Thomas Lloyd | Haverford - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Thomas Lloyd

International Choral Bulletin, 2023

Unpublished part songs of Hans Gál and rarely performed unaccompanied anthems of Jean Berger

A round composed in honor of Helen Kemp for the occasion of her retirement from the Singing for S... more A round composed in honor of Helen Kemp for the occasion of her retirement from the Singing for Seniors program of the Bucks County Choral Society

Arrangement of an African-American spiritual juxtaposed with a traditional Ewe melody from Ghana.... more Arrangement of an African-American spiritual juxtaposed with a traditional Ewe melody from Ghana. For SATB choir and traditional percussion

Press Urbana and Chicago www.press.uillinois.edu The choral experience is so intensely communal b... more Press Urbana and Chicago www.press.uillinois.edu The choral experience is so intensely communal by nature, it is easy for the perspective of choral musicians to become overly insular. We become consumed with our own insider language, and obsessions with things like "blend" or the ideal "choral sound," the details of fine tuning, vowel unification, breaths and phrase endings, articulation, and on and on. While useful and necessary in many technical ways, this narrowness of view can also cause us to lose sight of not only the music itself, but of the larger context in which choirs both reflect and impact the larger society to which they belong. This extra-musical interaction with society happens precisely because of the unique musical power of choral singing. Since choral singers don't need special instruments or special training to perform a wide range of repertoire, from simple folk songs to the most sophisticated art music, they are much more deeply woven into the fabric of different societies throughout the world than is normally the case for instrumental ensembles.

Edward Elgar’s The Apostles (1903) stands apart from the oratorio genre in its presentation of th... more Edward Elgar’s The Apostles (1903) stands apart from the oratorio genre in its presentation of the mission of Christ viewed primarily through the eyes of Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot, two relatively minor characters who are given few words of their own in the bible. The title of the oratorio itself is belied by featuring a woman who was not one of “The Twelve” and a man who was the one apostle to defect from the rest. There may be biographical resonances in Elgar’s highly unusual choice to make these two ‘outsiders’ the main subject of an oratorio ostensibly concerned with the life of Christ and his inner circle of disciples. Many biographers have suggested that Elgar perceived his own origins as a working-class Catholic outside the more aristocratic Anglican cultural environment he needed to impress as a composer. Some of his letters and quoted remarks also suggest that he struggled with his own faith more than it may have seemed from his public persona. Elgar’s distinctive use of Wagnerian leitmotif technique permeates the expansive form of the work, resulting in an exceptional example of the late Romantic juxtaposition of the cosmic and the personal in a multi-layered texture. Though The Apostles has been widely recognized as one of Elgar’s most important works, it has rarely been performed in the United States. While its inspired prologue is still sung as an anthem in some churches (a choral setting of Luke 4:18, where Jesus quotes Isaiah to proclaim his mission to the poor) the remainder of the work is seldom heard in American concert halls or churches.

Choral Journal, 2004

This article is based in part on the experience of collaborative performances by the Chamber Sin... more This article is based in part on the experience of collaborative performances by the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, directed by the author, with the Fisk Jubilee Singers under the
direction of Paul Kwami and the Howard University Choir under the
direction of J. Weldon Norris. It traces the history of performance of the Spiritual through the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, to the Fisk quartet recordings, the solo arrangements sung by Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, and Roland Hayes, to the large choral arrangements of Hall Johnson and William Dawson, to the Civil Rights era, where the Spirituals returned to one of their original functions as songs of community resistance. The article concludes with a discussion of how predominantly white choirs might seek to perform this repertoire with respect for the extreme circumstances of its origins alongside finding their own connection through the common humanity whose very denial was the origin of slavery and the reason for the universal appeal of this unique repertoire all over the world.

Constellations 2005; Choral Journal 2007, 2007

One of the major challenges in teaching standard choral repertoire to school and community choirs... more One of the major challenges in teaching standard choral repertoire to school and community choirs is that what we call choral music (an ensemble of singers performing in harmony or counterpoint with more than one voice to a part) grew primarily from a Christian tradition, developed in the West and spread throughout the world by Christian missionaries. While there also was also a secular repertoire developed in the courtly world, much of the most important choral literature originated in a Christian religious context. Teaching sacred choral literature without engaging the religious context of its origins shields the singers from a essential dimension of the music.

What does it mean to teach and perform sacred music with groups of people who do not share a common religious point of view? Can music composed from the wellspring of religious faith be understood and performed with authenticity from outside the point of view of that faith?

Choral Journal, 2010

Duke Ellington’s three full-evening jazz suites known as his Sacred Concerts are now recognized a... more Duke Ellington’s three full-evening jazz suites known as his Sacred
Concerts are now recognized as the central creative focus of the last
decade in the life of one of America’s greatest composers. During Ellington’s lifetime performances of these three works for jazz big band, full choir, vocal soloists, and dancers were major artistic and cultural events, performed for huge audiences in the United States and Europe. A combination of incomplete performing materials and the genre-crossing nature of the music, however, has left this inspired and important body of work without a natural home in the repertoire. Yet, a wave of recent performances by professional and community choral ensembles has
given new life to music that reminds us how the live concert experience is still unique and irreplaceable in a musical world dominated by recordings.

AMERICAN CHORAL REVIEW , 2010

There has seen a recent resurgence of interest in the music of Hans Gál (1890-1987), the eminent ... more There has seen a recent resurgence of interest in the music of Hans Gál (1890-1987), the eminent composer and musicologist who fled Nazi Germany to Scotland in 1938. Gál was long known primarily for his early work as a Brahms scholar, but his own compositions have now become more widely known.
through a growing catalog of thirty commercially
available recordings, the majority of which document
his extensive repertoire of instrumental chamber
music.2 However, close to one-third of his total
output consists of vocal works, including forty-four
choral works and madrigal collections, twenty-five
of which are a cappella. Yet despite the flourish of
instrumental recordings, there are currently no professionally
produced recordings of his choral music.

International Choral Bulletin of the International Federation of Choral Musicians (IFCM), 2017

Following a 2017 collaboration in Berlin between the Begegnungschor (choir equally divided betwee... more Following a 2017 collaboration in Berlin between the Begegnungschor (choir equally divided between "old Germans" and "new Germans' (refugees from the Middle East) and the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, the three directors involved - Thomas Lloyd, Be Susanne Kappe and Abdolrachman Omaren - reflect on the experience and the potential for music to bring people together in the face of contentious issues like immigration.

Choral Journal, 2017

Elgar’s distinctive use of Wagnerian leitmotif technique permeates the expansive form of the work, resulting in an exceptional example of the late Romantic juxtaposition of the cosmic and the personal in a multi-layered texture. Though The Apostles has been widely recognized as one of Elgar’s most important works, it has rarely been performed in the United States. While its inspired prologue is still sung as an anthem in some churches (a choral setting of Luke 4:18, where Jesus quotes Isaiah to proclaim his mission to the poor) the remainder of the work is seldom heard in American concert halls or churches.