Ronald Alfred Goodwin (17 February 1925 – 8 January 2003) was a British composer and conductor known for his film music. He scored over 70 films in a career lasting over fifty years. His most famous works included Where Eagles Dare, Battle of Britain, 633 Squadron and Operation Crossbow.

Born in Plymouth, Devon, Goodwin learned to play the piano and trumpet from the age of five which allowed him to join the school band. When he was nine, the family moved to Harrow, London, where he attended Willesden County School and Pinner County Grammar School, in Middlesex. From there he went on to study the trumpet in London at the Guildhall School of Music.

Whilst working as a copyist, he formed his own orchestra in his spare time and began arranging and conducting recordings for over fifty artists, which resulted in more than 100 chart successes. He wrote his first feature film score for Whirlpool, with screenplay by Lawrence P. Bachmann. After Bachmann became executive producer at MGM-British Studios in 1959, Goodwin composed and conducted the music for most of its productions, as well as working for other film studios.

In the 1980s Goodwin began concentrating on live orchestral performances and appeared as guest conductor with many symphony orchestras at home and abroad including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Goodwin was born in Plymouth to James Goodwin (died 1952), a policeman with the Metropolitan Police Force and Bessie Violet Goodwin née Godsland (died 1966). The family originally came from London, but had moved to Devon due to James being attached to a security operation at the naval dockyard.^[1] was engaged in security work at a naval dockyard in Devon.^[2] Goodwin learned to play the piano by the age of five and returned to London four years later, where he attended Willesden county grammar school.^[1][3] Whilst there, he learnt to play the trumpet and performed regularly in the school band.^[1] Upon the out break of world war II, the family moved to Harrow, London, and Goodwin attended Pinner county grammar school.^[4] It was here that he formed his own band - Ron Goodwin and the Woodchoppers.^[1] He later studied the trumpet in London at the Guildhall School of Music.

Early career[link]

In 1943 after a brief spell as an insurance clerk, Goodwin joined Campbell, Connelly and Company, a music publisher.^[1] His job was a copyist and arranger and went onto work in that role for the BBC.^[1] He entered the world of movie music through documentary films, which he said was "a very good training". He worked as a ghostwriter for Phil Green, Stanley Black, Geraldo and Peter Yorke among others. From 1949 Goodwin conducted for the Polygon company, arranging and conducting recordings of Petula Clark and Jimmy Young, including the latter’s 1951 UK no 1 hit "Too Young". In the 1950s he joined Parlophone, and worked alongside George Martin. He accompanied Peter Sellers on his Goodness Gracious Me album,^[5] and began to broadcast and make records with his Ron Goodwin Concert Orchestra. In 1953 Goodwin began arranging and conducting more than 300 recordings for over fifty artists, which resulted in more than 100 chart successes. He simultaneously made his own series of recordings and broadcasts as Ron Goodwin and his Concert Orchestra, and in addition began to compose scores for documentary films at Merton Park Studios. In 1958, Goodwin wrote his first feature film score for Whirlpool, with screenplay by Lawrence P. Bachmann. After Bachmann became executive producer at MGM British Studios in 1959, Goodwin composed and conducted the music for most of its productions, as well as working for other film studios.

Works[link]

Goodwin is primarily known for his film music and worked on more than 70 scores during his career. He composed his first feature film, Man with a Gun in 1958 and was quickly followed by The Witness and Whirlpool a year later. Early minor film success followed with several films until 1961 when he composed the first of four Miss Marple movies, starring Margaret Rutherford entitled Murder, She Said (1961). He later went on to compose the remaining three Miss Marple films Murder at the Gallop (1963), Murder Most Foul (1963) and Murder Ahoy (1964). His war films are particularly well remembered. These include Where Eagles Dare (1968), Battle of Britain (1969), for which he (mostly) replaced William Walton, 633 Squadron, Operation Crossbow and Force Ten From Navarone. After requests from the RAF military band, the opening from Battle of Britain, originally titled Luftwaffe March, was retitled Aces High and is now regularly played by military bands up and down the U.K.

He wrote the scores for Of Human Bondage (1964), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972, replacing Henry Mancini), two movies featuring Morecambe and Wise, and the Norman Wisdom film, The Early Bird (1965).

Goodwin wrote several Disney film scores during the 1970s, including the one used for One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975). He also composed the music and lyrics for a series of animated films. These included "The Selfish Giant" (1971), "The Happy Prince" (1974), and "The Little Mermaid" (also 1974). Goodwin's last film score was for the Danish-made animation film Valhalla in 1986.

