Classical Music / Composers Datebook: March 22
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. His various musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. To date, he has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a
set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He shares the same birthday with another 'giant' in musicals: Stephen Sondheim, 18 years his senior.
Early years
Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on 22 March 1948 in Kensington, London, the elder son of William Lloyd Webber, a composer and organist, and Jean Hermione Johnstone, a violinist and pianist. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, is a world-renowned solo cellist. On the BBC's genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, he learned that his mother's great-great-uncle was the soldier Sir Peregrine Maitland who in 1815 served as a major general at the Battle of Waterloo.
In 1965, when Lloyd Webber was a 17-year-old budding musical-theatre composer, he was introduced to the 20-year-old aspiring pop-song writer Tim Rice. Their first collaboration was The Likes of Us, an Oliver!-inspired musical based on the true story of Thomas John Barnardo. They produced a demo tape of that work in 1966, but the project failed to gain a backer.
The Likes of Us is stylistically fashioned after the Broadway musical of the 1940s and 1950s; it opens with a traditional overture
comprising a medley of tunes from the show, and the score reflects some of Lloyd Webber's early influences, particularly Richard Rodgers, Frederick Loewe, and Lionel Bart. In this respect, it is markedly different from the composer's later work, which tends to be either predominantly or wholly through-composed, and closer in form to opera.
Mid-1970s
Lloyd Webber collaborated with Rice once again to write Evita (1978), a musical based on the life of Eva Perón. As with Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita was released first as a concept album (1976), featuring Julie Covington singing the part of Eva Perón. The song "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" became a hit single and the musical was staged at the West End's Prince Edward Theatre in a production directed by Harold Prince and starring Elaine Paige in the title role. This original production was enormously successful, eventually running for nearly eight years in the West End.
Yvonne Elliman sings Jesus Christ Superstar ('73) "I don't know how to love him", the most brilliant interpretation in my books. Elliman doesn't just sing, she tells a story and shows her mixed feelings, emotions and doubts... all in a heartbeat.Youtube, uploaded by Blu Eyeangell. Accessed March 22, 2024.
Mid-80s
Lloyd Webber premiered The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in 1986. He wrote the part of Christine for his then wife, Sarah Brightman, who played the role in the original London and Broadway productions alongside Michael Crawford as the Phantom. It became a hit and is still running in the West End; in January 2006 it overtook Lloyd Webber's Cats as the longest-running show on Broadway. On 11 February 2012, Phantom of the Opera played its 10,000th show on Broadway. With over 14,200 London productions it is the second longest-running West End musical. The Broadway production closed on 16 April 2023, having played 13,981 performances, the most in Broadway history.
'Music of the Night' - Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, The Phantom of the Opera. Youtube, accessed March 22, 2024.
Lloyd Webber's notable musicals songs
Several of Lloyd Webber's songs have been widely recorded and widely successful outside of their parent musicals, such as "Memory" from Cats, "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita, and "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In 2001, The New York Times referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history". The Daily Telegraph named him in 2008 the fifth-most powerful person in British culture, on which occasion lyricist Don Black said that "Andrew more or less single-handedly reinvented the musical."
Elaine Paige sings 'Memory' | Cats The Musical. Youtube, uploaded by The Shows Must Go On. Accessed March 22, 2024.
Considered Lloyd Webbers' best musicals:
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Jesus Christ Superstar
- Evita
- Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat
- Sunset Boulevard
- Cats
- Cinderella
- School of Rock
- Aspects of Love
- Love Never Dies
Awards and honours
Lloyd Webber has received numerous awards, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage for services to the arts, six Tonys, seven Olivier Awards, three Grammys (as well as the Grammy Legend Award), an Academy Award, 14 Ivor Novello Awards, a Golden Globe, a Brit Award, the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, and two Classic Brit Awards (for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2008, and for Musical Theatre and Education in 2018). In 2018, after Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live), he became the thirteenth person to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.
The Really Useful Group, Lloyd Webber's company, is one of the largest theatre operators in London. He is also the president of the Arts Educational Schools, London, a performing arts school located in Chiswick, West London. Lloyd Webber is also involved in a number of charitable activities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, Prostate Cancer UK and War Child. In 1992, he started the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation which supports the arts, culture, and heritage of the UK.
More recent 2020s
In 2023, Andrew Lloyd Webber was one of twelve composers asked to write a new piece for the coronation of Charles III and Camilla. His anthem, "Make a Joyful Noise", was performed during the enthronement of Queen Camilla.
Image Credit:
Andrew Lloyd Webber. en.wikipedia.org
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