Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Edith Sitwell
birth date	September 07, 1887
birth place	Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
death date
death place	London, United Kingdom
occupation	Poet
nationality	United Kingdom
website	}}

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic.

Background

Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall;she was an expert on genealogy and landscaping. Her mother was the former Lady Ida Emily Augusta Denison, a daughter of the Earl of Londesborough and a granddaughter of Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort. She claimed a descent through female lines from the Plantagenets.

Sitwell had two younger brothers, Osbert (1892–1969) and Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988) both distinguished authors, well-known literary figures in their own right, and long-term collaborators. Sacheverell married a Canadian woman, Georgia Doble, in 1925 and moved to Weston Hall in Northamptonshire.

Her relationship with her parents was stormy at best, not least because her father made her undertake a "cure" for her supposed spinal deformation—involving locking her into an iron frame. In her later autobiography, she said that her parents had always been strangers to her.

In 1914, 25-year-old Sitwell moved to a small, shabby fourth-floor flat in Pembridge Mansions, Bayswater, which she shared with Helen Rootham (1875–1938), her governess since 1903. Edith never married. However, it is claimed that in 1927 she fell in love with the homosexual Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. The relationship with Tchelitchew lasted until 1928; the same year when Helen Rootham underwent operations for cancer, eventually becoming an invalid. In 1932, Rootham and Sitwell moved to Paris, where they lived with Rootham’s younger sister, Evelyn Wiel. Rootham died of spinal cancer in 1938.

Sitwell's mother died in 1937. Sitwell did not attend the funeral because of her displeasure with her parents during her childhood.

During World War II, Sitwell returned from France and retired to Renishaw with her brother Osbert and his lover, David Horner. She wrote under the light of oil lamps when the lights of England were out of service. She knitted clothes for their friends who served in the army. One of the beneficiaries was young Alec Guinness, who received a pair of seaboot stockings.

The poems she wrote during the war brought her back before a public. They include ''Street Songs'' (1942), ''The Song of the Cold'' (1945) and ''The Shadow of Cain'' (1947), all of which were much praised. ''Still Falls the Rain'', about the London blitz, remains perhaps her best-known poem (it was set to music by Benjamin Britten as Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain).

Her poem ''The Bee-Keeper'' was set to music by Priaulx Rainier, as ''The Bee Oracles'' (1970), a setting for tenor, flute, oboe, violin, cello and harpsichord. It was premiered by Peter Pears in 1970.

In 1943, her father died in Switzerland, his wealth depleted. In 1948, a reunion with Tchelitchew, whom she had not seen since before the war, went badly.

In 1948 Sitwell toured the United States with her brothers, reciting her poetry and, notoriously, giving a reading of Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene. Her poetry recitals were always occasions; she made recordings of her poems, including two recordings of ''Façade'', the first with Constant Lambert as co-narrator, and the second with Peter Pears.

Tchelitchew died in July 1957. Her brother Osbert died in 1969, of Parkinson's disease, diagnosed in 1950. Sitwell became a Dame Commander (DBE) in 1954. In August, 1955, Sitwell converted to Roman Catholicism and asked author Evelyn Waugh to serve as her godfather.

Sitwell wrote two books about Queen Elizabeth I of England, ''Fanfare for Elizabeth'' (1946) and ''The Queens and the Hive'' (1962). She always claimed that she wrote prose simply for money and both these books were extremely successful, as were her ''English Eccentrics'' (1933) and ''Victoria of England'' (1936).

Around 1957 she began using a wheelchair after battling with Marfan syndrome throughout her life. Her last poetry reading was in 1962. She died of cerebral haemorrhage at St. Thomas’s Hospital on 9 December 1964 at the age of 77.

Sitwell's papers are held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Poetry

Sitwell published her first poem ''The Drowned Suns'' in the ''Daily Mirror'' in 1913 and, between 1916 and 1921, she edited ''Wheels'', an annual poetic anthology compiled with her brothers—a literary collaboration generally called "the Sitwells".

In 1929 she published ''Gold Coast Customs'', a poem about the artificiality of human behaviour and the barbarism that lies beneath the surface. The poem was written in the rhythms of the tom-tom and of jazz, and shows considerable technical skill. Her early work reflects the strong influence of the French symbolists.

She became a proponent and supporter of innovative trends in English poetry and opposed what she considered the conventionality of many contemporary backward-looking poets. Her flat became a meeting place for young writers whom she wished to befriend and help: these later included Dylan Thomas and Denton Welch. She also helped to publish the poetry of Wilfred Owen after his death.

Her only novel, ''I Live under a Black Sun'', based on the life of Jonathan Swift, was published in 1937.

Publicity and controversy

Sitwell had angular features resembling Queen Elizabeth I (they also shared the same birthday) and stood 6' (183 cm) tall, but often dressed in an unusual manner with gowns of brocade or velvet with gold turbans and a plethora of rings - her jewelry may be seen in the jewelry galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her unusual appearance provoked critics almost as much as her verse, and throughout her life she was the subject of more or less virulent personal attacks from Geoffrey Grigson, F. R. Leavis and others, which she returned with vigour. As she lay dying, the critic Julian Symons published the last of these attacks in ''The London Magazine'' of November 1964, accusing her of 'wearing other people's bleeding hearts on her own safe sleeve.' Her 'enemies' were treated with scorn; after Noel Coward wrote a skit on Sitwell and her two brothers as "The Swiss Family Whittlebot" for his 1923 revue ''London Calling!'' she refused to speak to him until they were reconciled after her triumphant 70th birthday party at London's Festival Hall. To her friends she showed great sweetness and invariable kindness.

Sitwell was most interested by the distinction between poetry and music, a matter explored in ''Façade'' (1922), which was set to music by William Walton, a series of abstract poems the rhythms of which counterparted those of music. ''Façade'' was performed behind a curtain with a hole in the mouth of a painted face (the painting was by John Piper) and the words were recited through the hole with the aid of a Sengerphone. The public received the first performance with bemusement, but there were many positive reactions.

Poetry collections

''Clowns' Houses'' (1918)

''Rustic Elegies'' (1927)

''Gold Coast Customs'' (1929)

"Geen Song and Other Poems" (1946) - was published by View Editions in U.S.A. -

''The Song of the Cold'' (1948)

''Façade, and Other Poems'' 1920-1935 (1950)

''Gardeners and Astronomers'' (1953)

''Collected Poems'' (1957)

''The Outcasts'' (1962).

