flying Adored’ (Evita), ‘Memory’ (Cats) and ‘With One Look’ (Sunset Boulevard). Throughout, such numbers have tended to retain simple structural forms, from ‘Any dream will do’ (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) to ‘Too Much in Love to Care’ (Sunset Boulevard), some 25 years later. Such structural familiarity, however, allied to an innate sense of the melodically memorable account for much of Lloyd Webber’s lasting popular appeal.

WORKS

dramatic

unless otherwise stated, all are stage musicals and dates are those of first London performance; where different, writers shown as (lyricist; book author); vocal selections for most published at time of first London performance

other works

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GänzlEMT

G. McKnight: Andrew Lloyd Webber (London, 1984)

M. Walsh: Andrew Lloyd Webber: his Life and Works (London, 1989, 2/1997)

J.P. Swain: ‘History as Musical’, The Broadway Musical: a Critical and Musical Survey (New York, 1990), 293–307

H. Muhe: Die Musik von Andrew Lloyd Webber (Hamburg, 1993)

K. Richmond: The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber (London, 1995)

M. Steyn: ‘The Maximalist’, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (London, 1997), 273–86

M. Coveney: Cats on a Chandelier: the Andrew Lloyd Webber Story (London, 1999)

T. Rice: Oh, What a Circus: the Autobiography, 1944–1978 (London, 1999) [incl. list of works, pp.425–36]

Lloyd Webber

(3) Julian Lloyd Webber

(b London, 14 April 1951). Cellist. Son of (1) William Lloyd Webber. He studied with Douglas Cameron, Joan Dickson and Harvey Phillips at the RCM and Fournier in Geneva. He made his London recital début in 1971 and his concerto début the following year with the first London performance of Bliss's Cello Concerto, of which he subsequently made the first recording. Lloyd Webber has appeared widely as a soloist in Britain and abroad and has given many premières, including Rodrigo's Concierto como un Divertimento (1982), Arnold's Fantasy for Cello (1987) and Cello Concerto (1989), and Gavin Bryars's Farewell to Philosophy (1995), of which he is also the dedicatee. He was appointed professor of the cello at the GSM, London, in 1978, and was artistic director of Cellothon 88 at the South Bank in 1988. Lloyd Webber is known for his exploratory approach to repertory, introducing many neglected masterpieces into his programmes and recording his brother Andrew’s Variations for cello and rock band. He has also made numerous recordings, of which several, including Bridge's Oration, are world premières. His skilful control of the instrument and well-focussed, mellow tone are allied to an acute sense of style. He plays the ‘Barjansky’ Stradivarius dated c1690. He has written Travels with my Cello (London, 1984).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Campbell: ‘Julian Lloyd Webber: a Profile’, The Strad, xcii (1981–2), 180–84