Listening Journal No. 3a

Walton’s Façade: An Entertainment

William Walton (1902-1983) was a British composer and conductor, who was mostly self-taught as a composer. His compositional training was mainly limited to the scores available to him at the local library, where he gravitated primarily to works by Stravinsky, Debussy and Sibelius. Walton befriended and moved in with Sacheverell, Osbert and Edith Sitwell (three important literary figures in England). It was through the Sitwells that Walton began to obtain fame as a composer. Edith Sitwell was a well-known English poet, who had an interest in the association between music and poetry.
Walton’s Façade was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell. The piece was Façade was originally a set of poems by Edith, that Walton then set for the very peculiar ensemble, similar to Schonberg‘s Pierrot Lunaire. Both pieces have a flute, clarinet, percussion and cello, yet instead of a violin and piano, Walton opted for trumpet and alto saxophone. The most notable difference comes in the use of the vocalist. Schonberg made use of a vocalist using Sprechstimme, and conversely, Walton decided to use two speakers (typically, the speaker parts are performed by one male and one female). Although, he does not use Sprechstimme, Walton achieved a wide variety of spoken vocal timbres based on rhythmic speed, simple inflections, and just by using two different speakers. The piece was performed behind a curtain with the speakers projecting through mega-phones, and it centered around the idea of having the speakers simulate the rhythms of the instrumental ensemble.
This piece has obvious influences of jazz music and none of the twenty-two movements are longer than four minutes (with the whole piece lasting just shy of 40 minutes). Each movement has its own very distinct character, reflecting greatly upon the text used. Walton, like Schönberg in Pierrot Lunaire, hardly used the full ensemble in any of the movements. By fragmenting the ensemble like this, Walton allowed himself potential for greater contrast between his movements (which greatly supplements the speakers’ timbre changes).
Because of these short, jazz-inspired, multi-character pieces, Walton was labeled an avant-garde composer at its premiere in 1923. But judging by his latter output, Walton does not seem to have become the extreme avant-garde composer he was originally thought to be. His Symphony No. 1, for example, is much less humorous and fanciful than Façade, yet there still are hints of his more playful side within it. For the most part, though, his Symphony is relatively conservative compared to Façade, which was written almost thirteen years earlier. Walton’s notoriety seems to have disappeared in between these two pieces, leaving a much more toned-down version of Walton’s original style.
Walton’s Façade seemed to be a piece strictly for entertainment purposes, in fact it is subtitled “An Entertainment.” This idea probably accounts to the playfulness of the piece and its constantly shifting timbres and styles. Edith Sitwell named some of her poems things like: Hornpipe, Tango, Tarantella, Country Dance, Polka, and Fox-Trot (all of which were very commonplace compositional forms and styles). By using these ideas, Walton could connect with the audience in a deeper and much more meaningful way in these short movements by exploring (and expanding upon) the forms and styles of these genres. The movements’ titles and Walton’s incorporation of their stylistic nature into the movements, the piece could help the audience understand Walton’s stylistic language and compositional process quickly.
To use a term I heard in lessons once, this piece seems to be an exercise in “short-attention span theater.” The only continuity between the movements seems to be instrumentation and author of the text. Any continuity of musical thought seems completely absent. The piece as a structural whole tends to work only because each movement is so short and has the same author. With the constantly shifting musical styles, textures and ideas, one tends to lose track of the piece as a whole and begins to look at the work more as twenty-two separate pieces that happen to be lumped together.
But all the previous observations are based on aural information only. Had I had a score present, connections between the movements would (or perhaps would not) become more apparent. Walton seems to have constructed twenty-two well developed pieces and put them together in a “song-cycle” of sorts. It fits the song cycle genre due to it is all poetry of Edith Sitwell and music by Walton. From an orchestrational viewpoint this piece has much to offer, in terms of how Walton achieved the variety of timbres within the piece. Seeing as a piece like this was being written during the same time as Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, it was quite a remarkable achievement in the forward-progression of composition. As far as its inclusion in the Canon is concerned, I believe that this piece offers an interesting look into the development of the song-cycle and its progression in the twentieth century. It is definitely on par with Pierrot Lunaire as a great example of a non-traditional song cycle and for that reason it should be included in the Canon.