Other books

''Alexander Pope'' (1930)

''The English Eccentrics'' (1933)

''I Live under a Black Sun'' (1937)

''Fanfare for Elizabeth'' (1946) (biography of Elizabeth I)

''The Queens and the Hive'' (1962) (biography of Elizabeth I)

''Taken Care Of'' (1964) autobiography

''Victoria of England'' (1936)

References

Further reading

R. Greene, ''Edith Sitwell: Avant-Garde Poet, English Genius'' (2011)

S. Bradford [et al.], ''The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s'' [exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London] (1994)

V. Glendinning, ''Edith Sitwell, A Unicorn Among Lions'' (1981)

John Malcolm Brinnin, 'The Sitwells In Situ', in ''Sextet: T. S. Eliot, Truman Capote and Others'' (1981)

J. Pearson, ''Facades, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell'' (1978)

R. Fifoot, ''A Bibliography of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell'' (1971)

J. Lehmann, ''A Nest of Tigers, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell in their Times'' (1968)

E. Salter, ''The Last Years of a Rebel, A Memoir of Edith Sitwell'' (1967)

E. Sitwell, ''Taken Care Of'' (1965)

O. Sitwell, ''Laughter in the Next Room'' (1949)

O. Sitwell, ''Great Morning'' (1948)

O. Sitwell, ''Left Hand Right Hand'' (1945)

External links

Dame Edith Sitwell Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

"Edith Sitwell: A Nearly Forgotten Poetess"

Brief biography at CatholicAuthors

History of the Sitwells

Sitwell at the Lied and Art Songs Text Page

Letters sent to Walter Greenwood held at the University of Salford

''Wheels: An Anthology of Verse'' (1916–1921), edited by Sitwell, at The Modernist Journals Project

Category:1887 births Category:1964 deaths Category:British poets Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:English poets Category:English women writers Category:English Roman Catholics Category:People from Scarborough, North Yorkshire Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:Women poets

de:Edith Sitwell es:Edith Sitwell fr:Edith Sitwell ko:에디스 시트웰 it:Edith Sitwell la:Editha Sitwell nl:Edith Sitwell pl:Edith Sitwell pt:Edith Sitwell ru:Ситуэлл, Эдит Луиза vi:Edith Sitwell

Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Sir Peter Pears
birth date	June 22, 1910
birth place	Newark House, Searle Road, Farnham, Surrey, England
death date	April 03, 1986
death place	Red House, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England
occupation	tenor }}

Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE ( ; 22 June 1910 – 3 April 1986) was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten.

He was born at Newark House, Searle Road, Farnham, Surrey, and educated at Lancing. He went on to study music at Keble College, Oxford, serving as organist at Hertford College, but left without taking his degree. He later studied voice for two terms at the Royal College of Music. He claimed that it was hearing the tenor Steuart Wilson singing the Evangelist in J.S. Bach's ''St Matthew Passion'' that "started me off".

In 1936, while a member of the BBC Singers, he met Benjamin Britten, who was to become his lover. Pears and Britten gave their first recital together in 1937 at Balliol College, Oxford University. In early 1939, Britten and Pears left for America together as pacifists, a few months before the outbreak of war between the British Empire and Germany. There, in 1940, Britten composed ''Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo'', the first of many song cycles for Pears. Upon their return to England in 1942, when they both registered as conscientious objectors, they performed the song cycle at Wigmore Hall on 23 September, and then recorded them for EMI, their first recording together.

Many of Britten's works contain a main tenor role written specifically for Pears. These include the ''Nocturne'', the ''Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings'', the Canticles, the operas ''Peter Grimes'' and ''Albert Herring'' (title roles), his adaption of ''The Beggar's Opera'' (Macheath), ''Owen Wingrave'' (Sir Philip Wingrave), ''Billy Budd'' (Captain Vere), ''The Turn of the Screw'' (Quint), ''Death in Venice'' (Aschenbach) and the three Church Parables.

Pears was co-librettist for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', and created one of his few comic roles in it. As Flute the bellows-mender, he performed a drag parody of Dame Joan Sutherland in the mad scene of ''Lucia di Lammermoor''.

His voice was controversial, the vocal quality being unusual. Felix Benson described it as "dry and white" and that "it took some getting used to". It was cruelly said that he had one good note, E a third above middle C, which is why the crucial aria of ''Peter Grimes'', "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades", is mainly written on that note. Its quality did not always record well, but there is no doubt that he had unusually good articulation and vocal agility, of which Britten also took advantage. His delivery, and Britten's compositional style, were mercilessly (and accurately) satirised by Dudley Moore in ''Beyond the Fringe'' (''Little Miss Muffet'').

He made his Metropolitan Opera début in October 1974 as Aschenbach in ''Death in Venice''. He sang regularly at the Royal Opera House and other major opera houses in Europe and the United States.

During his life he was considered a notable interpreter of Franz Schubert's ''Lieder'', usually with Britten as accompanist. He also gave notable performances as the Evangelist in Bach's Passions.

Pears, a Sponsor of the Peace Pledge Union, died at Red House, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and is buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul's Church in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Benjamin Britten's grave is next to his, near the grave of Imogen Holst, a close friend.

References

External links

Photos of Peter Pears

Photos of Peter Pears' grave

Category:1910 births Category:1986 deaths Category:Alumni of Keble College, Oxford Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music Category:British conscientious objectors Category:British pacifists Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in England Category:English male singers Category:English opera singers Category:English tenors Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:LGBT people from England Category:Old Lancing Category:People from Suffolk Category:English conscientious objectors

ca:Peter Pears de:Peter Pears es:Peter Pears fr:Peter Pears he:פיטר פירס hu:Peter Pears nl:Peter Pears ja:ピーター・ピアーズ pl:Peter Pears pt:Peter Pears ru:Пирс, Питер simple:Peter Pears fi:Peter Pears sv:Peter Pears

Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer and conductor.

Early life

Lambert, the son of Russian-born Australian painter George Lambert, was educated at Christ's Hospital and the Royal College of Music. Lambert was a prodigy, writing orchestral works from the age of 13, and at 20 received a commission to write a ballet for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (''Romeo and Juliet'').

For a few years he enjoyed a meteoric celebrity, including participating in a recording of William Walton's ''Façade'' with Edith Sitwell. Lambert's best known composition is ''The Rio Grande'' (1927) for piano and alto soloists, chorus, and orchestra of brass, strings and percussion. It achieved instant success, and Lambert made two recordings of the piece as conductor (1930 and 1949). He had a great interest in American Negro music, and once said that he would have ideally liked ''The Rio Grande'' to feature a black choir.

Career

During the 1930s, his career as a conductor took off with his appointment with the Vic-Wells ballet (later The Royal Ballet), but his career as a composer stagnated. His major choral work ''Summer's Last Will and Testament'' (after the play of the same name by Thomas Nashe), one of his most emotionally dark works, proved unfashionable in the mood following the death of George V, but Alan Frank hailed it at the time as Lambert's "finest work". Lambert himself considered he had failed as a composer, and completed only two major works in the remaining sixteen years of his life. Instead he concentrated on conducting, and appeared at Covent Garden and in BBC radio broadcasts, and accompanied the ballet in European and American tours.

The war took its toll of his vitality and creativity, and his health declined with the development of diabetes which remained untreated for years owing to his fear of doctors, stemming from his childhood.

