The Sitwells looked after their protégé both materially and culturally, giving him not only a home but a stimulating cultural education. He took music lessons with
Ernest Ansermet,
Ferruccio Busoni and
Edward J. Dent. He attended the Russian ballet, met Stravinsky and
Gershwin, heard the
Savoy Orpheans at the
Savoy Hotel and wrote an experimental string quartet heavily influenced by the
Second Viennese School that was performed at a festival of new music at
Salzburg in 1923. In 1923, in collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Walton had his first great success, though at first it was a
succès de scandale.
The Manchester Guardian wrote of "relentless cacophony".
The Observer condemned the verses and dismissed Walton's music as "harmless". In
The Illustrated London News, Dent was much more appreciative: "The audience was at first inclined to treat the whole thing as an absurd joke, but there is always a surprisingly serious element in Miss Sitwell's poetry and Mr Walton's music ... which soon induced the audience to listen with breathless attention." In
The Sunday Times,
Ernest Newman said of Walton, "as a musical joker he is a jewel of the first water ... Here is obviously a humorous musical talent of the first order. Among the audience were
Evelyn Waugh,
Lytton Strachey,
Virginia Woolf and
Noël Coward. The last was so outraged by the avant-garde nature of Sitwell's verses and the staging, that he marched out ostentatiously during the performance. The players did not like the music: the clarinettist,
Charles Draper asked the composer, "Mr Walton, has a
clarinet player ever done you an injury?" Nevertheless, the work soon became accepted, and within a decade Walton's music was used for the popular
Façade ballet, choreographed by
Frederick Ashton. inspired Walton's overture of the same name. Walton's works of the 1920s, while he was living in the Sitwells' attic, include the
overture Portsmouth Point, dedicated to Sassoon and inspired by the well-known painting of the same name by
Thomas Rowlandson. It was first heard as an entr'acte at a performance in
Diaghilev's 1926 ballet season, where
The Times complained, "It is a little difficult to make much of new music when it is heard through the hum of conversation."
Sir Henry Wood programmed the work at
the Proms the following year, where it made more of an impression. The composer conducted this performance; he did not enjoy conducting, but he had firm views on how his works should be interpreted, and orchestral players appreciated his "easy nonchalance" and "complete absence of fuss." Walton's other works of the 1920s included a short orchestral piece,
Siesta (1926) and a
Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra (1928), which was well received at its premiere at a
Royal Philharmonic Society concert, but has not entered the regular repertory. The
Viola Concerto (1929) brought Walton to the forefront of British classical music. It was written at the suggestion of
Sir Thomas Beecham for the viola virtuoso
Lionel Tertis. When Tertis received the manuscript, he rejected it immediately. The composer and violist
Paul Hindemith stepped into the breach and gave the first performance. The work was greeted with enthusiasm. In
The Manchester Guardian,
Eric Blom wrote, "This young composer is a born genius" and said that it was tempting to call the concerto the best thing in recent music of any nationality. Tertis soon changed his mind and took the work up. A performance by him at a
Three Choirs Festival concert in
Worcester in 1932 was the only occasion on which Walton met
Elgar, whom he greatly admired. Elgar did not share the general enthusiasm for Walton's concerto. Walton's next major composition was the massive choral
cantata ''
Belshazzar's Feast'' (1931). It began as a work on a modest scale; the
BBC commissioned a piece for a small chorus, orchestra of no more than fifteen players, and soloist. Osbert Sitwell constructed a text, selecting verses from several books of the
Old Testament and the
Book of Revelation. As Walton worked on it, he found that his music required far larger forces than the BBC proposed to allow, and Beecham rescued him by programming the work for the 1931
Leeds Festival, to be conducted by
Malcolm Sargent. Walton later recalled Beecham as saying, "As you'll never hear the work again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?" During early rehearsals, the Leeds chorus members found Walton's music difficult to master, and it was falsely rumoured in London musical circles that Beecham had been obliged to send Sargent to Leeds to quell a revolt. The first performance was a triumph for the composer, conductor and performers. A contemporary critic wrote, "Those who experienced the tremendous impact of its first performance had full justification for feeling that a great composer had arisen in our land, a composer to whose potentialities it was impossible to set any limits." The work has remained a staple of the choral repertoire. Walton's later affair with Alice,
