The Music Plays On — Walton Symphony №1
Why do certain pieces capture the time in which they’re written? Obviously, it takes retrospect in order for this rare occurrence to happen at all, but in the case of William Walton’s Symphony №1, the acknowledgement was immediate. With pieces like this, I’ve always felt that somehow I’ve heard it before, as if it’s always been with me. If someone would use this phenomenon to posit the existence of reincarnation, I just might believe them!
By the early thirties, Walton had achieved considerable renown as, at first, an avant garde composer with theater works like Façade, but quickly became a composer of national stature with works such as his Viola Concerto and the cantata, Belshazzar’s Feast. He was a slow, methodical composer who would often take many months, if not years to finish a work and this was certainly the case with his first symphony. Walton began composing it in 1932 and at first he made decent progress, finishing the first two movements by the beginning of the 1933. He was able to finish the third movement by the middle of the same year, but then he hit a roadblock and simply could not finish the last movement. It would take him another two years to do so.
Some have offered the theory that it was due to the end of a six-year affair to the person for which the symphony is dedicated, Baroness Imma von Doernberg. However, another argument…