Lambert was renowned as a raconteur in his day and as an expert on many different arts and modern European culture. He was also one of the first "serious" composers to understand fully the importance of jazz and popular culture in the music of his time. He responded positively to the music of Duke Ellington. His embrace of music outside the 'serious' repertoire is illustrated by his book ''Music Ho!'' (1934), subtitled "a study of music in decline", which remains one of the wittiest, if highly opinionated, volumes of music criticism in the English language.

He was at the centre of a brilliant literary and intellectual circle including Michael Ayrton, Sacheverell Sitwell and Anthony Powell, and despite Powell's denial, he is often said to be the prototype of the character Hugh Moreland in Powell's ''A Dance to the Music of Time''.

As a conductor he had an instinctive appreciation of Liszt, Chabrier, Waldteufel and romantic Russian composers, and made fine recordings of some of their works. However, it was only when his health was declining that his career had a chance to flourish with the development of the BBC Third Programme and the Philharmonia Orchestra, having struggled for many years to extract vital performances from second-rate ensembles.

Personal life

Lambert's first marriage was to Florence Kaye; their son was Kit Lambert. After divorcing Kaye, in 1947 Lambert married the artist Isabel Delmer; after his death, she married Alan Rawsthorne. Lambert's first wife Florence Kaye married Peter Hole; their daughter Anne later took the stage name Annie Lambert.

Lambert earlier had an on-and-off affair with the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn which began when Fonteyn was only 17 years old. It was rumoured at the time that Fonteyn became pregnant by Lambert but had an abortion. According to friends of Fonteyn, Lambert was the great love of her life and she despaired when she finally realised he would never marry her. Some aspects of this relationship were symbolised in his ballet ''Horoscope'' (1938).

Later life

Lambert died on 21 August 1951, two days short of his forty-sixth birthday, of pneumonia and undiagnosed diabetes complicated by acute alcoholism, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London. His son Kit was buried in the same grave in 1983.

Major works

Ballets:

''Romeo and Juliet'' (1925)

''Pomona'' (1927)

''Horoscope'' (1938)

''Tiresias'' (1950)

Choral and vocal:

''Eight poems of Li Po'' (1928)

''The Rio Grande'' (1927) (set to a poem by Sacheverell Sitwell)

''Summer's Last Will and Testament'' (1936; to words by Thomas Nashe)

''Dirge from Cymbeline'' (1947)

Orchestral:

Piano Concerto (1924) (ed. Shipley/Easterbrook - premiered Mark Gasser 2001 Christ's Hospital)

''The Bird Actors'' Overture (1924)

''Music for Orchestra'' (1927)

''Aubade Heroique'' (1941)

Chamber

''Concerto for Piano and 9 Instruments'' (1931)

Instrumental

Piano Sonata (1930)

''Elegy'', for piano (1938)

''Trois pieces negres, pour les touches blanches'', piano duet (4 hands) (1949)

Film Music

''Merchant Seamen'' (1940)

''Anna Karenina'' (1948)

References

External links

'The Jazz Age', lecture and concert by Chamber Domaine given on the 6th of November 2007 at Gresham College, including the Suite in Three Movements for Piano by Lambert (available for audio and video download).

Constant Lambert (1905-1951), Composer, conductor and critic: Sitter in 24 portraits (National Portrait Gallery)

Bibliography

Motion, Andrew. ''The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit''. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986. ISBN 0374182833.

Category:20th-century classical composers Category:English composers Category:English conductors (music) Category:1905 births Category:1951 deaths Category:Christ's Hospital Old Blues Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music Category:Burials at Brompton Cemetery Category:Ballet composers Constant Lambert

ca:Constant Lambert da:Constant Lambert de:Constant Lambert es:Constant Lambert fr:Constant Lambert it:Constant Lambert ja:コンスタント・ランバート pt:Constant Lambert simple:Constant Lambert sv:Constant Lambert

Sir William Turner Walton OM (29 March 1902 – 8 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade – An Entertainment'', the cantata ''Belshazzar's Feast'' and his First Symphony.

Born in Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, ''Façade'', which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score. Other early works that made his name were a Viola Concerto and ''Belshazzar's Feast''.

In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a modernist, and some of his compositions of the 1950s were criticised as old-fashioned. His only full-length opera, ''Troilus and Cressida'', was among the works to be so labelled and has made little impact in opera houses. In his last years, his works came back into critical fashion; his later compositions, dismissed by critics at the time of their premieres, were revalued and regarded alongside his earlier works.

Walton, who was largely self-taught as a composer, was a slow worker, painstakingly perfectionist, and his complete body of work across his long career is not large. His most popular compositions continue to be frequently performed in the 21st century, and by 2010 all his works were recorded for CD.

Biography

Early years

Walton was born into a musical family in Oldham, Lancashire, the second son in a family of three boys and a girl. His father, Charles Alexander Walton, was a musician who had trained at the Royal Manchester College of Music under Charles Hallé, and made a living as a singing teacher and church organist. His wife, Louisa Maria (''née'' Turner), had been a singer before their marriage. Walton's musical talents were spotted when he was still a young boy, and he took piano and violin lessons, though he never mastered either instrument. He was more successful as a singer: he and his elder brother sang in their father's choir, taking part in performances of large-scale works by Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn and others. Walton was sent to a local school, but in 1912 his father saw a newspaper advertisement for probationer choristers at Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford and applied for William to be admitted. The boy and his mother missed their intended train from Manchester to Oxford because Walton's father had spent the money for the fare in a local public house. Louisa Walton had to borrow the fares from a greengrocer. Although they arrived in Oxford after the entrance trials were over, Mrs Walton successfully pleaded for her son to be heard, and he was accepted. He remained at the choir school for the next six years. The Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Thomas Strong, noted the young Walton's musical potential and was encouraged in this view by Sir Hubert Parry, who saw the manuscripts of some of Walton's early compositions and said to Strong, "There's a lot in this chap; you must keep your eye on him."

At the age of sixteen, Walton became an undergraduate of Christ Church. It is sometimes said that he was Oxford's youngest undergraduate since Henry VIII, and though this is probably not correct, he was nonetheless among the youngest. He came under the influence of Hugh Allen, the dominant figure in Oxford's musical life. Allen introduced Walton to modern music, including Stravinsky's ''Petrushka'', and enthused him with "the mysteries of the orchestra". Walton spent much time in the university library, studying scores by Stravinsky, Debussy, Sibelius, Roussel and others. He neglected his non-musical studies, and though he passed the musical examinations with ease, he failed the Greek and algebra examinations required for graduation. Little survives from Walton's juvenilia, but the choral anthem ''A Litany'', written when he was fifteen, anticipates his mature style.

At Oxford Walton befriended several poets including Roy Campbell, Siegfried Sassoon and, most importantly for his future, Sacheverell Sitwell. Walton was sent down from Oxford in 1920 without a degree or any firm plans. Sitwell invited him to lodge in London with him and his literary brother and sister, Osbert and Edith. Walton took up residence in the attic of their house, later recalling, "I went for a few weeks and stayed about fifteen years".