Later career[link]

By 1987, Goodwin had begun concentrating on live orchestrations which included his "Drake 400 Suite" in (1980) and "Armada Suite" in (1988).^[6] His "New Zealand Suite" in (1983) marked a long association with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Goodwin appeared as guest conductor with many symphony orchestras at home and abroad including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Australian Pops Orchestra, Danish Radio Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Goodwin was guest conductor at the Royal Academy of Music's Festival of British and American Film Music in June 1996.

Awards[link]

In 1972, he recorded Somebody Named Ron Goodwin Plays Somebody Named Burt Bacharach and recorded internationally, winning gold and platinum discs awarded by EMI. He won a platinum disc from EMI New Zealand to mark two million sales of the album "Going Places". During his career he won three Ivor Novello Awards, including a lifetime achievement award, and was a Fellow of the City of Leeds College of Music and a Freedom of the City of London.^[6]

Personal life[link]

Goodwin was married twice and had a son, Chris from his first marriage. Ron Shillingford, Goodwin's personal assistant for over twenty years said of him "Ron was a musical perfectionist who had a fine rapport with his fellow artists. He was a kind, caring man, with a wonderful sense of humour". Goodwin was a keen worker with young people and was heavily involved with the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra, Worthing Youth Orchestra, City of Leeds College of Music and the City of Birmingham Schools’ Concert Orchestra.

The road in which Goodwin lived with his family in Plymouth has since been renamed "Goodwin Crescent" in his memory.^[7]

Death[link]

In December 2002, he completed his 32nd consecutive year of these Christmas concerts in packed venues across the South of England. However, he had suffered from asthma for many years and the condition had got progressively worse the older he got. On 7 January 2003, having completed conducting Christmas concerts with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra he returned home and died in his sleep at Blacknest Cottage, Brimpton Common, Berkshire, on 8 January 2003, aged 77.^[4][8] He is buried at St Paul's Churchyard, Ashford Hill, Hampshire, England.^[9]

Modern Day References[link]

He is associated with the Yorkshire Television start up music used from the mid-70s to early 80s before ITV had breakfast television. A 30-second variation of his 1969 composition for the film Monte Carlo Or Bust is used as the intro for the BBC Radio Four panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. Goodwin's score for the 1966 film The Trap is now used by the BBC as the theme to the London Marathon coverage.

Selected filmography[link]

Sources[link]

• Ades, David 2001. "Goodwin, Ron". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages, ISBN 0-19-861459-4

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Ron Goodwin at the Internet Movie Database
• Ron Goodwin at findagrave
• Detailed biography at The Robert Farnon Society
• Ron Goodwin on Youtube
• Ron Goodwin on Grooveshark Radio
• Ron Goodwin Discography

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)

Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. Alongside Hercule Poirot, she is one of the most famous of Christie's characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Sketch magazine in 1926, "The Tuesday Night Club",^[1] which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.

Character[link]

The character of Miss Marple is based on Christie's grandmother and her cronies,^[2] but there is no definitive source for the derivation of the name 'Marple'.^[3] The most common explanation suggests that the name was taken from the railway station in Marple, Stockport, through which Christie passed, with the alternative account that Christie took it from the home of a Marple family who lived at Marple Hall, near her sister Madge's home at Abney Hall.^[3][4] Agatha Christie attributed the inspiration for the character of Miss Marple to a number of sources: Miss Marple was "the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my grandmother's Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl".^[5] Christie also used material from her fictional creation, spinster Caroline Sheppard, who appeared in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When Michael Morton adapted Roger Ackroyd for the stage, he removed the character of Caroline replacing her with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice: Miss Marple was born.^[1]

The character of Jane Marple in the first Miss Marple book, The Murder at the Vicarage, is markedly different from how she appears in later books. This early version of Miss Marple is a gleeful gossip and not an especially nice woman. The citizens of St. Mary Mead like her but are often tired by her nosy nature and how she seems to expect the worst of everyone. In later books she becomes more modern and a kinder person.

Miss Marple never married and has no close living relatives. Vicarage introduced Miss Marple's nephew, the "well-known author" Raymond West. His wife Joan (initially called Joyce), a modern artist, was introduced in 1933 in The Thirteen Problems. Raymond tends to be overconfident in himself and underestimates Miss Marple's mental powers. A niece named Mabel, widow of the mysteriously dead Geoffrey Denham, stars in the 1927 short story "The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter." Miss Marple also employs young women from a nearby orphanage, whom she trains for "service" as general housemaids after the retirement of her long-time maid-housekeeper "faithful Florence." In her later years, Miss Marple has a live-in companion named Cherry Baker, who was first introduced in The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side.

