William Walton

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Walton was born into a musical family in Lancashire, the second son of a singing teacher and church organist. His musical talents were spotted early, and he became a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford after his mother borrowed train fares from a greengrocer to get him there. He later became an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, where he neglected non-musical studies and failed the Greek and algebra examinations required for graduation. He was sent down in 1920 without a degree. After leaving Oxford, Walton was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings—Osbert, Sacheverell, and Edith—who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Façade, first performed in public at the Aeolian Hall, London, on 12 June 1923. The work initially brought him notoriety as a modernist, with the press condemning it—one headline read "Drivel That They Paid to Hear"—but it later became a popular ballet score. During his time with the Sitwells, he also wrote the overture Portsmouth Point (dedicated to Siegfried Sassoon) and the Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra (1928). In middle age, Walton left England and settled with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he was no longer regarded as a modernist, and some of his 1950s compositions, including his only full-length opera Troilus and Cressida, were criticized as old-fashioned. In his last years, his works came back into critical fashion, with later compositions revalued and regarded alongside his earlier ones.

Reader's Guide

Walton's significance lies in his ability to work across classical genres while maintaining a distinctive voice. His early collaboration with Edith Sitwell on Façade marked him as a modernist, but his later works, such as the Viola Concerto (1929) and Belshazzar's Feast (1931), established him as a central figure in British classical music. The Viola Concerto was written at the suggestion of Sir Thomas Beecham for violist Lionel Tertis, who initially rejected it; Paul Hindemith gave the first performance. Belshazzar's Feast began as a modest BBC commission but grew into a massive choral cantata rescued by Beecham for the 1931 Leeds Festival, where it was a triumph. His coronation marches, Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre, became staples of British ceremonial music. Walton was a slow, perfectionist worker, and his complete body of work across his long career is not large, but his most popular compositions continue to be frequently performed in the 21st century.

Did You Know?

• Walton's mother had to borrow train fares from a greengrocer to get him to Oxford for his chorister audition after his father spent the money in a local public house.
• At age sixteen, Walton became an undergraduate of Christ Church, Oxford—among the youngest ever, though probably not the youngest since Henry VIII.
• The clarinettist Charles Draper, after playing Façade, asked Walton, 'Mr Walton, has a clarinet player ever done you an injury?'
• Walton's Viola Concerto was first performed by Paul Hindemith after Lionel Tertis rejected the manuscript.
• Sir Thomas Beecham told Walton of Belshazzar's Feast, 'As you'll never hear the work again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?'