First successes

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. Alban Berg heard the performance and was impressed enough to take Walton to meet Arnold Schoenberg, Berg's teacher and the founder of the Second Viennese School.

In 1923, in collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Walton had his first great success, though at first it was a ''succès de scandale''. ''Façade'' was first performed in public at the Aeolian Hall, London, on 12 June. The work consisted of Edith's verses, which she recited through a megaphone from behind a screen, while Walton conducted an ensemble of six players in his accompanying music. The press was generally condemnatory. ''The Daily Express'' loathed the work, but admitted that it was naggingly memorable. ''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". Among the audience were Evelyn Waugh, 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 work: the clarinettist 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.

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, however, 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 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. 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.

1930s

In the 1930s, Walton's relationship with the Sitwells became less close. He had love affairs and new friendships that drew him out of their orbit. His first long affair was with Imma von Doernberg, the young widow of a German baron. She and Walton met in the late 1920s and they were together until 1934, when she left him. His 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.

Walton's first major composition after ''Belshazzar's Feast'' was his First Symphony. It was not written to a commission, and Walton worked slowly on the score from late 1931 until he completed it in 1935. He had composed the first three of the four movements by the end of 1933 and promised the premiere to the conductor Hamilton Harty. Walton then found himself unable to complete the work. The end of his affair with Imma von Doernberg coincided with, and may have contributed to, a sudden and persistent writer's block. Harty persuaded Walton to let him perform the three existing movements, which he premiered in December 1934 with the London Symphony Orchestra. During 1934 Walton interrupted work on the symphony to compose his first film music, for Paul Czinner's ''Escape Me Never'' (1934), for which he was paid £300. After a break of eight months, Walton resumed work on the symphony and completed it in 1935. Harty conducted 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, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the U.S. premiere, and the young George Szell conducted the symphony in Australia.

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. After their first meeting, Britten wrote in his diary, "[...] to lunch with William Walton at Sloane Square. He is charming, but I feel always the school relationship with him – he is so obviously the head prefect of English music, whereas I'm the promising new boy." 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.

World War II

During World War II, Walton was exempted from military service on the understanding that he would compose music for wartime propaganda films. In addition to driving ambulances (extremely badly, he said), 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). Walton was at first dismissive of his film scores, regarding them as professional but of no intrinsic worth; he resisted attempts to arrange them into concert suites, saying, "Film music is not good film music if it can be used for any other purpose." 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 about 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 Queen''; and, for the concert hall, a suite of orchestral miniatures, ''Music for Children'', and a comedy overture, ''Scapino'', composed for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Walton's house in London was destroyed by German bombing in May 1941, after which he spent much of his time at Alice Wimborne's family house at Ashby St. Ledgers in the countryside of Northamptonshire in the middle of England. While there, Walton worked on projects that had been in his mind for some time. In 1939 he had been planning a substantial chamber work, a string quartet, but he set it aside while composing his wartime film scores. In early 1945 he turned again to the quartet. Walton was conscious that Britten, with ''Les Illuminations'' (1940), the ''Sinfonia da Requiem'' (1942), and ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, had produced a series of substantial works, while Walton had produced no major composition since the Violin Concerto in 1939. 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 England 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. His biographer, Michael 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."

Post-war

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. He decided to base it on Chaucer's ''Troilus and Criseyde'', but his preliminary work came to a halt in April 1948 when Alice Wimborne died. To take Walton's mind off his grief, the music publisher Leslie Boosey persuaded him to be a British delegate to a conference on copyright in Buenos Aires later that year. While there, Walton met Susana Gil Passo (1926–2010), daughter of an Argentine lawyer. At 22 she was 24 years younger than Walton (Alice Wimborne had been 22 years his senior), and at first she ridiculed his romantic interest in her. He persisted, and she eventually accepted his proposal of marriage. The wedding was held in Buenos Aires in December 1948. From the start of their marriage, the couple spent half the year on the Italian island of Ischia, and by the mid-1950s they lived there permanently.

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; he was also commissioned to write a ''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 Sir Malcolm 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 Titanic met its iceberg (1912). However, it has 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.

Walton's orchestral works of the 1960s include his Second Symphony (1960), ''Variations on a Theme by Hindemith'' (1963), ''Capriccio burlesco'' (1968), and ''Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten'' (1969). His song-cycles from this period were composed for Peter Pears (''Anon. in Love'', 1960) and Schwarzkopf (''A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table'', 1962). He was commissioned to compose a score for the 1969 film ''Battle of Britain'', but the film company rejected most of his score, replacing it with music by Ron Goodwin. A concert suite of Walton's score was published and recorded after Walton's death. 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 A minor String Quartet as a Sonata for Strings. 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''.

Walton died at La Mortella on 8 March 1983, at the age of 80. His ashes were buried on Ischia, and a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey, where a commemorative stone to Walton was unveiled near to those to Elgar and Britten.

Legacy

In 1944, it was said of Walton that he summed up the recent past of English music and augured its future. Later writers have concluded that Walton had little influence on the next generation of composers. In his later years, Walton formed friendships with younger composers including Hans Werner Henze and Malcolm Arnold, but although he admired their work, he did not influence their compositional styles. Throughout his life, Walton held no posts at music conservatoires; he had no pupils, gave no lectures, and wrote no essays. After his death, the Walton Trust, inspired by Susana Walton, has run arts education projects, promoted British music and held annual summer masterclasses on Ischia for gifted young musicians.

Music

Walton was a slow worker. Both during composition and afterwards he would continually revise his music; he said, "Without an india-rubber I was absolutely sunk." Consequently, his total body of work from his sixty-year career as a composer is not large. Between the first performance of ''Façade'' in 1923, for example, and that of the Sinfonia Concertante in 1928, he averaged only one small piece a year. Of his work as a whole, Byron Adams in the ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' writes:

The writer adds that Walton's allegiance to his basic style never wavered and that this loyalty to his own vision, together with his rhythmic vitality, sensuous melancholy, sly charm and orchestral flair, gives Walton's finest music "an imperishable glamour". Another biographer of Walton, Neil Tierney, writes that although contemporary critics felt that the post-war music did not match Walton's pre-war compositions, it has become clear that the later works are "if emotionally less direct, more profound."

Orchestral music

Overtures and short orchestral pieces

Walton's first work for full orchestra, ''Portsmouth Point'' (1925), inspired by a Rowlandson print of the same name, depicts a rumbustious dockside scene (in Kennedy's phrase, "the sailors of H.M.S. Pinafore have had a night on the tiles") in a fast moving score full of syncopation and cross-rhythm that for years proved hazardous for conductors and orchestras alike. Throughout his career, Walton wrote works in this pattern, such as the lively Comedy Overture ''Scapino'', a virtuoso piece commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, "an ingenious blending of fragments in exhilarating profusion." Walton's post-war works in this genre are the ''Johannesburg Festival Overture'' (1956), the "diverting but hard-edged ''Capriccio burlesco''" (1968), and the longer ''Partita'' (1957), written for the Cleveland Orchestra, described by Grove as "an impressively concentrated score with a high-spirited finale [with] steely counterpoint and orchestral virtuosity". Walton's shorter pieces also include two tributes to musical colleagues, ''Variations on a Theme by Hindemith'' (1963) and the ''Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten'' (1969), in both of which the source material is gradually transformed as Walton's own voice becomes more prominent.

