William Lloyd Webber

Waltz in E Minor

Orchestration:
Strings (Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Bass)

William Lloyd Webber was born in 1914. By the age of fourteen he had already become a well-known organ recitalist, giving frequent performances at many important churches and cathedrals throughout Great Britain. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and gained his FRCO diploma at nineteen. Parallel to his activities as an organist, he began to compose. Although the Second World War interrupted this development, (he was organist and choirmaster at London's All Saints, Margaret Street throughout the war), its ending marked the beginning of Lloyd Webber's most prolific years as a composer. During the war he had married Jean Hermione Johnstone, a violinist and pianist. They had two sons: Andrew (b. 1948) and Julian (b. 1951). From 1945 to the mid-1950's William Lloyd Webber wrote music in many different forms: orchestral and choral; sacred and secular; chamber and instrumental. Important works from this period include the orchestral tone-poem Aurora, the song-cycle The Lyre of Orpheus and the oratorio St Francis of Assisi. Lloyd Webber's music was influenced by the romanticism of such composers as Rachmaninov and Cesar Franck, and he became convinced that his music was 'out of step' with the climate of the time. Disillusioned with composition, he wrote virtually nothing for the next twenty years - until shortly before his death, when a sudden flowering of creativity produced among a number of works the mass 'Missa Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae'.

This Waltz in E minor for strings composed in 1939, was intended as a companion piece to his Lento for Strings, written in the same year.

A commercial recording of this work performed by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by Gavin Sutherland is due for release early in 2005.

Duration: 4 minutes>A PACK comprises one full score and strings 4/4/3/4/2