Miss Marple is able to solve difficult crimes not only because of her shrewd intelligence, but because St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has given her seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature. No crime can arise without reminding Miss Marple of some parallel incident in the history of her time. Miss Marple's acquaintances are sometimes bored by her frequent analogies to people and events from St. Mary Mead, but these analogies often lead Miss Marple to a deeper realization about the true nature of a crime. Although she looks like a sweet, frail old woman, Miss Marple is not afraid of dead bodies and is not easily intimidated. She also has a remarkable ability to latch onto a casual comment and connect it to the case at hand.

Miss Marple has never worked for her living and is of independent means, although she benefits in her old age from the financial support of Raymond West, her nephew (A Caribbean Mystery, 1964). She demonstrates a remarkably thorough education, including some art courses that involved study of human anatomy through the study of human cadavers. In They Do It with Mirrors (1952), it is revealed that, in her distant youth, Miss Marple spent time in Europe at a finishing school. She is not herself from the aristocracy or landed gentry, but is quite at home among them; Miss Marple would probably have been happy to describe herself as a gentlewoman. In They Do It With Mirrors (1952), it is mentioned that Miss Marple grew up in a cathedral close, and that she studied at an Italian finishing school with Americans Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline "Carrie" Louise Serrocold. (Ruth, prevailing on Miss Marple's long affection for them, arranges for Miss Marple to investigate Ruth's belief that Carrie Louise is in danger of her life.) Miss Marple may thus be considered a female version of that staple of British detective fiction, the gentleman detective. This education, history, and background are hinted at in the Margaret Rutherford films (see below), in which Miss Marple mentions her awards at marksmanship, fencing and equestrianism (although these hints are played for comedic value).

Christie wrote a concluding novel to her Marple series, Sleeping Murder, in 1940. She locked it away in a bank vault so it would be safe should she be killed in the Blitz. The novel was not published until shortly after Christie's death in 1976, some thirty-six years after it was originally written.

While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is mentioned in "At Bertram's Hotel", where it is said she visited the hotel when she was 14 and almost 60 years have passed since then. Excluding "Sleeping Murder", forty-one years passed between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's son. At the end of The Murder at the Vicarage, the Vicar's wife is pregnant. In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, it is mentioned that the son is now grown and successful and has a career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a vacation after illness in A Caribbean Mystery or finding in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side that because of poor eyesight she can no longer knit.

Novels featuring Miss Marple[link]

1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
2. The Body in the Library (1942)
3. The Moving Finger (1943)
4. A Murder is Announced (1950)
5. They Do It with Mirrors, or Murder with Mirrors (1952)
6. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
7. 4.50 from Paddington, or What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (1957)
8. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, or The Mirror Crack'd (1962)
9. A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
10. At Bertram's Hotel (1965)
11. Nemesis (1971)
12. Sleeping Murder (written around 1940, published 1976)

Miss Marple short story collections[link]

• "The Tuesday Night Club" (short story) featured Miss Marple for the first time ever. Written in 1927.
• The Thirteen Problems (short story collection featuring Miss Marple, also published as The Tuesday Club Murders) (1932)
• Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories (short stories collected posthumously, also published as Miss Marple's Final Cases, but only six of the eight stories actually feature Miss Marple) (written between 1939 and 1954, published 1979)
• Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories, Hardcover, 243 pages, Published 1985 by Dodd, Mead NY, ISBN 0-396-08747-7 includes 20 from 4 sets: The Tuesday Club Murders, The Regatta Mystery, Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, and Double Sin and Other Stories.

Miss Marple also appears in Greenshaw's Folly, a short story traditionally included as part of the Poirot collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960). Four stories in the Three Blind Mice collection (1950) feature Miss Marple: Strange Jest, Tape-Measure Murder, The Case of the Caretaker, and The Case of the Perfect Maid.

Books about Miss Marple[link]

• The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple -- a biography by Anne Hart

Films[link]

Margaret Rutherford[link]

Although popular from her first appearance in 1930, Jane Marple had to wait thirty-two years for her first big-screen appearance. When she made it, the results, starring Margaret Rutherford, were popular and successful light comedies, but were disappointing to Christie herself; nevertheless, Agatha Christie dedicated the novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side to Rutherford.