Concertos and symphonies

Walton's first successful large-scale concert work, the Viola Concerto (1929) is in marked contrast to the raucous ''Portsmouth Point''; despite the common influence of jazz and of the music of Hindemith and Ravel, in its structure and romantic longing it owes much to the Elgar Cello Concerto. In this work, wrote Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor in ''The Record Guide'', "the lyric poet in Walton, who had so far been hidden under a mask of irony, fully emerged." Walton followed this pattern in his two subsequent concertos, for Violin (1937) and for Cello (1956). Each opens reflectively, is in three movements, and contrasts agitated and jagged passages with warmer romantic sections. The Cello Concerto is more introspective than the two earlier concertos, with a ticking rhythm throughout the work suggesting the inexorable passage of time.

The two symphonies are strongly contrasted with one another. The First is on a large scale, reminiscent at times of Sibelius. Grove says of the work that its "orgiastic power, coruscating malice, sensuous desolation and extroverted swagger" make the symphony a tribute to Walton's tenacity and inventive facility. However, critics have always differed on whether the finale lives up to the rest of the work. In comparison with the First, the Second Symphony struck many reviewers as lightweight, and, as with many of Walton's works of the 1950s, it was regarded as old fashioned. It is a very different kind of work from the First Symphony. David Cox describes it as "more a ''divertimento'' than a symphony ... highly personal, unmistakably Walton throughout", and Kennedy calls it "somewhat enigmatic in mood, and a superb example of Walton's more mature, concise, and mellow post-1945 style."

Music for ballets, plays and films

Although generally a slow and perfectionist composer, Walton was capable of working quickly when necessary. Some of his stage and screen music was written to tight deadlines. He regarded his ballet and incidental music as of less importance than his concert works and was generally dismissive of what he produced. Of his ballets for Sadler's Wells, ''The Wise Virgins'' (1940) is an arrangement of eight extracts from choral and instrumental music by Bach. ''The Quest'' (1943), written in great haste, is, according to Grove, oddly reminiscent of Vaughan Williams. Neither of these works established itself in the regular repertoire, unlike the ballet score Walton arranged from the music of ''Façade'', the music for which was expanded for full orchestra, still retaining the jazz influences and the iconoclastic wit of the original. Music from ''The Quest'' and the whole of the Viola Concerto were used for another Sadler's Wells ballet, ''O.W.'', in 1972.

Walton wrote little incidental music for the theatre, his music for ''Macbeth'' (1942) being among the exceptions. For the cinema he wrote the music for 13 films between 1934 and 1969. He arranged the ''Spitfire Prelude and Fugue'' from his own score for ''The First of the Few'' (1942), and he allowed suites to be arranged from his Shakespeare film scores of the 1940s and 1950s. In these films, Walton mixed Elizabethan pastiche with wholly characteristic Waltonian music. Kennedy singles out for praise the Agincourt battle sequence in ''Henry V'', where Walton's music makes the charge of the French knights "fearsomely real." Despite Walton's view that film music is ineffective when performed out of context, suites from several more of his film scores have been put together since his death.

Opera

Walton worked for many years on his only full-length opera, ''Troilus and Cressida'', both before its premiere and afterwards. It has never been regarded as a success. The libretto is generally considered weak, and Walton's music, despite many passages that have won critical praise, is not dramatic enough to sustain interest. Grove calls the work a partially successful attempt to revivify the traditions of 19th-century Italian opera in a post-war era wary of heroic Romanticism.

Walton's only other opera, ''The Bear'', based on a comic vaudeville by Chekhov, is judged by critics as much more successful. It is, however, a one-act piece, a genre not regularly staged at most opera houses, and so is rarely seen.

Chamber works

Apart from an early experiment in atonalism in his String Quartet (1919–22), which he later described as "full of undigested Bartók and Schoenberg", Walton's major essays in chamber music are his String Quartet in A Minor (1945–6) and the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1947–9). In the opinion of Adams in ''Grove's Dictionary'', the quartet is one of Walton's supreme achievements. Earlier critics did not always share this view. In 1956 ''The Record Guide'' said, "[T]he material is not first class and the composition as a whole seems laboured." The work exists also in its later expanded form as the Sonata for Strings (1971), which, the critic Trevor Harvey wrote, combines Walton in his most energetically rhythmic mood with a "vein of lyrical tenderness which is equally characteristic and is so rewarding to listen to". The Violin Sonata is in two closely-related movements, with strong thematic material in common. The first movement is nostalgically lyrical, the second a set of variations, each one a semitone higher than its predecessor. Walton briefly refers back to Schoenberg with a dodecaphonic passage in the second movement, but otherwise the sonata is firmly tonal.

Choral and other vocal music

One of the best-known and most frequently performed of Walton's works is the cantata ''Belshazzar's Feast''. Written for large orchestra, chorus and baritone soloist, it intersperses a choral and orchestral depiction of Babylonian excess and depravity, barbaric jazzy outbursts, and the lamentations and finally the rejoicing of the Jewish captives. The "couple of brass bands" added at Beecham's suggestion to an already large orchestra each consist of three trumpets, three trombones and a tuba. Many critics judged it the most important English choral work since Elgar's ''The Dream of Gerontius'' in 1900. None of Walton's later choral works have matched its popularity. They include ''In Honour of the City of London'' (1937) and a ''Gloria'' (1960–61) composed for the 125th anniversary of the Huddersfield Choral Society.

Recordings

From the days of 78rpm discs, when relatively little modern music was being put on record, Walton was favoured by the record companies. In 1929 he conducted a chamber ensemble to accompany Edith Sitwell and Constant Lambert in eleven movements from ''Façade'', for the small, new Decca company. In the 1930s, he also had two of his major orchestral works on disc, both on Decca, the First Symphony recorded by Sir Hamilton Harty and the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Viola Concerto with Frederick Riddle and the LSO conducted by Walton. In the 1940s Walton moved from Decca to its older, larger rival, EMI. The EMI producer Walter Legge arranged a series of recordings of Walton's major works and many minor ones over the next twenty years; a rival composer expressed the view that if Walton had an attack of flatulence (he used an earthier expression), Walter Legge would record it.

Walton himself, although a reluctant conductor, conducted many of the EMI recordings, and some for other labels. He made studio recordings of the First Symphony, the Viola Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Sinfonia Concertante, the ''Façade'' Suites, the Partita, ''Belshazzar's Feast'', and suites from his film scores for Shakespeare plays and ''The First of the Few''. Some live performances conducted by Walton were recorded and have been released on compact disc, including the Cello Concerto and the Coronation Te Deum.

