William Walton

"Using first-hand accounts, including contemporary correspondence, articles and interviews, this account of Walton's life also draws on material newly available relating to his friends and associates. The reception of Facade and Walton's work in both films and radio are fully explored."--BOOK JACKET.

This revised, updated, and expanded edition of the definitive catalogue of works by Sir William Walton (1902-83) follows the completion of the William Walton Edition. A comprehensive source of musical and documentary information relevant to Walton's life and work, the catalogue features full details of composition dates, instrumentation, first performance, publication, the location of autograph manuscripts, critical comment, and significant recordings, as well as previously undiscovered pieces. Appended are a helpful bibliography for further reading and indexes including for works, authors of texts, first lines, and dedicatees.

The aim of this dissertation is to present a study and an historical-musicological analysis of the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra of Sir William Walton, discussing more specifically the shape of the Concerto for Violin in England between 1900 and 1940, taking into consideration the works of Charles Villiers Stanford, Edward Elgar, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Somervell, Arnold Bax and Benjamin Britten. The thesis is divided in three parts: - the first discusses the Concertos for Violin and Orchestra of the composers active in England between 1900 and 1920: Stanford*, Elgar, Coleridge-Taylor, Delius. - the second discusses the Concertos for Violin and Orchestra of the composers active in England between 1920 and 1940: Vaughan Williams, Somervell, Bax, Britten. - The third part discusses the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra of William Walton. At the beginning there is a brief digression on the shape of the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra between the XIX and XX century in Europe, aimed to provide base knowledge of the characteristics of this musical form and to initiate a comparison between the various national composing styles. Each part is introduced by means of a generic historical-musical description of England and presents, after a biographical exposition of the composers, a formal, structural, harmonic and aesthetic analysis more or less extensive of the single concerts, along with a study of the technical aspects of the performance and a reflection on the composer-performer relationship. At the end of each part a comparative compendium is presented. The first and second part are entirely developed in function of the third, that discusses exclusively and in a more detailed manner the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra of William Walton, the work that provoked the most interest in me. To conclude the introduction, in the appendix there are some unpublished quotes, gained during the research work for this dissertation, given by well-known composers, regarding some of the discussed concertos, particularly in relation to Walton's. I believe this to be a precious contribution, that enriches and completes a reflection started in the dissertation, on the purely technical aspect of music for violin of British composers in the first half of the XIX century. * Concerto in D major Op.74 (1899), last concerto for violin and orchestra of the XIX century in England.

When you're in love with the wrong person for the right reasons, anything could happen. Tretch lives in a very small town where everybody's in everybody else's business. Which makes it hard for him to be in love with his straight best friend. For his part, Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels - and Tretch can't tell whether that makes it better or worse.The problem with living a lie is that the lie can slowly become your life. For Tretch, the problem isn't just with Matt. His family has no idea who he really is and what he's really thinking. The girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is. And the guy at school who's a thorn in Tretch's side doesn't realize how close to the truth he's hitting.Tretch has spent a lot of time dancing alone in his room, but now he's got to step outside his comfort zone and into the wider world. Because like love, a true self can rarely be contained.

Almost two decades after his death Walton's reputation is higher than ever - many of his masterworks remain firm favourites in the concert repertoire, notably his eloquent concertos for violin, viola and cello, his dramatic cantata Belshazzar's Feast, his vivid film scores (such as Henry V), his powerful First Symphony (the creative outcome of a tempestuous love affair) and the sparkling entertainment Facade, a brilliant divertissement based on Edith Sitwell's poems and composed before hewas twenty. Born in the cotton town of Oldham, young Billie's life was transformed when he won a boy chorister's scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. He soon lost his Lancashire accent but never his innate canniness. His remarkable creative gifts were spotted early both by Hubert Parry (of "Jerusalem" fame) and the intellectually adventurous circle surrounding the Sitwell family, who persuaded him, since he was determined not to return to the narrow confines of life in Oldham, that he should quit Oxford without a degree to live with them in Jazz-Age London and earn his living purely as a composer. He stuck to music but it made him only a pittance, however, and he became a self-acknowledged scrounger, lodging with the Sitwells for over ten years. His evident genius and his romantic good looks saw him taken up by rich admirers such as the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the rich industrialist Samuel Corutauld, to whose mistress, Christabel Aberconway, he dedicated his first orchestral masterpiece, the 1929 Viola Concerto. His idyllic relationship with a beautiful but impecunious German princess ended in an emotional turmoil that held up completion of his First Symphony for over a year. Walton then became the lover of a woman 22 years his senior, Alice, Viscountess Wimborne, a powerful society hostess who guided his career and chose the librettist, Christopher Hassall, for his first opera Troilus and Cressida. Within a year of her death in 1948 (when he was 46) hemet the vivacous 22 year old Susana Gil Passo and they married after a whirlwind courtship. On their honeymoon he announced that he did not want children and intended to live in Italy. They settled on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, eventually acquiring a plot of rocky hillside land upon which they developed the villas and estate of La Mortella, now one of Italy's best-known gardens. A professional composer to his fingertips, always writing to commission, Walton's critical reputation sagged during his self-imposed Italian exile. But he demonstrated an uncanny flair for tapping a patriotic vein in such popular works as Crown Imperial, Orb and Sceptre and the Coronation Te Deum. A knighthood awarded in 1951 was followed by other honours, notably the Order of Merit. His final years were dogged by ill health - including a near fatal attack of lung cancer - and by a depressing sense of creative impotence; lack of inspiration forced him to abandon plans in his seventies to compose a Third Symphony. The authors Humphrey Burton and Maureen Murray worked with Walton on Ischia and have retained their Waltonian links since his death in 1983: she is curator of the Walton Archive and he is a member of the Walton Trust. With their shared background in television documentary they have adopted a filmic approach to this new pictorial biography. Each of its eight chapters opens with a succinct descriptive essay highlighting Walton's life and his significant musicalachievements: the narrative text is followed by many pages of illustrations, in which portraits by Cecil Beaton, Bill Brandt, Norman Parkinson and many others are interspersed with hitherto unpublished family photographs, music manuscript, press cuttings, playbills etc., all accompanied by commentary, reminiscences, anecdotes and liberal quotations from Walton's typically trenchant letters and self-deprecating interviews for radio and television. Much more than a coffee-table book, this centenary tribute conveys the essence of Walton's personality and provides a measure of his colossal artistic achievement. It will be essential reading for all lovers of his music and students of twentieth century musical life.

An anthology including the organ arrangements of Walton's works which were made with his authorization, plus new ones by Robert Gower. The varied and idiomatic arrangements in this book are indispensable additions to every organist's library.