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Walton, Blanche W(etherill)
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Walton, Blanche W(etherill)(b Philadelphia, 15 Nov 1871; d New York, 17 July 1963). American patron of music. After her marriage at the age of 22 to Ernest F. Walton, she moved to New York, where she was among the last of MacDowell's piano pupils. She supported the work of many composers in the 1920s and 1930s, including Cowell, Bartók (who stayed in her home during his first American visit in 1927), Varèse, Ruggles, Riegger, Weiss, Carlos Chávez, Paul Arma (the pseudonym of Imre Weisshaus) and Ruth Crawford. In 1932, with Charles Seeger and Joseph Yasser, she founded and supported the American Library of Musicology. In 1934 the American Musicological Association (later Society) was formed in her home. Cowell, who considered her an important and highly esteemed sponsor of modern music, organized a concert in her honour at the New School, New York, in 1959. BIBLIOGRAPHYAMS Bulletin, no.1 (1936), 1 Obituary, New York Times (18 July 1963) R.P. Locke: ‘Paradoxes of the Woman Music Patron in America’, MQ, lxxviii (1994), 798–825 RICHARD JACKSON Walton, William (Turner)(b Oldham, 29 March 1902; d Ischia, 8 March 1983). English composer. Noted above all for his orchestral music, he is one of the major figures to emerge in England between Vaughan Williams and Britten. 1. Life. 2. Works. WORKS BIBLIOGRAPHY BYRON ADAMS Walton, William 1. Life.The second of four children, Walton was born into an impecunious family. His father, Charles, was a baritone who made a modest income as a choir master and his mother, Louisa (née Turner), was a contralto. Walton’s earliest musical experiences came as a choirboy in his father’s church choir. Anglican anthems, as well as the secular vocal music he heard at home, thus formed the basis of his musical habits and laid the foundation of his later style. The punishment he received as a choirboy (his knuckles were rapped by his father for each musical mistake he made) may have also contributed to his often painful quest for musical perfection. In 1912 Walton won a scholarship to become a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. He remained at the cathedral school for six years, singing treble solos and studying the piano and the violin. While many of his early compositions are the apprentice efforts of a choirboy with a good ear, the choral work A Litany (1916, rev. 1930) remarkably anticipates his mature style. (In later life, he claimed that he began to compose as a way to avoid returning to his family in Oldham). During these years, Walton attracted the attention of Thomas Strong, the dean of Christ Church (later the bishop of Oxford), who provided artistic encouragement and financial support and arranged for him to enter the University in 1918 at the age of 16. Although in later years Walton was prone to exaggerate his lack of musical education, he in fact received careful training under Hugh Allen, the organist at Christ Church (later the director of the RCM). A great deal of his time at Oxford was spent in the library, studying scores by Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and developing his abilities as an orchestrator. He left Christ Church in 1920 without a degree, however, having failed three times to pass an obligatory BA exam. While at Oxford, Walton met Sacheverell, Osbert and Edith Sitwell, friends with whom he lived for over a decade (fig.1). The Sitwell’s provided him with freedom from want, time to compose and a lively cultural education. During this period, he attended the Russian ballet, met Stravinsky and Gershwin, listened to jazz at the Savoy Hotel and wrote an experimental string quartet that won the praise of Alban Berg. His first trip to Italy, taken with the Sitwells in 1920, proved to be a seminal experience. He found there a congenial musical tradition steeped in Mediterranean lyricism, as well as the sunlight that he craved. His first important score, Façade (1922–9) reflects these influences. The scores that followed, such as the overture Portsmouth Point (1924–5) and the Sinfonia concertante (1926–7) enhanced his growing reputation. With the Viola Concerto (1928–9), Walton deepened his expressive range and contrapuntal technique, advancing his musical language far ahead of those of his friends and acquaintances Constant Lambert, Peter Warlock and Lord Berners. An uninhibited Italian vivacity animated his next major score, the cantata Belshazzar’s Feast (1930–31). The success