William Walton

Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 1902 – 8 March 1983) was an English composer whose career spanned six decades. He worked across a range of classical forms, from film scores to opera. His most celebrated pieces include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the coronation marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre. Walton was born in Lancashire to a father who was a classical musician.

Legacy

He began as a chorister and later studied at Christ Church, Oxford. After leaving the university, he was taken in by the literary Sitwell siblings, who gave him a home and a broad cultural education. His first major work, Façade, created with Edith Sitwell, initially brought him notoriety as a modernist but later became a popular ballet score. In middle age, Walton moved to the Italian island of Ischia with his young wife Susana.

By then, he was no longer seen as a modernist, and some of his 1950s compositions—including his only full-length opera, Troilus and Cressida—were criticized as old-fashioned. That opera has since had little impact in opera houses. In his final years, his later works, once dismissed by critics, were reassessed and placed alongside his earlier output. Walton worked slowly and was a perfectionist, so his complete body of work is not large.

Early life and education

His most popular compositions remain frequently performed in the 21st century. Walton grew up in a musical household in Oldham, Lancashire, the second of three boys and a girl. His father, Charles Alexander Walton, was a musician trained at the Royal Manchester College of Music under Charles Hallé, earning a living as a singing teacher and church organist. His mother, Louisa Maria (née Turner), had been a singer before marriage.

Walton’s musical talent was recognized early; he took piano and violin lessons but never mastered either. He was a better singer, performing with his elder brother in their father’s choir in large works by Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and others. He attended a local school until 1912, when his father saw a newspaper ad for probationer choristers at Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford and applied. Walton and his mother missed their intended train because his father had spent the fare money at a pub.

Louisa borrowed the fares from a greengrocer. Though they arrived after the entrance trials, she persuaded the school to hear her son, and he was accepted. He stayed at the choir school for six years. The Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Thomas Strong, noticed Walton’s potential, encouraged by Sir Hubert Parry, who saw early manuscripts and told Strong, “There’s a lot in this chap; you must keep your eye on him.”

At sixteen, Walton became an undergraduate at Christ Church—often said to be Oxford’s youngest since Henry VIII, though likely not true, but still among the youngest. He was influenced by Hugh Allen, Oxford’s dominant musical figure, who introduced him to modern music like Stravinsky’s Petrushka and taught him “the mysteries of the orchestra.” Walton spent hours in the library studying scores by Stravinsky, Debussy, Sibelius, Roussel, and others. He neglected non-musical studies, passing music exams easily but failing Greek and algebra, which were required for a degree. Little of his juvenilia survives, but the choral anthem A Litany, written at fifteen, hints at his mature style.

At Oxford, Walton befriended poets Roy Campbell, Siegfried Sassoon, and, most importantly, Sacheverell Sitwell. He was sent down in 1920 without a degree or plans. Sitwell invited him to lodge in London with his siblings Osbert and Edith. Walton took lessons with Ernest Ansermet, Ferruccio Busoni, and Edward J. Dent.

Career

He attended the Russian ballet, met Stravinsky and Gershwin, heard the Savoy Orpheans, and wrote an experimental string quartet influenced by the Second Viennese School, performed at a 1923 Salzburg festival. Alban Berg was impressed and took Walton to meet Arnold Schoenberg. In 1923, Walton had his first major success with Façade, a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, though it was initially a succès de scandale. The public premiere at London’s Aeolian Hall on 12 June featured Edith reciting verses through a megaphone behind a screen while Walton conducted six players.