All Walton's works have been recorded for the gramophone. EMI published a "Walton Edition" of his major works on CD in the 1990s, and the recording of the Chandos Records "Walton Edition" of all his works was completed in 2010. His best-known works have been recorded by performers from many countries. Among the frequently recorded are ''Belshazzar's Feast'', the Viola and Violin Concertos, and the First Symphony, which has had more than twenty recordings since Harty's 1936 set.

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

William Walton Trust

William Walton Online Archive. Archive of digitised works from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Walton pages at Oxford University Press

Sir William Turner Walton (1902–1983), Composer, Sitter in 22 portraits (National Portrait Gallery collection)

"The Jazz Age", lecture and concert by Chamber Domaine given on 6 November 2007 at Gresham College, including Walton's ''Façade'' (available for audio and video download).

Walton, Cello Concerto performed by Julian Lloyd Webber and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner

Interview: Composer Sir William Walton, as remembered by his wife, Lady Susana Walton (by Paolo Petrocelli)

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:20th-century classical composers Category:English composers Category:English film score composers Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Category:Music from Oldham Category:Musicians from Manchester Category:People from Oldham Category:1902 births Category:1983 deaths Category:Ballet composers

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Tim Curry
birth name	Timothy James Curry
birth date	April 19, 1946
birth place	Grappenhall, Warrington, England, UK
occupation	Actor, singer, composer
years active	1968–present }}

Timothy James "Tim" Curry (born 19 April 1946) is an English actor, singer, composer and voice actor, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Curry first became known to film audiences with his breakthrough role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 cult movie ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'', reprising the role he played in the 1973 London and 1974 Los Angeles stage productions of ''The Rocky Horror Show'', then later for his supporting roles as Rooster in the film adaption of ''Annie'' (1982), Lord of Darkness in the film ''Legend'' (1985), Wadsworth in the movie ''Clue'' (1985), as well as a starring role portraying Pennywise the Clown in the horror film ''It'' (1990).

He played Nigel, the father in the Nickelodeon children's TV show ''The Wild Thornberrys''. He originated the role of King Arthur in the Broadway hit ''Monty Python's Spamalot''. He is notable for often playing or voicing villainous characters in film.

Early life

Curry's father, James, was a Methodist chaplain in the Royal Navy, and his mother, Patricia, was a school secretary. Curry was born and raised in Cheshire and attended Lymm High School until his father's death in 1958. Curry's family then moved to South London, but Curry himself went to boarding school and attended Kingswood School in Bath. As a child, he developed into a talented boy soprano (treble). Deciding to concentrate on acting, Curry graduated from Birmingham University with a combined degree in English and drama.

Acting career

''Rocky Horror''

Curry's first full-time role was as part of the original London cast of the musical ''Hair'' in 1968, where he first met Richard O'Brien who went on to write Curry's next full-time role, that of Dr. Frank N. Furter in ''The Rocky Horror Show''. Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, but the character evolved into the sly, very upper-class English mad scientist and transvestite that carried over to the movie version of ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' and made Curry both a star and a cult figure. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles and New York until 1975.

For many years, Curry was reluctant to talk about ''Rocky Horror'', feeling that it was a trend that had gone too far and had distracted attention away from his later roles. A VH1 Pop-Up Video Halloween special even quoted Curry as saying he grew so unnerved by the fan attention from this role he became "chubby and plain" in order to escape it. However, he has become much more open about discussing the show and now recognizes it as a "rite of passage" for many young people.

Theatre

Shortly after the end of ''Rocky Horror Show'' on Broadway, Curry was back on Broadway with Tom Stoppard's ''Travesties'', which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. ''Travesties'' was a Broadway hit which won two Tony Awards (Best Performance by an Actor for John Wood and Best Comedy), as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (Best Play), and Curry's performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.

In 1981, Curry formed part of the original cast in the Broadway show ''Amadeus'', playing the title character, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was nominated for his first Tony Award (Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play) for this role, but lost out to his co-star Ian McKellen, who played Antonio Salieri. In 1982, Curry took the part of the Pirate King in the Drury Lane production of Joe Papp's version of ''The Pirates of Penzance'' opposite George Cole, earning enthusiastic reviews.

In the mid 1980s, Curry performed in ''The Rivals'' (Bob Acres 1983) and in several plays with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, including ''The Threepenny Opera'' (MacHeath 1986), ''Dalliance'' (Theodore 1986), and ''Love For Love'' (Tattle 1985). In 1987/1988, Curry did the national tour of ''Me and My Girl'' as the lead role of 'Bill Snibson', a role originated on Broadway by Robert Lindsay and followed by Jim Dale. In 1989/90, Tim Curry returned once again to the New York stage in ''The Art of Success''. In 1993, Curry played Alan Swann in the Broadway musical version of ''My Favorite Year'', earning him his second Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

In 2001, Curry starred as Scrooge in the musical version of ''A Christmas Carol'' that played at Madison Square Garden. In 2004, Curry began his role of King Arthur in ''Spamalot'' in Chicago. The show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. The show sold more than $1 million worth of tickets in its first 24 hours. It brought him a third Tony nomination, again for Best Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role in London's West End at the Palace Theatre, where ''Spamalot'' opened on 16 October 2006. His final performance came on 6 January 2007. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role and also won the Theatregoers' Choice Award (getting 39% of the votes cast by over 12,000 theatregoers) as Best Actor in a Musical.

From May to August 2011, Curry was scheduled to portray The Player in a Trevor Nunn stage production of Tom Stoppard's ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'' at the Chichester Festival Theatre and then in London. He withdrew from the production on 27 May, citing ill health.

Musical career

Aside from his performances on various soundtrack records, Curry has had some success as a solo musical artist. In 1976, he recorded a 9-song album for Lou Adler's Ode Records which was unreleased in its entirety until February 2010, when it was made available as a legal download (4 tracks from these sessions had been released on a 1990 ''Rocky Horror'' box set). In 1978, A&M; Records released Curry's debut solo album, ''Read My Lips''. The album featured an eclectic range of songs (mostly covers) performed in diverse genres. Highlights of the album are a reggae version of the Beatles song "I Will", a rendition of "Wake Nicodemus" featuring the Pipes and Drums of the 48th Highlanders of Canada, and a bar-room ballad, "Alan", composed by Canadian singer/songwriter Tony Kosinec.

The following year, Curry released his second and most successful album, ''Fearless''. The LP was more rock-oriented than ''Read My Lips'' and mostly featured original songs rather than cover versions. The record included Curry's only US charting songs: "I Do the Rock" and "Paradise Garage".

Curry's third and final album, ''Simplicity'', was released in 1981, again by A&M; Records. This record, which did not sell as well as the previous offerings, combined both original songs and cover versions.