of this highly dramatic choral work confirmed Walton’s place as an prominent figure in the British musical world. He extended his reputation internationally with the impressive First Symphony (1931–5), inspired by his stormy love affair with Baroness Imma Doernberg. During the early 1930s Walton began to detach himself from the Sitwells. He attracted such patrons as Siegfried Sassoon, Mrs Samuel Courtauld and especially Lady Alice Wimbourne, with whom he enjoyed a long, happy and intimate relationship. He gained further financial security by composing film scores, the first of which, Escape Me Never, was written in 1934. During World War II, he wrote music for a series of patriotic films, including Laurence Olivier’s stirring adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1943–4). Following the death of Lady Wimbourne in 1948, Walton travelled to Argentina for a conference of the Performing Rights Society. In Buenos Aires he met and tenaciously courted Susana Gil Passo, an Argentine woman 24 years his junior. They were married in a civil ceremony on 13 December 1948; a Catholic ceremony was held on 20 January the following year. In 1949 the couple settled on the island of Ischia. From 1947 to 1954 Walton struggled with the composition of a grand opera, Troilus and Cressida. His severe standards of craftsmanship, combined with dissatisfaction with the librettist, Christopher Hassell, conspired to make the project a slow and painful one. Although the opera was a success at its Covent Garden première (3 December 1954) and in subsequent productions in New York and San Francisco, its outright failure at La Scala wounded Walton deeply and sapped his self-confidence. He continued to revise, cut and make other alterations to the work for many years. Walton’s output slowed as he grew older, partly because of the cool critical reception given to Troilus and Cressida, the Second Symphony (1957–60) and other postwar scores, and partly because his health became increasingly precarious. He continued to attend major performances, however, and to tour as an effective conductor of his own works. He visited Australia and New Zealand in 1964 and received a tumultuous welcome on a trip to Russia in 1971. During these years the Waltons built an expansive villa with a luxurious garden on Ischia; he spent the rest of his life in that idyllic setting. Walton received many awards during his long career: seven honorary doctorates, including one from Oxford (1942); the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1947); a knighthood (1951); the Order of Merit (1967); and the Benjamin Franklin Medal (1972). He was elected to honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1978) and received the Ivor Novello Award (1982). Despite such recognition, his critical reputation fell after World War II, the victim of rapid changes in musical fashion. By the end of the 20th century, however, his music again secured a prominent and valued place in the repertory. Walton, William 2. Works.Walton’s most important work of surviving juvenilia is A Litany (1916, rev. 1930) for unaccompanied chorus. A precocious production for a teenager, this lapidary setting of a text by Phineas Fletcher (‘Drop, Drop Slow Tears’) demonstrates many of the stylistic traits of the mature composer. Walton’s peculiarly effective writing for voices, characterized by arching melodic lines, elegant but idiosyncratic part-writing based on practical experience rather than textbook rules, and admirable formal concision, is already present. Other aspects of A Litany familiar from later works include an harmonic vocabulary based on triads (often spiced with added notes) and seventh chords (but avoiding diminished and dominant seventh structures), and unusual cadential formulas. Walton also leavens the expression of voluptuous melancholy with a characteristic touch of irony. Other early scores include two charming solo songs, The Winds (1918) and Tritons (1920), and a lively Piano Quartet (1918–21), which takes as its model a work by Herbert Howells for the same combination of instruments. Self-consciously English in style, the quartet is filled with echoes of Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Delius. While lacking the suavity of Howell’s score, Walton’s work possesses an abundance of melodic invention and rhythmic variety. Walton aptly described his first, experimental String Quartet (1919–22) as ‘full of undigested Bartók and Schoenberg’. The most striking features of this work are its clotted textures and self-conscious