Jonathan Lloyd (composer)


Jonathan Lloyd was a British composer.

Life and career

Lloyd's early teachers included Emile Spira. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Music where he was a recipient of the Mendelssohn Scholarship. His orchestral work Cantique, which he wrote whilst at the RCM, was featured in the 30-year retrospective of the Society for the Promotion of New Music in 1973. He continued to study composition with John Lambert and Edwin Roxburgh as well as Henri Pousseur in Durham. In 1973, Lloyd attended the Tanglewood Music Center in the US, where he studied with Gyorgy Ligeti and where he won the Koussevitsky Prize for his work Scattered Ruins. In 1978-1979, he was composer-in-residence at the Dartington College of Arts in its theatre department.
Lloyd began to achieve wider recognition with his 1981 work Toward the Whitening Dawn, which he composed in memory of John Lennon. He composed works on commission from such ensembles as the London Sinfonietta, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. In addition to works for the concert hall, Lloyd composed a new score to accompany the silent version of Alfred Hitchcock's 1929 film Blackmail.In 1986 he collaborated with the music critic Michael White on a large-scale community opera, The Adjudicator, for the village of Blewbury, Oxon.
Lloyd died on 31 July 2025 at the age of 76.

Selected compositions

Chamber ensembles

Airs and GracesAlmeida DancesBallad for the Evening of a ManBen's Boogie Brass Quintet Dancing in the Ruins Don't mention the War The Five Senses
  • 'Go Blow Your Own'
  • 'He will make it'
  • 'It's All Sauce to Me' John's Journal Like Fallen AngelsThe Mill of MemoriesThe New Ear
  • Oboe Sonata One Step More Restless Night The Shorelines of Certainty Songs from the Other Shore
  • String Quintet No. 1
  • String Quintet No. 2 Then There There and Then Three Dances Time Between Trains True Refuge Waiting for Gozo
  • Wind Quintet
  • 'Won't It Ever Be Morning'

Orchestral and concertante works

blessed days of blue CantiqueFantasy Feuding Fiddles Keir's Kicknew balls old racketRhapsody

Choral and vocal works

And Beyond Everything Returns If I Could Turn You OnMarching to a Different Song MassMissa Brevis
  • 'People your Dreams'Revelation
  • Three Songs
  • ''Toward the Whitening Dawn''

Music theatre works

Musices GenusScattered Ruins
  • ''The Adjudicator''