After World War IIĭuring World War II, Walton was granted leave from military service in order to compose music for wartime propaganda films, such as The First of the Few (1942), and Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1944), which Winston Churchill encouraged Olivier to adapt as if it were a piece of morale-boosting propaganda.
Though Belshazzar's Feast is a cornerstone of the repertoire of any up-and-coming choral society, the First Symphony remains a challenge even to professional orchestras without generous rehearsal time to devote to it. Each of these works remains firmly entrenched in the repertoire today. 1 (1935), the coronation march Crown Imperial (1937), and the Violin Concerto (1939). This success was followed by equally acclaimed works: the massive choral cantata Belshazzar's Feast (1931), the Symphony No. It was the Viola Concerto of 1929, however, which catapulted him to the forefront of British classical music, its bittersweet melancholy proving quite popular it remains a cornerstone of the solo viola repertoire. The orchestral overture Portsmouth Point (which he dedicated to Sassoon) was the first work to point toward his eventual accomplishments, including a strong rhythmic drive, extensive syncopation and a dissonant but predominantly tonal harmonic language. An early string quartet gained only slight international recognition, including a performance at the 1923 festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salzburg, with a much appreciative Alban Berg in attendance.ĭuring the 1920s Walton spent most of his time composing in the Sitwells' attic. The 1923 first public performance of the jazz-influenced Façade resulted in Walton being branded an avant-garde modernist (the critic Ernest Newman described him thus: 'as a musical joker he is a jewel of the first water'), though the first performances stimulated a considerable amount of controversy.
Walton's first reputation was one of notoriety, built on his ground-breaking musical adaptation of Edith Sitwell's Façade poems. Through the Sitwells, Walton became familiar with many of the most important figures in British music between the World Wars, particularly his fellow composer Constant Lambert, and also in the arts, notably Noël Coward, Lytton Strachey, Rex Whistler, Peter Quennell, Cecil Beaton and others. Walton left Oxford without a degree in 1920 for failing Responsions, to lodge in London with the literary Sitwell siblings - Sacheverell, Osbert and Edith - as an 'adopted, or elected, brother'. Little of Walton's juvenilia survives, but the choral anthem A Litany, written when he was just fifteen, exhibits striking harmonies and voice-leading which was more advanced than that of many older contemporary composers in Britain.
At Oxford Walton befriended two poets - Sacheverell Sitwell and Siegfried Sassoon - who would prove influential in publicizing his music.
He was largely self-taught as a composer (poring over new scores in the Ellis Library, notably those by Stravinsky, Debussy, Sibelius and Roussel), but received some tutelage from Hugh Allen (organist of New College and then Professor of Music). At the age of ten, Walton was accepted as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, and he subsequently entered Christ Church of the University of Oxford as an undergraduate at the unusually early age of sixteen. Walton, the son of Charles Alexander Walton and his wife Louisa Maria (née Turner), was born into a musical family, in Oldham, Lancashire, England.