In 1989, A&M; released ''The Best of Tim Curry'' on CD and cassette, featuring songs from his albums (including a live version of "Alan") and a previously unreleased song, a live cover version of Bob Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate".

Curry toured America with his band through the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. He also performed in Roger Waters' (of Pink Floyd fame) 1990 production of The Wall in Berlin, as the prosecutor. Curry's voice also appeared on The Clash's ''Sandinista!'', on the track "Sound of Sinners".

The writing, production and musician roster for Curry's solo albums included an impressive list of collaborators, including Bob Ezrin and David Sanborn.

Real estate career

Apart from his activities as an actor, Curry has also developed several properties in the city of Los Angeles. Among these is a 1926 Mediterranean Italianate Revival estate located on Nottingham Avenue just below Griffith Park Observatory in the neighborhood of Los Feliz.

Filmography

Films and television

Curry's television and film credits are long and varied. A partial list of roles:

"Madman" in a telefilm of John Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi'' (1972)

Glen in ''Schmoedipus'', a BBC ''Play for Today'' TV episode written by Dennis Potter and directed by Barry Davis (1974)

Dr. Frank N. Furter ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' (1975)

Jerome K. Jerome in the BBC's TV movie ''Three Men in a Boat'' (1975)

Has-been rock star Stevie Streeter in ''Rock Follies of '77'' (1977)

William Shakespeare in a 6-hour British TV series ''Will Shakespeare'' directed by Mark Cullingham, Robert Knights, Peter Wood (1977)

Robert Graves in "The Shout" (1978)

Disc jockey Johnny LaGuardia in ''Times Square'' (1980)

Host of ''Saturday Night Live'' (1981); in one sketch, Curry and Meat Loaf ran a "Rocky Horror" memorabilia store.

Larry Gormley in LWT's TV comedy ''Blue Money'' (1982)

Rooster Hannigan in the musical ''Annie'' (1982)

Lord of Darkness in the film ''Legend'' (1985)

Wadsworth in the film ''Clue'' (1985)

The Grand Wizard in ''The Worst Witch'' (1986)

Pentecostal televangelist in ''Pass the Ammo'' (1988)

Rapacious record producer Winston Newquay in ''Wiseguy'' (1989)

Prince Charles (voice) in episode 27 – "Europe in 30 Minutes" of ''Tiny Toon Adventures'' (1990)

The Prosecutor in Roger Waters' 1990 Performance of ''The Wall – Live in Berlin'' (1990)

Pennywise in Stephen King's ''It'' (1990)

Dr. Petrov in ''The Hunt for Red October'' (1990)

Dr. Thornton Poole the elocutionist in the film ''Oscar'' (1991)

The Plaza Hotel concierge, Mr. Hector, in ''Home Alone 2: Lost in New York'' (1992)

Mr. Jigsaw in the film ''Loaded Weapon 1'' (1993)

Roger in 2 episodes of ''Roseanne'' (1993)

Cardinal Richelieu in Disney's ''The Three Musketeers'' (1993)

Pa, Ma, and Winoma Brackett in ''Death of Some Salesman'' from ''Tales from the Crypt'' (1993)

Corrupt scientist Farley Claymore in ''The Shadow'' (1994)

Gaal in ''Earth 2'' (1994)

Kilokahn in ''Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad'' (1994)

Herkermer Homolka, Romanian philanthropist in ''Congo'' (1995) – Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor

Long John Silver in ''Muppet Treasure Island'' (1996)

Simon Doonan in the ''Titanic'' miniseries (1996)

Major Vladikov in ''McHale's Navy'' (1997)

Dr. Kao in ''Doom Runners'' (1997)

"Poet Man" in ''Lexx'' (1997) in the episode "Supernova"

''Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas'' (voice of Forte) (1997)

Simon Ferguson in Over the Top (1997)

Gomez Addams in ''Addams Family Reunion'' (1998)

"The Sorcerer" (voice only) in ''The Net'' (1998–1999)

"Jezebel Jack" in ''Pirates of the Plain'' (1999) from the creators of Ernest.

"Edward Whatsett St. John" in ''Jackie's Back!'' (1999)

"Officer Lightoller" in ''The Titanic Chronicles'' (1999)

Roger Corwin in ''Charlie's Angels'' (2000)

Felix in ''Four Dogs Playing Poker'' (2000)

Captain Fitzgerald in ''Lion of Oz'' (2000)

Damien Kemp in ''Sorted'' (2000)

The Mouse King in Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001)

Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II in ''Attila'' (2001)

Professor Oldman in ''Scary Movie 2'' (2001)

Harley Dune in ''Wolf Girl'' (sometimes listed as ''Blood Moon'' (2001)

Vet Matthew Hope in ''Ritual'' from the Tales from the Crypt (2001)

Priest in ''The Scoundrel's Wife aka Home Front'' (2002)

Butler Mr. Giles French in the remake of ''Family Affair'' (2002)

Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck in the ''Mr. Monk Goes to Jail'' episode of the ''Monk (TV series)'' (2004)

Thurman Rice in ''Kinsey'' (2004)

Marion Finster in ''Will & Grace'' (2004)

Caspar Pennington in ''Bailey's Billion$'' (2005)

Nigel St. Nigel in ''Psych'' second season episode "American Duos" (2007)

Gordon McLoosh in ''Christmas in Wonderland'' (2007)

Coeur De Noir in ''The Secret of Moonacre'' (2008)

Trymon in ''Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic'' (2008)

Lord Greville Boynton in ''Agatha Christie's Poirot: Appointment with Death'' (2008)

Dodo in ''Alice'' (2009)

Signor Brunoni in ''Return to Cranford'' (2010)

Dr. Monroe in ''Burke and Hare'' (2010)

Billy Flynn in ''Criminal Minds'' fifth season episode "Our Darkest Hour" and sixth season episode "The Longest Night"(2010)

Voice acting

From the early 1990s onward, Curry has also become known as a highly acclaimed voice artist. Notable roles include:

Voice of priest on ''The Clash'' "Sound Of The Sinners" song from album ''Sandinista!'' (1981)

The Serpent in "The Creation", an episode of ''The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible''

Judas Iscariot in "The Easter Story", episode of ''The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible''

Captain James S. Hook in Fox's ''Peter Pan and the Pirates'' TV series (1990)

Konk in Hanna–Barbera's TV series ''The Pirates of Dark Water'' (1990)

M.A.L., evil sentient computer programme and assistant to Doctor Blight in ''Captain Planet and the Planeteers'' (1990–1993)

Sir Gawain in ''The Legend of Prince Valiant'' (1991–1994)

Taurus Bulba in ''Darkwing Duck'' (1991)

Chief Elder in ''Dinosaurs'' TV series (1992–94)

Hexxus in ''FernGully: The Last Rainforest'' (1992)

Sharkster in ''Fish Police'' (1992)

S.I.R. – Alien Encounter (Magic Kingdom Attraction) (1995)

King Maximillian Acorn on three episodes of ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (1993)

Skullmaster in ''Mighty Max'' (1993)

