I suppose it was inevitable that
Walton should follow the example of most of the older English composers and
write an oratorio. There was a time when no English composer was considered to
have "arrived" unless he had swept the dust off the family bible and
dredged in it for a libretto; indeed, it was one of the very few means he had
of making a reputation (unless he had a foreign name), for the choral societies
were then in their prime. But how different was Walton's effort from those that
oozed from the pens of our Victorian composers. Belshazzar's Feast was
introduced at the Leeds Festival in 1931 by Dr Malcolm Sargent and repeated in
London soon afterwards. The text was compiled from the scriptures by Sir Osbert
Sitwell, and the whole work dedicated to Lord Berners. This amazing oratorio
demands a huge orchestra to provide the barbaric colour to the tumultuous paeans
of the heathen, for in addition to all the usual instruments of a full symphony
orchestra, an alto saxophone, E-flat military clarinet, and if possible, a
couple of brass bands are required! The percussion department must be augmented
by a tambourine, glockenspiel, gong, xylophone, anvil, slapstick, and Chinese
block. The piano is used merely as an orchestral instrument, by the way.
Owing to the
"unsuitability" of certain passages of the text, this work was
rejected when efforts were made to get it performed at one of the Three Choirs
Festivals. Commenting on a performance of it, William McNaught said in the
Musical Times "The oats may be wild, but they are British. Our Mr. Walton
has written a thrilling work out of a music that is entirely his own."
Much of his time during the next
few years was spent in working out his Symphony, one of his most adventurous
efforts. It took considerably longer than he had anticipated, and he allowed
Sir Hamilton Harty to perform its first three movements at a concert given by
the London Symphony Orchestra on December 3rd, 1934, much to the surprise of
many of his friends, for very few composers permit the performance of
uncompleted works. The final movement was written some time afterwards, and the
first performance of the complete symphony was given at a BBC concert in the
Queen's Hall on November 6th, 1935, under the direction of Sir Hamilton Harty.
The success of this symphony
brought Walton into the front rank of British composers; a position well summed
up in the Musical Times in March 1937 by A. J. B. Hutchings [1] with the
words: "There can be few more effective ways of realising the debt which
English music owes to Walton than to imagine what it would be without him. In
Bax the youngsters see one whose fecundity and brilliance they admire, but one
who does not pretend to lead them anywhere. Without him or William Walton,
all-British programmes during the past decade would have shown little advance
from the emasculated precocity which has been served in Paris since the war.
There would have been, not attenuated Debussy, but Delius and water (although
Vaughan Williams and vinegar was the taste of most of the post-war academicians
who had lived thirty years and seen the futility of it); for dessert there
would have been Handel with a few wrong notes, or an at-all-costs-decent
cantata on a Greek text, begotten by Stravinsky out of Bliss. Yet to-day, English
music holds a place of dignity and distinction, with promise of a rising school
of composers under an exemplary leader . . . When all is allowed for insular
prejudice, one can say for certain that we shall from now wait for every new
work of Walton, as we once did of Sibelius, in the certainty of getting
something of permanent value.”
If a general note may be
interposed here, it is perhaps worth recording that Walton joined the music
committee of the British Council in 1933, and it was at about this time that he
began to take an interest in film music. In the ensuing year he wrote the score
for the film Escape Me Never and has been associated with the film
industry ever since. He has written the music for such films as As You Like
It (1936); Major Barbara and Next of Kin (1941); The First
of the Few, for which he wrote his famous Spitfire Prelude and Fugue;
and Went the Day Well (1942). His latest at the time of writing is the
excellent score he has written for Henry V, in which he had to capture
the musical atmosphere of the period without producing a pseudo-Tudor effect.
He succeeded in embodying sequences of plainsong and the Agincourt Song into a
remarkably effective and dramatic score: a masterpiece of virile English music.
Particularly noteworthy is the quaint and singularly appropriate music that
accompanies the scene in the old Globe Theatre, and the fine passacaglia played
at the deathbed of Falstaff (George Robey).