use of dissonance. In the score, Walton experiments with an angst-ridden, expressionistic aesthetic that was foreign to his pleasure-loving nature. Despite the praise lavished on the work by Berg after its première at the first ISCM Festival in 1923, Walton soon withdrew it. Walton’s next composition, Façade (1922–9, rev. 1951), could not be more different from the severity of its immediate predecessor. A setting of Edith Sitwell’s poetry, the text forms a complex reminiscence of Sitwell’s difficult Edwardian childhood, including recollections that are delicate (‘Through Gilded Trellises’), terrifying (‘Black Mrs Behemoth’) or satirical (‘Jodelling Song’). In the work, Walton rediscovers and deepens certain stylistic elements first manifest in A Litany. His expressive range is expanded through the assimilation of popular styles of the early 1920s, such as the tango, fox-trot and Charleston, and the hybrid Anglo-American jazz he heard at nightclubs and at the Savoy Hotel. Additional influences include Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire which, like Façade, uses a reciter, and the spiky instrumentation and irregular metres of Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat. These scores provided Walton with models of how popular genres – cabaret songs in Pierrot and ragtime in Histoire – could be incorporated into a distinctive style essentially predicated on art music. It is interesting to note his sly parody of the formal organization of Pierrot (its division into 21 [3 x 7] succinct movements) in Façade’s final version. Walton’s fascination with the etchings of Thomas Rowlandson resulted in the overture Portsmouth Point (1924–5), which had a successful première at the 1926 ISCM Festival in Zürich. In this admirably concise evocation of Rowlandson’s bawdy etching, jazzy syncopation and orchestral athleticism jostle reminiscences of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. The virile pandiatonicism of Portsmouth Point also pervades the neo-classical Sinfonia concertante for orchestra and piano obbligato (1926–7), a work in which even greater echoes of Stravinsky can be heard. The Viola Concerto (1928–9) represents an important development in Walton’s style. For the first time Stravinskian influences are smoothly integrated into music displaying lessons learned from Hindemith (who performed the solo part in the work’s 1929 première), Prokofiev, Ravel and Gershwin. Consisting of a scherzo preceded and followed by two more substantial movements, the concerto is a marvel of orchestral poise; the orchestra never impinges on the soloist’s both melancholy and muted voice. Walton’s contrapuntal inventiveness is much in evidence throughout the work. The musical narrative is organized into broad paragraphs that extend melodic material through continuous variation. A pervasive use of cross-relations is integral to both motivic development and harmonic language (see, for example, the final cadence of the finale) and contributes a smoky cinema noir quality to its finest pages (ex.1). Commissioned by the BBC, Belshazzar’s Feast (1930–31) is a sardonic inversion of the ‘dramatic cantata’ beloved by Victorian composers and audiences. Osbert Sitwell’s libretto consists of cunning juxtapositions of Old Testament excerpts that draw implicit parallels between the excesses and downfall of the Babylonian monarch and the opulence and eventual implosion of Edwardian society. Rather than using Biblical texts to express religious sentiment, Sitwell uses them to titillate. The audience at the première must have been discomfited by the perverse innuendo of the cantata’s opening line: ‘Thus spake Isaiah: Thy sons that thou shalt beget, They shall be taken away/And be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon’. Walton’s music colludes fully with Sitwell’s text in its intent to subvert Edwardian mores. The real protagonists of Belshazzar’s Feast, the captive Jewish people represented by the chorus, react with the ferocious indignation of powerless outsiders forced to serve an oppressive society. Walton, himself a Lancastrian outsider at Oxford and in London, vividly contrasted the searing anguish of the Jewish slaves with a caricature of the garish ostentation of Belshazzar’s court. A parody of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches erupts as a paean of praise to Belshazzar’s God of Gold to cleverly characterize Babylonian decadence through a specific reference to an Edwardian musical style. After the triumph of Belshazzar’s Feast, Walton