Dr. Maelstrom in ''Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?'' (1994)

Kilokahn in ''Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad'' (1994)

George Herbert Walker "King" Chicken on ''Duckman'' (1994–1997)

Dr. Anton Sevarius in ''Gargoyles'' (1994)

Pretorius in the cartoon series ''The Mask: The Animated Series'' (1995)

Drake in ''The Pebble and the Penguin'' (1995)

Dr. Mystico in ''Freakazoid!'' (1995)

Zimbo in ''Aaahh!!! Real Monsters'' (1996)

Lazlo Gigahurtz in ''Bruno the Kid'' (1996)

Lord Dragaunus in Disney's ''The Mighty Ducks'' TV Series (1996)

Trader Slick in the ''Jumanji'' animated TV series (1996)

Voice of Dr. Anton Sevarius in Gargoyles (TV series) (1996)

Prince Lotor and King Alfor in ''Voltron: The Third Dimension'' (1996)

Nostro the head elf in ''The Story of Santa Claus'' (1996)

Forté in Disney's ''Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas''

The frog in the ''Teen Angel'' episode, "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" (1997)

Emperor Nero in the ''Easter Storykeepers'' (1997)

Ben Ravencroft in ''Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost'' (1999)

Rex Pester in ''The Rugrats Movie'' (1998)

The Skull in ''Bartok the Magnificent'' (1999)

King Renard in ''Xyber 9: New Dawn'' (1999)

Leichliter in ''Hey Arnold!'' (1999-2004)

Dr. Neugog in ''The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot''

Mutro Botho in ''Batman Beyond''

Slagar the Cruel in the TV series ''Redwall'' based on the books by Brian Jacques

The Goose God in ''Courage the Cowardly Dog'' (2001)

Spooky the cat in ''Teacher's Pet'' (2001)

The Mouse King in ''Barbie in the Nutcracker'' (2001)

The three musketiers ''Kardinaal Richelieu'' (2002)

Nigel Thornberry in ''The Wild Thornberrys'' (1998–2004), ''The Wild Thornberrys Movie'' (2002) and ''Rugrats Go Wild'' (2003)

Professor Finbarr Calamitous in several episodes of ''The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius'' (2002, 2004–2006)

Hazzaka in the first episode of ''K10C: Kids' Ten Commandments''

The Cat King in The Cat Returns (English dub) (2005)

General Von Talon in ''Valiant'' (2005)

The Magnificent Rogue on ''Duck Dodgers''

El Malefico in ''¡Mucha Lucha!: The Return of El Malefico''.

Narrator of the ''Lemony Snicket'' audio books

Narrator of the ''Abhorsen Trilogy'' audio books

Ringmaster in ''Loonatics Unleashed'' (2005)

Mr. Salamone in ''Eloise: The Animated Series (2006)

Prince in ''Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties'' (2006)

King Evilo in ''Nick's Evil Ways'' (2006)

Yegor in ''Fly Me to the Moon'' (2007)

Dr. Joseph Chadwick in ''Ben 10: Alien Force'' (2008)

Philippe in ''Barbie and the Three Musketeers'' (2009)

Stubbings and Dr. Lloyd Wexler in ''Phineas and Ferb''

Henchman and Robot Clown in ''Batman: The Animated Series''

The librarian in ''Higglytown Heroes''

The Goblin King in ''Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King''

The Cat King in the English release of ''The Cat Returns'' by Hiroyuki Morita

The ring master Piccadilly in Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey! (2010)

The Hot Dog Leader in Regular Show

The "Master" Prank Caller in Regular Show

Sonnicula in Bunnicula (2011)

Narrator of ''A Journey to the Center of the Earth'' audio book by Jules Verne

Lord Poltergeist in SpongeBob SquarePants

Curry was cast as the Joker in Warner Brothers' ''Batman: The Animated Series'', and even recorded several episodes worth of dialogue. At the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con, Bruce Timm told a panel audience that Curry could not maintain the Joker voice for long, and would violently cough between takes, so he was replaced by Mark Hamill.

At the end of 2002, Curry served as the narrator in a parody of ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas!'' called "How the You-Know-Who Stole You-Know-What" for Nickelodeon as part of their "Merry Nickmas" promotion.

Curry was also cast as the voice of SIR (Simulated Intelligence Robotics) at Walt Disney World's ''Alien Encounter'', which ran from 1995 to 2003.

Games

Melek in ''Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger'' (1994)

Gabriel Knight in ''Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers'' (1993) and ''Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned'' (1999)

Doctor Victor Frankenstein in ''Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster'' (1995)

Count Nefarious in ''Toonstruck'' (1996)

Decanter in ''The Day the World Broke'' (1997)

Stratos, the God of Air in the video game ''Sacrifice'' (2000)

Mastermind in ''Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights'' (2002)

Lemony Snicket in ''Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events'' (2004)

Professor Finbarr Calamitous in ''Nicktoons Unite!'' (2005) and ''Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots'' (2007)

The sailor in ''Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey''

Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in ''Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3'' (2008)

Emperor Doviculus in ''Brütal Legend'' (2009) Arl Rendon Howe in ''Dragon Age: Origins'' (2009)

Awards and nominations

1975 Drama Desk Award nomination, Best Actor in a Musical (for playing Dr. Frank N Furter in ''The Rocky Horror Show'')

1981 Tony Award nomination, Best Actor in a Play (for playing the title role in ''Amadeus'')

1981 Drama Desk Award nomination, Best Actor in a Play (for playing the title role in ''Amadeus'')

1991 Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series (for playing Captain James S. Hook in ''Peter Pan and the Pirates'')

1993 Tony Award nomination, Best Actor in a Musical (for playing Alan Swann in ''My Favorite Year'')

1994 Emmy Award nomination, Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (for a trio of roles in ''Tales from the Crypt'', in an episode entitled ''Death of Some Salesmen'')

1996 Razzie Award nomination, Worst Supporting Actor (for playing Herkermer Homolka in ''Congo'')

1998 Annie Award nomination, Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Male Performer in an Animated Feature Production (for playing Forté in ''Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas'')

2005 Tony Award nomination, Best Actor in a Musical (for playing King Arthur in ''Monty Python's Spamalot'')

2007 Laurence Olivier Award nomination, Best Actor in a Musical (King Arthur in ''Monty Python's Spamalot'')

2007 Whatsonstage Theatregoers' Choice Award as Best Actor in a Musical (King Arthur in ''Monty Python's Spamalot'')

References

External links

Ultimate Video Tribute to Tim Curry Pictorial Tribute

Tim Curry at RockyMusic.org

''Fresh Air'' interview with Tim Curry

Tim Curry ''Downstage Center'' interview at American Theatre Wing

Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Birmingham Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English musical theatre actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:Old Kingswoodians (Bath) Category:People from Grappenhall and Thelwall Category:People from Warrington Category:Royal Shakespeare Company members Category:Audio book narrators Category:English expatriates in the United States

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