Portsmouth Point Overture
William Walton (1902-83)
William Walton read music at Oxford University but did not graduate. Rather than toil over dry academic tasks, he chose to study all the musical scores he could find in the libraries of the city, and used much of his remaining time to cultivate friendships among the ‘glitterati’, the Sitwell family in particular. His assured knowledge of orchestration coupled to a ready wit, both acquired at Oxford, led to the sensational Façade in 1923, featuring Edith Sitwell declaiming her verses through a megaphone against Walton’s sparkling score. His growing reputation was boosted by the first performance of the Portsmouth Point Overture two years later.
The inspiration for the overture comes from a Thomas Rowlandson etching of the same title, made in 1811. An American, Aaron Grad, wrote of it: ‘The vibrant image depicts a rowdy port ... with a dense jumble of ships, sailors, taverns, drunken carousers, women of ill repute, and a peg-legged fiddler entertaining a dancing couple.’ Often described as rumbustious, the naked bawdiness of the print is matched by music of tremendous energy, influenced to some extent by Stravinsky and contemporary jazz idioms. The overture is brief, loud, entertaining and difficult to play. Its sheer spontaneity was much praised at the time, but Walton slowed down as the years passed. He became more serious. In a letter of 1939, he wrote, ‘I advise all sensitive composers to die at the age of thirty-seven. I know I’ve gone through the first halcyon period, and am just about ripe for my critical damnation.’ That gloom was unjustified, but he may have looked back wistfully to this youthful work in particular, being no longer quite able to capture the same sparkle.
Walton’s oeuvre was small but of exceptionally high quality. He retired from composition long before his death in 1983, living comfortably on Ischia, an island close to Naples. The British musicologist Christopher Palmer wrote, ‘He is a major figure in English music and musically speaking occupies a position mid-way between Elgar and Britten’. Walton certainly helped to give English music an edge and modernity that was in danger of being overshadowed by the modal preoccupations of some of his contemporaries during the inter-war period.
William Walton (1902-83)
William Walton read music at Oxford University but did not graduate. Rather than toil over dry academic tasks, he chose to study all the musical scores he could find in the libraries of the city, and used much of his remaining time to cultivate friendships among the ‘glitterati’, the Sitwell family in particular. His assured knowledge of orchestration coupled to a ready wit, both acquired at Oxford, led to the sensational Façade in 1923, featuring Edith Sitwell declaiming her verses through a megaphone against Walton’s sparkling score. His growing reputation was boosted by the first performance of the Portsmouth Point Overture two years later.
The inspiration for the overture comes from a Thomas Rowlandson etching of the same title, made in 1811. An American, Aaron Grad, wrote of it: ‘The vibrant image depicts a rowdy port ... with a dense jumble of ships, sailors, taverns, drunken carousers, women of ill repute, and a peg-legged fiddler entertaining a dancing couple.’ Often described as rumbustious, the naked bawdiness of the print is matched by music of tremendous energy, influenced to some extent by Stravinsky and contemporary jazz idioms. The overture is brief, loud, entertaining and difficult to play. Its sheer spontaneity was much praised at the time, but Walton slowed down as the years passed. He became more serious. In a letter of 1939, he wrote, ‘I advise all sensitive composers to die at the age of thirty-seven. I know I’ve gone through the first halcyon period, and am just about ripe for my critical damnation.’ That gloom was unjustified, but he may have looked back wistfully to this youthful work in particular, being no longer quite able to capture the same sparkle.
Walton’s oeuvre was small but of exceptionally high quality. He retired from composition long before his death in 1983, living comfortably on Ischia, an island close to Naples. The British musicologist Christopher Palmer wrote, ‘He is a major figure in English music and musically speaking occupies a position mid-way between Elgar and Britten’. Walton certainly helped to give English music an edge and modernity that was in danger of being overshadowed by the modal preoccupations of some of his contemporaries during the inter-war period.