began to sketch his First Symphony (1931–5), the genesis of which was protracted and agonized. In composing this work Walton struggled against the weight of symphonic tradition, in particular the overwhelming precedent set by Sibelius, whose music was immensely popular in England during the 1930s. He placed an additional creative block in his own path by allowing the first three movements of the symphony to be performed by the LSO under Harty on 3 December 1934. After further anguished work, the finale was finally completed and the full work given its première by the same orchestra and conductor on 6 November 1935. The ascending horn calls that open the work recall the initial bars of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony (ex.2); an extensive use of pedal points, ominous timpani rolls and menacing low brass timbres also derive from Sibelius. Walton’s deployment of ostinatos to organize extensive passages is his own particular innovation, however, and the peculiar thematic logic of the symphony is closer to Beethoven than Sibelius. With its mixture of orgiastic power, coruscating malice, sensuous desolation and extroverted swagger, the symphony is a tribute to Walton’s tenacity and inventive facility. Both the coronation march Crown Imperial (1937, rev. 1963) and the Violin Concerto (1936–9, rev. 1943) pay a less equivocal homage to Elgar than is found in Belshazzar’s Feast. Modelled on Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches, Crown Imperial is the finest and most infectious of Walton’s essays in that genre. The Violin Concerto is an ingenious reconciliation of the demands of virtuosity and Romantic expressiveness. Commissioned by Heifetz, it shares the same basic formal plan of the Viola Concerto, consisting of a fleet scherzo flanked by two larger movements. The orchestral colour of the Violin Concerto, however, is brighter than that of the earlier work, the themes more extroverted and the harmonies more luscious. The commedia dell’arte capriciousness of the scherzo anticipates the high spirits of the concert overture Scapino (1940, rev. 1950), written for the 50th anniversary of the Chicago SO, while the Neapolitan languor of the trio evokes the earlier Siesta (1926, rev. 1962). During World War II Walton composed music for a series of patriotic films that included The First of the Few, from which he drew the exhilarating Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (1942). His cinematic experience is particularly evident in his music for Christopher Columbus (1942), a BBC radio programme celebrating the 450th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage to America. In addition to Christopher Columbus, Walton composed two ballets: The Wise Virgins (1940), a skilful orchestration of music by Bach, and The Quest (1943), a ‘propaganda ballet’ oddly reminiscent of Vaughan Williams. Aside from these scores, and miniatures such as Duets for Children (1940), he focussed his attention on film music. His collaboration with Laurence Olivier resulted in magnificent scores for Henry V (1943–4), Hamlet (1947) and Richard III (1955). ‘Doing films’, Walton once said, ‘gave me a lot more fluency’; the assurance he gained from writing film scores increased his depth, concentration and versatility. Immediately after the war, Walton turned to chamber music composition, producing in succession the String Quartet in A Minor (1945–6) and the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1947–9). The quartet, one of Walton’s supreme achievements, can be justly compared to Ravel. At the suggestion of Marriner, he later arranged it as the Sonata for Strings (1971). Written for Yehudi Menhuin and Louis Kentner, the Violin Sonata is cast in an unusual bipartite form; extensive motivic connections between the two movements create a highly cohesive design. Despite the brief appearance of a 12-note passage in the set of variations that comprises the second movement, the sonata is strongly tonal. In 1947 Walton began planning his grand opera Troilus and Cressida (1947–54, rev. 1963, 1972–6). As with the First Symphony, the process of composition was fraught with difficulties. (The complex history of the opera’s painful evolution and extensive revisions is lucidly unravelled in Kennedy, 1989). Walton was so preoccupied with Troilus and Cressida that during the protracted period of its creation he wrote only two brief occasional pieces: a second coronation march, Orb and Sceptre, and the effervescent Coronation Te Deum (both 1952–3). Hampered by Christopher