Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar’s Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation anthems Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford.
About William Walton in brief
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar’s Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation anthems Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a modernist, and some of his compositions of the 1950s were criticised as old-fashioned. His only full-length opera, Troilus and Cressida, was among the works to be so labelled and has made little impact in opera houses. In his last years, his works came back into critical fashion; his later compositions, dismissed by critics at the time of their premieres, were revalued and regarded alongside his earlier works. His most popular compositions continue to be frequently performed in the 21st century, and by 2010 almost all his works had been released on CD. He was a slow worker, painstakingly perfectionist and his complete body of work across his long career is not large. Walton was the second son in a family of three boys and a girl.
His father, Charles Alexander Walton, was a musician who had trained at the Royal Manchester College of Music under Charles Hallé, and made a living as a singing teacher and church organist. Walton’s musical talents were spotted when he was still a young boy, and he took piano and violin lessons, though he never mastered either instrument. He and his elder brother sang in their father’s choir, taking part in performances of large-scale works by Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn and others. At the age of 16 Walton became an undergraduate of Christ Church. He came under the influence of Hugh Allen, the dominant figure in Oxford’s musical life. Allen introduced Walton to modern music, including Stravinsky’s Petrushka, and enthused him with the mysteries of the orchestra. Little survives from his choral examinations, but A Litany anthem anticipates his mature style. At Oxford Walton befriended several poets including Roy Campbell, Siegfried Sassoon and, most importantly for his future, Sachell Sassoon. The Sitwells looked after their protégé financially and culturally, giving him only a few weeks’ residence in their London lodge in Chelsea, but not culturally giving him a materially rich life. He died in a car crash in 1997, aged 80. He is buried in the village of Bournemouth, near his family home in the West Country. He had a son, William, who was a composer and a conductor.
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