The advent of the Coronation of
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth inspired Walton to write his splendid march Crown
Imperial, a tremendously popular Elgarian work commissioned by the BBC and
first played by their Symphony Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult on May 9th,
1937. It is scored on generous lines and provides for the addition of an organ
at the end. At about the same time he wrote his cantata In Honour of the
City of London, a setting of words by the Scottish poet William Dunbar
(circa 1460-1520).
In 1938 Walton wrote a second
suite for his Façade, and then Heifetz commissioned the Violin Concerto,
reserving it exclusively for his own performance for two years, so in the
spring of 1939 Walton went to America to confer with the great violinist. The
concerto was completed in New York on June 2nd, 1939, and first performed in
the following December at Cleveland, Ohio, with Arturs Rodziński [2] conducting.
About eighteen months later the score was sent to England for a performance at
the Albert Hall, but it was lost on the journey over owing to enemy action. Fortunately,
a photographic copy had been made in New York, and this was flown to London in
time for a performance given under the auspices of the Royal Philharmonic
Society on November 1st, 1941, when Henry Holst [3] was the soloist. Walton
conducted personally, and a criticism worth quoting was the one written by [William]
McNaught in the following month's issue of the Musical Times. "This
is a difficult work for the listener. The composer's vocabulary has advanced
since his Viola Concerto. It has probably become more chromatic, if the test be
a counting of accidentals; certainly, if the test be the impression on the ear
. . . there are many solitary clumps of incompatible notes; there is more
independence and incongruence among the lines of counterpoint, and the music is
very contrapuntal. In short, the technique has been screwed up to a higher
pitch." The majority of listeners, McNaught feared, would find some
difficulty in appreciating certain parts of this concerto, and he concluded
"Walton is important to us, not only as one who has sought out new things
in the art of music, but as one who has helped towards the growth of that
modern phenomenon, the enjoyment of British music by a British audience; and we
may view with apprehension any signs that in the search for his inmost self he
is likely to lose touch with a large part of the audience. We want to hear the
crowds, not the groups, saying how much they enjoyed the latest Walton. Perhaps
a quarter of the music in the Violin Concerto provokes such thoughts as these.
The remainder of it is music to be thankful for, toughness and all. A great
deal of what Walton has to say really calls for his highly wrought vocabulary
and could not shape itself otherwise…Speaking generally, the Concerto is a work
for British music to be proud of. Granted the idiom and the means and plane of
expression, the work explores its orbit with completeness and mastery. So many
modern works mark out an orbit and then get lost in it."
Among Walton's minor works [4] we
find his Scapino, a comedy overture suggested by an etching from Jacques
Callot's Balli di Sfessania (1622); the Music for Children (1941), which
is an orchestration of two books of children's duets written a year or so
previously; the incidental music to Macbeth (1941) and to a radio play Christopher
Columbus (1942). In 1943 he wrote The Quest, a ballet for the
Sadler's Wells Company [5]
Donald Brook, Composer’s Gallery (London, Rockcliff, 1946)
[2] Artur Rodziński (1892-1958)
was a Polish American conductor known for his work with major orchestras like
the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
He rejuvenated many orchestras and was praised for his energetic, sometimes
volatile, performances.
[3] Henry Holst (1899-1991) was a
Danish violinist and conductor. He led the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm
Furtwängler and later the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Holst also taught
at the Royal Manchester College of Music and the Royal Danish Academy of Music.
He founded the Henry Holst String Quartet in 1931, which gained recognition in
the UK.
[4] I guess that the short
orchestral Scapino (1941) would not now be regarded as a minor work. In
fact, it remains one of Walton’s most popular pieces.
[5] Composed in 1943, The
Quest is a ballet score by William Walton. Choreographed by Frederick
Ashton, it was inspired by Edmund Spenser's epic poem, The Faerie Queene.
The ballet, performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet company, features a
storyline involving knights and allegorical figures. Walton's music is known
for its dramatic and evocative qualities, making it a significant piece in his
oeuvre.
Concluded.
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