Viscountess Wimborne (born 1880), which lasted from 1934 until her death in April 1948, caused a wider breach between Walton and the Sitwells, as she disliked them as much as they disliked her. By the 1930s, Walton was earning enough from composing to allow him financial independence for the first time. A legacy from a musical benefactress in 1931 further enhanced his finances, and in 1934 he left the Sitwells' house and bought a house in
Belgravia. After a break of eight months, Walton resumed work on the symphony and completed it in 1935. Harty and the
BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of the completed piece in November of that year. The symphony aroused international interest. The leading continental conductors
Wilhelm Furtwängler and
Willem Mengelberg sent for copies of the score, the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the work in the US under Harty,
Eugene Ormandy and the
Philadelphia Orchestra gave the New York premiere, and the young
George Szell conducted the symphony in Australia. commissioned Walton's Violin Concerto. Elgar having died in 1934, the authorities turned to Walton to compose a march in the Elgarian tradition for the
coronation of George VI in 1937. His
Crown Imperial was an immediate success with the public, but disappointed those of Walton's admirers who thought of him as an avant-garde composer. Among Walton's other works from this decade are more film scores, including the first of his
incidental music for Shakespeare adaptations,
As You Like It (1936); a short ballet for a West End revue (1936); and a choral piece,
In Honour of the City of London (1937). His most important work of the 1930s, alongside the symphony, was the
Violin Concerto (1939), commissioned by
Jascha Heifetz. The concerto, Walton later revealed, expressed his love for Alice Wimborne. Its strong
romantic style caused some critics to label it retrogressive, and Walton said in a newspaper interview, "Today's white hope is tomorrow's black sheep. These days it is very sad for a composer to grow old ... I seriously advise all sensitive composers to die at the age of 37. I know: I've gone through the first halcyon period and am just about ripe for my critical damnation." In the late 1930s Walton became aware of a younger English composer whose fame was shortly to overtake his,
Benjamin Britten. They remained on friendly terms for the rest of Britten's life; Walton admired many of Britten's works, and considered him a genius; Britten did not admire all of Walton's works but was grateful for his support at difficult times in his life. he was attached to the Army Film Unit as music adviser. He wrote scores for six films during the war – some that he thought "rather boring" and some that have become classics such as
The First of the Few (1942) and
Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Shakespeare's
Henry V (1944). He later relented to the extent of allowing concert suites to be arranged from
The First of the Few and the Olivier Shakespeare films. For the BBC, Walton composed the music for a large-scale radio drama,
Christopher Columbus, written by
Louis MacNeice and starring Olivier. As with his film music, the composer was inclined to dismiss the musical importance of his work on the programme. Apart from these commissions, Walton's wartime works of any magnitude comprised incidental music for
John Gielgud's 1942 production of
Macbeth; two scores for the
Sadler's Wells Ballet,
The Wise Virgins, based on the music of
J. S. Bach transcribed by Walton, and
The Quest, with a plot loosely based on
Spenser's The Faerie Queene; and a comedy overture,
Scapino, composed for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Among English critics and audiences, the Violin Concerto was not at first rated one of Walton's finest works. Because Heifetz had bought the exclusive rights to play the concerto for two years, it was not heard in Britain until 1941. The London premiere, with a less famous soloist, and in the unflattering acoustics of the
Royal Albert Hall, did not immediately reveal the work as a masterpiece. The
String Quartet in A minor, premiered in May 1947, was Walton's most substantial work of the 1940s. Kennedy calls it one of his finest achievements and "a sure sign that he had thrown off the trammels of his cinema style and rediscovered his true voice."
Postwar In 1947, Walton was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal. In the same year he accepted an invitation from the BBC to compose his first opera. Walton's last work of the 1940s was his music for Olivier's film of
Hamlet (1948). After that, he focused his attentions on his opera
Troilus and Cressida. On the advice of the BBC, he invited
Christopher Hassall to write the libretto. This did not help Walton's relations with the Sitwells, each of whom thought he or she should have been asked to be his librettist. Work continued slowly over the next few years, with many breaks while Walton turned to other things. In 1950 he and Heifetz recorded the Violin Concerto for EMI. In 1951 Walton was
knighted. In the same year, he prepared an authorised version of
Façade, which had undergone many revisions since its premiere. In 1953, following the accession of
Elizabeth II he was again called on to write a coronation march,
Orb and Sceptre; he was also commissioned to write a choral setting of the
Te Deum for the occasion.
