George Lloyd (composer)

George Walter Selwyn Lloyd (28 June 1913 – 3 July 1998) was a British composer.

Born in St Ives, Cornwall, of part Welsh, part American ancestry, Lloyd grew up in a very musical family.

His father, William A C Lloyd, was an Italian opera aficionado. He was born in Rome and returned to England on the death of his father, a retired naval officer. William Lloyd wrote a biography of Bellini. He was also an accomplished flautist. George Lloyd's mother played the violin, viola and piano. Both were leading members of the St Ives Arts Club and their house was a regular weekly venue for chamber music, so the young composer grew up with music all around him. His grandmother, the American painter Frances (Fanny) Powell, had been an opera singer, and was an early pioneer of the St Ives artists' colony.

George Lloyd showed his talent as a composer early; he began composing at the age of 9, and began serious study at the age of 14. He was mainly educated at home because of rheumatic fever. He was trained in the dramatic aspects of opera by his father, who would regularly give him scenes from English plays to set to music, and he later studied violin with Albert Sammons and composition with Frank Kitson and Harry Farjeon. He was a student at Trinity College London. His first symphony, written at the age of 19, was premiered in 1932 by the Penzance Orchestral Society and was performed again in 1933 by the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra, with the composer conducting on both occasions. A second symphony had its premiere in 1935 and was soon followed by a third. George Lloyd and his father William, formed The New English Opera Company in 1935, with the intention of establishing a school of English opera. George Lloyd's first opera, Iernin, with a libretto by his father, was performed in 1934 in Penzance, before being transferred to the Lyceum Theatre, London, where it had an unusually long run. His second opera, The Serf, was staged by Vladimir Rosing at Covent Garden in 1938.

Lloyd served in World War II with the Royal Marines as a Bandsman. On board the cruiser HMS Trinidad on Arctic convoys he was one of the Bandsmen manning the Transmitting Station, which was situated deep in the hull of the ship. In 1942, during an engagement, the ship fired a faulty torpedo which travelled in a circular track and hit the ship, fracturing a large fuel oil tank. Many of Lloyd's shipmates were drowned in the fuel oil, and he was the last man to escape from the compartment. He suffered severe mental and physical trauma from the shell shock, and was hospitalised before being discharged from the Royal Marines. After 4 years he was well enough to start composing again, through the devotion and love of his Swiss wife, Nancy.

...
Wikipedia