William Walton

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Sir William Walton on the set of one of his operas

Sir William Turner Walton, OM (March 29, 1902–March 8, 1983) was a British composer whose style was influenced by the works of Stravinsky, Sibelius and jazz. He is primarily remembered for his orchestral works, choral music, film scores, and ceremonial music.

Born in Oldham, he studied at Christ Church, Oxford. He moved to London where he lodged with the literary Sitwell family. His setting of poems from Edith Sitwell's Façade brought him notoriety as a modernist, and this was followed by acclaim for his symphonic orchestral works and the oratorio Belshazzar's Feast. Having proved adept at writing ceremonial music he was exempted from military service during World War II in order to compose scores for patriotic British films. He was knighted in 1951, and was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1968. He died in Ischia, Italy, where he had settled in 1949.

Biography

Early Life and Rise to Fame

Walton was born in Oldham, Lancashire, to a musical family. At the age of ten, Walton was accepted as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, and he subsequently entered Christ Church, Oxford as an undergraduate at the unusual age of sixteen. He was largely self-taught as a composer, but received some tutelage from Hugh Allen, the cathedral organist. At Oxford Walton befriended two poets—Sacheverell Sitwell and Siegfried Sassoon—who would prove influential in publicizing his music. Little of Walton's juvenilia survives, but the choral anthem A Litany exhibits striking harmonies and voice-leading which was more advanced than that of many older contemporary composers in Britain.

Walton left Oxford without a degree in 1920, to lodge in London with the literary Sitwell siblings—Sacheverell, Osbert and Edith—as an 'adopted, or elected, brother'. Through the Sitwells, Walton became familiar with many of the most important figures in British music between the World Wars, most particularly his fellow composer, Constant Lambert. Walton's first reputation was one of notoriety, built on his ground-breaking musical accompaniment to Edith Sitwell's Façade poems. The 1923 first public performance of the jazz-influenced Façade resulted in Walton's being branded an avant-garde modernist. An early string quartet gained only slight international recognition, including a performance at the 1923 festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salzburg, with a much appreciative Alban Berg in attendance.

During the 1920s, Walton made a little income playing piano at jazz clubs, but spent most of his time in the Sitwells' attic composing. The orchestral overture Portsmouth Point (which he dedicated to Sassoon) was the first work to point toward his eventual accomplishments, including a strong rhythmic drive, together with a dissonant but predominantly tonal harmonic language. It was the Viola Concerto of 1929, however, which catapulted him to the forefront of British classical music, its bittersweet melancholy proving quite popular; it remains a cornerstone of the solo viola repertoire. This success was following by equally acclaimed works: the massive choral cantata Belshazzar's Feast (1931), the Symphony No. 1 (1935), the coronation march Crown Imperial (1937), and the Violin Concerto (1939). Each of these works remains firmly entrenched in the repertoire today.

After World War II

During World War II, Walton was granted leave from military service in order to compose music for propagandistic films, such as The First of the Few (1942) and Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1944). By the mid-1940s, the rise to fame of younger composers such as Benjamin Britten substantially curtailed Walton's reception among music critics, though the public always received his music enthusiastically. After composing a second string quartet (1946)—his strongest achievement in the world of chamber music—Walton dedicated the considerable period of seven years to his three-act tragic opera, Troilus and Cressida (1947-1954). The opera was not widely acclaimed, and it was from this point that Walton's reputation as an old-fashioned composer became confirmed.

After Troilus and Cressida, Walton returned to orchestral music, composing in rapid succession the Cello Concerto (1956), the Symphony No. 2 (1960), and his masterpiece of the post-war period, the Variations on a Theme by Hindemith (1963). His music from the 1960s shows a great reluctance to accept the post-war avant-garde trends espoused by Boulez and others, as Walton preferred to compose in the post-Romantic style which he had found most rewarding. Indeed, he was far from forgotten, having been knighted in 1951 and received the Order of Merit in 1968. His one-act comic opera, The Bear, was well received at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1967, and commissions came from as far afield as the New York Philharmonic (Capriccio burlesco, 1968), and the San Francisco Symphony (Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten, 1969). His song-cycles from this period were premiered by artists as illustrious as Peter Pears (Anon. in love, 1960) and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table, 1962).

In his final decade, Walton found composition increasingly difficult. He repeatedly tried to compose a third symphony for André Previn, but later abandoned the work. His final works are mostly re-orchestrations or revisions of earlier music, and liturgical choral music. He had settled on the island of Ischia in Italy since 1949, and it was at his home there where he died in 1983. Since his death, Walton's music has gained a resurgence of attention, both in live performance and recordings. Indeed, as the history of post-war classical music continues to be re-evaluated, Walton is seen less as as old-fashioned representative of a lost era, and more as a strong individualist who wrote in an attractive, personal idiom.

Works

Opera

Ballet

Orchestral Music

Choral Music

Chamber Music

Solo Vocal Music

Film Scores

Incidental Music

  • Christopher Columbus, music for the radio play by Louis MacNeice (1942)
  • various music for theater and television

Further reading

  • Howes, Frank (1965). The Music of William Walton. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193154129.
  • Walton, Susana (1988). William Walton: Behind the Façade. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193151561.
  • Kennedy, Michael (1989). Portrait of Walton. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198167059.
  • Craggs, Stewart R. (1990). William Walton: A Catalogue. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193154749.
  • Burton, Humphrey, and Maureen Murray (2002). William Walton: The Romantic Loner. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198162359.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Hayes, Malcolm, ed. (2002). The Selected Letters of William Walton. Faber and Faber (London). ISBN 0571201059. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Lloyd, Stephen (2002). William Walton: Muse of Fire. Boydell (London). ISBN 085115803X.

External links

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