William Lloyd Webber: Aurora for orchestra

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.