Troilus and Cressida was presented at
Covent Garden on 3 December 1954. Its preparation was dogged by misfortunes. Olivier, originally scheduled to direct it, backed out, as did
Henry Moore who had agreed to design the production;
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, for whom the role of Cressida had been written, refused to perform it; her replacement,
Magda László, had difficulty mastering the English words; and Sargent, the conductor, "did not seem well acquainted with the score". The premiere had a friendly reception, but there was a general feeling that Hassall and Walton had written an old-fashioned opera in an outmoded tradition. The piece was subsequently staged in
San Francisco,
New York and
Milan during the next year, but failed to make a positive impression, and did not enter the regular operatic repertory. In 1956 Walton sold his London house and took up full-time residence on Ischia. He built a hilltop house at
Forio and called it
La Mortella. Susana Walton created a magnificent garden there. Walton's other works of the 1950s include the music for a fourth Shakespeare film, Olivier's
Richard III, and the
Cello Concerto (1956), written for
Gregor Piatigorsky, who gave the premiere in January 1957 with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra and the conductor
Charles Munch. Some critics felt that the concerto was old-fashioned;
Peter Heyworth wrote that there was little in the work that would have startled an audience in the year the met its iceberg (1912). It has nevertheless entered the regular repertoire, performed by
Paul Tortelier,
Yo-Yo Ma,
Lynn Harrell and
Pierre Fournier among others. In 1966 Walton successfully underwent surgery for
lung cancer. Until then he had been an inveterate pipe-smoker, but after the operation he never smoked again. While he was convalescing, he worked on a one-act comic opera,
The Bear, which was premiered at Britten's
Aldeburgh Festival, in June 1966, and enthusiastically received. Walton had become so used to being written off by music critics that he felt "there must be something wrong when the worms turned on some praise." Walton received the
Order of Merit in 1967, the fourth composer to be so honoured, after Elgar,
Vaughan Williams and Britten. After his experience over
Battle of Britain, Walton declared that he would write no more film music, but he was persuaded by Olivier to compose the score for a film of
Chekhov's
Three Sisters in 1969.
Last years Walton was never a facile or quick composer, and in his final decade, he found composition increasingly difficult. He repeatedly tried to compose a third symphony for
André Previn, but eventually abandoned it. Many of his final works are re-orchestrations or revisions of earlier music. He orchestrated his song cycle
Anon in Love (originally for tenor and guitar), and at the request of
Neville Marriner adapted his
String Quartet in A minor as a Sonata for String Orchestra. One original work from this period was his
Jubilate Deo, premiered as one of several events to celebrate his seventieth birthday. The British prime minister,
Edward Heath, gave a birthday dinner for Walton at
10 Downing Street, attended by royalty and Walton's most eminent colleagues; Britten presented a Walton evening at
Aldeburgh and Previn conducted an all-Walton concert at the
Royal Festival Hall. Walton revised the score of
Troilus and Cressida, and the opera was staged at Covent Garden in 1976. Once again it was plagued by misfortune while in preparation. Walton was in poor health; Previn, who was to conduct, also fell ill; and the tenor chosen for Troilus pulled out. As in 1954, the critics were generally tepid. Some of Walton's final artistic endeavours were in collaboration with the film-maker
Tony Palmer. Walton took part in Palmer's profile of him,
At the Haunted End of the Day, in 1981, and in 1982 Walton and his wife played the cameo roles of King
Frederick Augustus and Queen Maria of Saxony in Palmer's nine-hour film
Wagner. In March 1982 there were concerts marking Walton's eightieth birthday, at the
Barbican and Royal Festival halls. The audience's response to the performance of ''Belshazzar's Feast'', at the latter, conducted by Previn, moved the composer to tears. Walton died at La Mortella on 8 March 1983, at the age of 80. ==Music==