Hassell’s ‘poetic’ and pseudo-archaic libretto, Walton nevertheless managed to compose dramatically effective music that often rises to both nobility and passion, especially in Cressida’s three arias. His compassion for the hopeless plight of his vacillating heroine, a weak young woman facing an insoluble moral dilemma, gives the opera consistency and poignancy. Despite its many beauties, however, Troilus and Cressida represents a late and only partially successful attempt to revivify the traditions of 19th-century Italian opera in a postwar era wary of heroic Romanticism. Walton’s second opera, The Bear (1965–7), was completed 13 years after the première of Troilus and Cressida and offers a marked contrast to the earlier work. A one-act ‘extravaganza’ with an expert libretto by Paul Dehn after the play by Anton Chekhov, The Bear is a burlesque on the excesses of Romanticism. Chekhov’s unsentimental view of human nature gave Walton ample opportunity for a pointed expression of wit and irony. His composition of The Bear was preceded by two song cycles, both of which share the opera’s melodic invention and high spirits: Anon in Love for tenor and guitar (1959) and A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table for soprano and piano (1962). Compared with the torturous creation of Troilus and Cressida, the Cello Concerto (1955–6) was composed with comparative ease. Commissioned by Piatigorsky, the concerto is related both to the Mediterranean lyricism of Troilus and Cressida and to the mastery of variation displayed in the Violin Sonata. While the formal plan of the Cello Concerto superficially recalls that of the viola and violin concertos, it possesses an unusually introspective depth of feeling. The luminous ticking present throughout the work suggests the inexorable passage of time, and the pensive melancholy of its conclusion recalls Cressida’s aria ‘At the Haunted End of the Day’. Composed after the Cello Concerto, the Partita for orchestra (1957) is, in contrast, an extroverted showpiece written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra. More substantial than either the Johannesburg Festival Overture (1956) or the diverting but hard-edged Capriccio burlesco (1968), the Partita is an impressively concentrated score with a high-spirited finale, the main theme of which gradually emerges during the course of the movement. The steely counterpoint and orchestral virtuosity of the Partita are also present in the Second Symphony (1957–60), commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society. A grander conception than the Partita, the Second Symphony is one of Walton’s finest works. More refined than the First Symphony, it is remarkable for its stylistic integration, developmental ingenuity and orchestral mastery. Although not as urgently passionate as its predecessor, the Second Symphony is notated with greater clarity and displays clearer formal articulation. The finale, a passacaglia based on a 12-note theme (ex.3), is an intriguing reconciliation of Baroque formal procedures with a complex and dissonant harmonic vocabulary. The symphony’s density of texture and sonorous brilliance is also found in the next of Walton’s large works, the Gloria (1960–61) composed for the 125th anniversary of the Huddersfield Choral Society. Like the earlier In Honour of the City of London (1937), the Gloria shares some of the glittering energy of Belshazzar’s Feast without possessing either its high level of invention or its enlivening irony. Far more satisfying are the orchestral acts of homage to admired colleagues: the Variations on a Theme by Hindemith (1962–3) and the Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten (1969). The Hindemith Variations, commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society for its 150th concert, is an extraordinary meld of Hindemithian craftsmanship and Waltonian exuberance. Walton takes as his theme a substantial passage from the slow movement of Hindemith’s Cello Concerto and, through the variations, relates it to a quotation from the opera Mathis der Maler. Though the variations begin with Hindemith’s material, Walton’s own voice becomes more prominent as the work progresses. For Walton, an ‘improvisation’ was a free and fanciful elaboration of a theme rather than a formal variation. In the improvisations based on the opening melody of the second movement, ‘Impromptu’, of Britten’s Piano Concerto, op.13, the theme is subjected to a variety of kaleidoscopic metamorphoses. Commissioned for the San Francisco SO, the