Murder, She Said (1961, directed by George Pollock) was the first of four British MGM productions starring Rutherford. She presented the character as a bold and eccentric old lady, different from the prim and birdlike character Christie created in her novels. This first film was based on the 1957 novel 4:50 from Paddington (U.S. title, What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!), and the changes made in the plot were typical of the series. In the film, Mrs. McGillicuddy does not see anything because there is no Mrs. McGillicuddy. Miss Marple herself sees an apparent murder committed on a train running alongside hers. Likewise, it is Miss Marple herself who poses as a maid to find out the facts of the case, not a young friend of hers who has made a business of it. Joan Hickson played the part of the home help in this film and can claim to have appeared in two Miss Marple series.

The other Rutherford films (all directed by George Pollock) were Murder at the Gallop (1963), based on the 1953 Hercule Poirot novel After the Funeral (In this film, she is identified as Miss JTV Marple, though there was no indication as to what the extra initials might stand for); Murder Most Foul (1964), based on the 1952 Poirot novel Mrs McGinty's Dead; and Murder Ahoy! (1964). The last film is not based on any Christie work but displays a few plot elements from They Do It With Mirrors (viz., the ship is used as a reform school for wayward boys and one of the teachers uses them as a crime force), and there is a kind of salute to The Mousetrap. Rutherford also appeared briefly as Miss Marple in the spoof Hercule Poirot adventure The Alphabet Murders (1965).

The music to all four films was composed and conducted by Ron Goodwin and is still played on radio today. The same theme is used on all four films with slight variations on each. The main theme has a distinct 1960s feel to it and is known to be a highly complex piece of music due to the quick playing of the Violin. The score was written within a couple of weeks by Goodwin who was approached by George Pollock after Pollock had heard about him from Stanley Black. Black had worked with Pollock on "Stranger in Town" in 1957 and years previously Stanley Black had used Ron Goodwin as his orchestrator.^[6]

Rutherford, who was 70 years old when the first film was made, insisted that she wear her own clothes during the filming of the movie, as well as having her real-life husband, Stringer Davis appear alongside her as the character 'Mr Stringer'. The Rutherford films are frequently repeated on television in Germany, and in that country Miss Marple is generally identified with Rutherford's quirky portrayal.^[7]

Angela Lansbury[link]

In 1980, Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (EMI, directed by Guy Hamilton), based on Christie's 1962 novel. The film featured an all-star cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Geraldine Chaplin, Tony Curtis, and Kim Novak. Edward Fox appeared as Inspector Craddock, who did Miss Marple's legwork. Lansbury's Marple was a crisp, intelligent woman who moved stiffly and spoke in clipped tones. Unlike most incarnations of Miss Marple, this one smoked cigarettes.

Ita Ever[link]

In 1983, Estonian stage and film actress Ita Ever starred in the Russian language film adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel A Pocket Full of Rye (using the Russian edition's translated title, The Secret of the Blackbirds) as the character of Miss Marple.^[8]

Jennifer Garner[link]

In March 2011 it was reported that The Walt Disney Company had acquired the cinematic rights to the Miss Marple character, and was planning a contemporary adaptation to be set in the United States. ^[9] It was reported that Jennifer Garner would portray Miss Marple in the new franchise, and that Mark Frost had been hired to write the script for the first film.^[9][10]

Television, stage and radio adaptations[link]

Television[link]

American TV was the setting for the first dramatic portrayal of Miss Marple with Gracie Fields, the legendary British actress, playing her in a 1956 episode of Goodyear TV Playhouse based on A Murder Is Announced, the 1950 Christie novel.

In 1970, the character of Miss Marple was portrayed by Inge Langen in a West German television adaptation of The Murder at the Vicarage (Mord im Pfarrhaus).^[8]

American stage and screen legend Helen Hayes portrayed Miss Marple in two American made-for-TV movies, both for CBS: A Caribbean Mystery (1983) and Murder with Mirrors (1984). Sue Grafton contributed to the screenplay of the former. Hayes's Marple was benign and chirpy.

