Generally, I have avoided invitations to criticise composers. Composers I don't enjoy are not necessarily ones without merits. It gets trickier when a composer had a significant place in history and I feel I'm missing something. And here it is. I have tried but I just don't "get" Walton. Everything I have heard of him sounds like air force blue. I note that he held no posts at music conservatoires. He had no pupils, gave no lectures and wrote no essays. His total body of work from his sixty-year career as a composer is not large and many writers have concluded that he had little influence on the next generation of composers. And yet I suspect that had the Queen died in the 1960s or the 1970s, it would have been Walton who would have been chosen to produce the music for the coronation of Charles. And his music will almost certainly be included when Charles is eventually crowned, notwithstanding that it is less than obvious who will or could be the musical director. Todd? So how does Walton really stand in 20th C British music? And does anyone have suggestions to help me with a reappraisal?
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Malcolm Arnold and Richard Rodney Bennett were two composers who were clearly influenced by Walton, as, less directly, was Hugh Wood.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View Post -
Do you draw any conclusions there?Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
I'm not being facetious - at least I don't think I am.
It's a decent start.
(It's quite interesting that there hasn't been a thread on him until now)Comment
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Hindemith and Walton cross-pollinated somewhat, too.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostComment
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There is some high quality music amongst Walton's output. His violin concerto is one of my all time favourites in the genre, his pair of symphonies are especially outstanding, Portsmouth Point is most rousing, I do enjoy the stirring coronation marches and the unaccompanied sacred choral music is often sublime. The short 'Touch her soft lips and part' is a cherished piece that I have got my church organist to play as a prelude. I remember reading or hearing that the title has a double meaning.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View Post
I omitted the magnificent Belshazzer's Feast which deserves mention.Last edited by Stanfordian; 23-02-18, 10:32.Comment
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Our overseas friends seem to play Walton’s music more than other British composers. I think he has influenced more than we think but at the moment, I’m not able to substantiate my comment here.Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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Have you heard The Twelve (a choral piece) Lat? Terrific choral writing. He was very good with voices...having been a chorister himself.Comment
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Arnold actually acknowledged Walton's influence on him in an interview in 1963; you can also hear it in RR Bennett's music, the use of those (to me) annoying jerky rhythms found in a lot of "contemporary" choral writing often ascribed to Stravinsky and to jazz but more likely to the sorts of "sprung rhythms" the early Tippett fruitfully drew from Renaissance madrigals, also ascribed (if I remember rightly) to their applications in Gerald Manley Hopkins' poetry. These became a cliché in more British works from the 60s than I'd bore people by listing. From memory - because it is a work not to my liking -Britten's "War Requiem" contains many references to "Belshazzar's Feast". In terms of rhythm, orchestration and rhetoric, Hugh Wood's "Scenes from Comus" of 1965 culminates in the kinds of sprung rhythmic tensions leading to a climax on a major chord, with the phrase leading up to it reiterated, the rhythms compacted. The conclusion I drew at the time was that Walton traits represented a stylistic calling card inducement for listeners' difficulties in approaching the new music of the time: like all Wood's mature work of the time "Scenes" was based on a 12-tone row whose working out is made simpler than it might otherwise have been in more a more radical composer's hands using the method; whether or not Walton was "making a point" in introducing the 12-tone passacaglia theme to underpin the finale of his second symphony (1960), but not treating it serially, many critics at the time compared the work disfavourably with its predecessor as continuing evidence of a falling off of its composer's inspiration when tackling the more demanding end of the repertoire - possibly a sense of disillusion in falling behind the times. What, after all, had become of the Britain celebrated in the "Spitfire Fugue" and in the ringing proclamations of "Richard III".Originally posted by Lat-Literal View PostDo you draw any conclusions there?
I'm not being facetious - at least I don't think I am.
It's a decent start.
(It's quite interesting that there hasn't been a thread on him until now)
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Chandos issued a 23 CD collection of Walton's works. I regret not taking the opportunity to buy it.
Mind you, Walton must have hated me. Having refused to sign his autograph in Liverpool, he then trod on my toe.Comment
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Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
I like lots of Walton- especially the concertos , Belshazzar's Feast and the First Symphony. I can do without Orb and Sceptre and Facade.Comment
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Yikes, EA!
I love Walton's choral writing as well. He wrote very well for brass, wind and percussion, in all works for them. Includimng his First Symphony, Crown Imperial, etc.Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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Do without it? It's marvellous! Having rather specialised in the speaking parts, perhaps I'm biased.FacadeComment
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Haven't some of the poems been accused of racism? If so, they're pretty innocuous, when compared to some of the stuff that went out unchallenged at the time.Originally posted by ardcarp View PostComment
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Give us a clue, Lats - what pieces constitute the "everything" that you've heard of his? (That way we're not suggesting that you to listen to pieces you've already tried.) If you've heard the First Symphony and that doesn't grab you, I'd give up if I were you.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View Post
(And who is the "Musical director Todd" to whom you refer?)[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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Will Todd.Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
Re Walton:
Portsmouth Point, Belshazzar's Feast, the symphonies, Crown Imperial, Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, Henry V, Orb and Sceptre. Possibly other things. I don't hate them - there are many other composers who are less to my taste - but much of his output sounds like nondescript film music to me like Coates's The Dambusters if it had lacked a popular theme. Not being technical, I don't know how to explain this : for all of the theatrics I hear in the structures tight lines. That, in theory, is quite a good thing even if it isn't for those who prefer moments of wild abandon. But the problem is that most of his lines seem to run above or below what is being conveyed rather than being at the heart of it. It's all a bit off centre so that any emotion seems somewhat vacuous. He was dropped in favour of Ron Goodwin in the 1960s for the film The Battle of Britain. That it should have happened and that he should have been considered for it in the first place both seem entirely appropriate. But thanks for your post and to other contributors for theirs. I'll follow up on recommendations with an open mind.Comment
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