Britten Improvisations is a curiously ambivalent tribute: the atmosphere is often chilly and remote and the celebratory tone of the final improvisation sounds oddly forced. Both the ingenuity and austerity of the Britten Improvisations are found in Walton’s two final orchestral works. The engaging Varii capricci (1975–6) is a skillful transcription for orchestra of the Five Bagatelles for guitar (1970–71). The Prologo e Fantasia (1981–2), written for Rostropovich and the National SO of Washington, DC, is a chilling glimpse into the bleakness of old age. Throughout his life Walton returned to the composition of choral music, producing such fine pieces as Set me as a seal upon thine heart (1938) and Where does the uttered music go? (1946). As he grew older, he frequently explored this medium, producing an anthem, The Twelve (1964–5), a Missa brevis (1965–6), a Jubilate Deo (1971–2), a Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (1974) and the Antiphon (1977). All of these pieces, as well as the spare Cantico del sole (1973–4) are reminders of the music that he composed as a choirboy and bring his career full circle. Walton’s music has often been too neatly dismissed by a few descriptive tags: ‘bittersweet’, ‘nostalgic’ and, after World War II, ‘same as before’. Such convenient categorizations ignore the expressive variety of his music and slight his determination to deepen his technical and expressive resources as he grew older. His early discovery of the basic elements of his style allowed him to assimilate successfully an astonishing number of disparate and apparently contradictory influences, such as Anglican anthems, jazz, and the music of Stravinsky, Sibelius, Ravel and Elgar, to name a few. Walton’s allegiance to his basic style never wavered and this loyalty to his own vision, along with his rhythmic vitality, sensuous melancholy, sly charm and orchestral flair, gives his finest music an imperishable glamour. Walton, William WORKSstage
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orchestral
band and brass ensemble
choral
solo vocal
chamber and solo instrumental
Walton, William BIBLIOGRAPHYC. Lambert: ‘Some Recent Works by William Walton’, The Dominant, i (1928), 16–19 B. de Zoete: ‘William Walton’, MMR, lix (1929), 321–3, 356 H.J. Foss: ‘William Walton’, The Chesterian, xi (1930), 175–81 A. Hutchings: ‘The Symphony and William Walton’, MT, lxxviii (1937), 211–15 A. Frank: ‘The Music of William Walton’, The Chesterian, xx (1939), 153–6 H.J. Foss: ‘William Walton’, MQ, xxvi (1940), 456–66 E. Evans: ‘William Walton’, MT, lxxxv (1944), 329–32, 364–8 C. Mason: ‘William Walton’, British Music of our Time, ed. A.L. Bacharach (Harmondsworth, 1946), 137–49 K. Avery: ‘William Walton’, ML, xxviii (1947), 1–11 O. Sitwell: Laughter in the Next Room (London, 1949) P. Evans: ‘Sir William Walton’s Manner and Mannerism’, The Listener (20 Aug 1959) F. Howes: The Music of William Walton (London, 1964, rev. 2/1974) J. Warrack: ‘Sir William Walton talks to John Warrack’, The Listener (8 Aug 1968) F. Aprahamian: ‘Walton Retrospective’, Music and Musicians, xx/11 (1971–2), 22–6 H. Ottaway: William Walton (Sevenoaks, 1972, rev. 2/1977) C. Palmer: ‘Walton’s Film Music’, MT, cxiii (1972), 249–52 E. Rubbra: ‘William Walton’s 70th Birthday’, The Listener (23 March 1972) H. Ottaway: ‘Walton Adapted’, MT, cxv (1974), 582 S.R. Craggs: William Walton: a Thematic Catalogue (London, 1977, rev. 2/1990) J. Churchill: ‘The Church Music of Sir William Walton’, Music: the AGO and RCCO Magazine, xi (1977), 40–43 A. Poulton: Sir William Walton: a Discography (Kidderminster, 1980) W.K. Fulton: Selected Choral Works of William Walton (diss., Texas Technical U., 1981) B. Northcott: ‘In Search of Walton’, MT, cxxiii (1982), 179–84 A.M. DeZeeuw: Tonality and the Concertos of William Walton (diss., U. of Texas, Austin, 1983) C. Palmer: ‘Sir William Walton’, MT, cxxiv (1983), 316 only [obituary] A. Morrison: ‘Willie: the Young Walton and his Four Masterpieces’, R.C.M. Magazine, lxxx (1984), 119–27 N. Tierney: William Walton (London, 1984) C. Smith: William Walton: a Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1988) S. Walton: William Walton: Behind the Façade (Oxford, 1988) M. Kennedy: Portrait of Walton (Oxford, 1989) E.L. Lasansky: William Walton’s Façade: an Entertainment (diss., U. of Arizona, 1991) S.R. Craggs: William Walton: a Source Book (Aldershot, 1993) Directory: New%20Grove%20Dictionnary%20Of%20Music Download 14.95 Mb. Share with your friends:
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