William
Lloyd Webber's undoubted masterpiece is his tone poem Aurora composed during 1948. It is the only work that the composer
would talk about: the only one that he seemed enthusiastic about. It is quite definitely a love poem - Julian
Lloyd Webber admits this in his interview with Rob Barnett on the MusicWeb
International website. Yet, it was a love poem written in the ‘abstract’.
Seemingly, it was not inspired by any individual – although, tantalisingly,
Julian states that he cannot be sure of this!
Whatever
the antecedents and inspiration of this work it is impressive and important. We
must put to one side any feelings of derivation. It is true that we can hear
echoes of Rachmaninov, Delius and Sibelius and even Wagner. The opening of the
piece has been likened to Bartok smoothed over by Vaughan Williams. And there
are definite echoes of RVW here. It
really does not matter. William Lloyd Webber was not a trend-setter: he did not
intend to break new ground. He used musical vocabulary that was already
available that appealed to his emotions.
But then so did J.S. Bach.
Aurora
is a skilfully composed piece of music - by structure, harmonic language and
most certainly orchestral colouring. It can be described as sumptuous. It is
also quite sentimental without being in any way mawkish.
It is
instructive to the composer's own words here -
‘Arriving from the East in a chariot of winged horses,
dispelling night and dispersing the dews of the morning. Aurora was the
Roman Goddess of the dawn. This short tone poem attempts to portray in reasonably
respectable sonata first movement form, the inherent sensuality of her nature.
Consecutive
6/4 chords introduce a bit of night music soon to be dispelled by the dawn
theme, announced by the flute. Aurora's theme forms the second subject and (it
is hoped) is of a suitably lyrical nature, as befits such a beautiful goddess.
Her amorous adventures can possibly be imagined in the development section, and
in the recapitulation her theme occurs twice – the first time with a light
textured orchestration, and then with all the instruments that were available
at the time of writing the piece.
At the
moment of climax, the night music returns again, and Aurora has to leave us. However,
the final cadence has a hint of her theme, and there is always the promise of a
new day.’ Programme Note for Phillips Classics 420 342-2 (1986).
Robert Matthew-Walker (Music and Musicians February 1987) noted
that ‘‘Aurora’ is a difficult work to pin-point in style: English, certainly,
but not at all derivative, although echoes may be traced of Bax, Ireland and
Moeran.’ Matthew-Walker had changed his mind about William Lloyd Webber’s
musical achievement - of whom he had ‘...previously thought [of] as an
eminently respectable composer of Methodist Easter cantatas, and not much else,
was an artist of no mean achievement.’
It is incredible
to realise that Aurora remained unperformed until 1986. If this were the
only piece of music written by the composer, it would be a major achievement.
William Lloyd
Webber’s Aurora can be heard on YouTube.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Lorin Maazel. The work was also
released on the Chandos label (CHAN 9595). Here Richard Hickox conducted the
City of London Sinfonia.
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