From 1984 to 1992, the BBC adapted all of the original Miss Marple novels as a series titled Miss Marple. Joan Hickson played the lead role. (Coincidentally, Hickson had played a housekeeper in the first film in which Margaret Rutherford played Miss Marple.) ^[11]

Listing of the TV series featuring Joan Hickson:

• The Body in the Library (1984)
• A Murder is Announced (1985)
• A Pocket Full of Rye (1985)
• The Moving Finger (1985)
• The Murder at the Vicarage (1986) - BAFTA nomination
• Sleeping Murder (1987)
• At Bertram's Hotel (1987)
• Nemesis (1987) - BAFTA nomination
• 4.50 from Paddington (1987)
• A Caribbean Mystery (1989)
• They Do It With Mirrors (1991)
• The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1992)

Angela Lansbury, who had played Miss Marple in the movie, The Mirror Crack'd, directed by Guy Hamilton, went on to star in the TV series Murder, She Wrote as Jessica Fletcher, a mystery novelist who also solves crimes. The character of Jessica Fletcher is thought^[12] to be based on a combination of Miss Marple, Agatha Christie herself, and another Christie character, Ariadne Oliver, who often appears in the Hercule Poirot mysteries.

Beginning in 2004, ITV broadcast a series of adaptations of Agatha Christie's books under the title Agatha Christie's Marple, usually referred to as Marple. Geraldine McEwan starred in the first three series. One other TV movie called "At Bertram's Hotel" (2007). Julia McKenzie took over the role in the fourth season. The adaptions are notable for changing the plots and characters of the original books (e.g., incorporating lesbian affairs, changing killer identities, renaming or removing significant characters, and even using stories from other books in which Miss Marple did not originally feature).

Listing of the TV series featuring Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie:

• The Body in the Library (2004)
• The Murder at the Vicarage (2004)
• 4.50 from Paddington (2004)
• A Murder is Announced (2005)
• Sleeping Murder (2005)
• The Moving Finger (2006)
• By the Pricking of My Thumbs (2006)
• The Sittaford Mystery (2006)
• At Bertram's Hotel (2007) with Isabella Parriss, playing the young Marple.
• Ordeal by Innocence (2007)
• Towards Zero (2008)
• Nemesis (2008)
• A Pocket Full of Rye (2009)
• Murder is Easy (2009)
• They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
• Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2009)
• The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (2010)
• The Secret of Chimneys (2010)
• The Blue Geranium (2010)
• The Pale Horse (2010)

From 2004 to 2005, Japanese TV network NHK produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, which features both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Miss Marple's voice is provided by Kaoru Yachigusa.

Stage[link]

In 1974, Barbara Mullen played Miss Marple in Murder at the Vicarage at the Savoy Theatre, London. In September 1977, veteran actress and authoress Dulcie Gray played the Miss Marple character in a stage adaptation of A Murder Is Announced at the Vaudeville Theatre in London, England^[13] that featured also Dinah Sheridan, Eleanor Summerfield, Patricia Brake and Barbara Flynn.^[14]

Radio[link]

BBC Radio 4 dramatised all of the novels from 1993-2001 with June Whitfield as Miss Marple.^[15]

Other appearances[link]

Marple was highlighted in volume 20 of the Case Closed manga's edition of "Gosho Aoyama's Mystery Library", a section of the graphic novels (usually the last page) where the author introduces a different detective (or occasionally, a villain) from mystery literature, television, or other media.

See also[link]

Novels portal

• Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories
• List of female detective characters

References[link]

External links[link]

• Miss Marple at the official Agatha Christie website
• Biography of Miss Marple
• Miss Marple at the Internet Movie Database
• Yahoo Grouplist for Geraldine McEwan
• Marion Shaw and Sabine Vanacker, "Reflecting on Miss Marple"
• Marty S. Knepper, "Reading Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Series: The Thirteen Problems"

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, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola Concerto, and the 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.

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 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 almost all his works had been released on CD.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Christ Church, Oxford, where Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate

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. Charles's wife, Louisa Maria (née Turner), had been a singer before their marriage.^[1] William 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:^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[4] Louisa Walton had to borrow the fares from a greengrocer.^[4] 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.^[4] 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."^[5]

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,^[6] and though this is probably not correct, he was nonetheless among the youngest.^[7] 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".^[8] 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.^[9] Little survives from Walton's juvenilia, but the choral anthem A Litany, written when he was fifteen, anticipates his mature style.^[10]

Edith Sitwell, Walton's patron and collaborator. 1915 portrait by Roger Fry

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.^[11] 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".^[12]

First successes[link]

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.^[13] 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.^[10] 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.^[14]

In 1923, in collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Walton had his first great success, though at first it was a succès de scandale.^[4] Façade was first performed in public at the Aeolian Hall, London, on 12 June.^[15] 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.^[4] The press was generally condemnatory.^[16] The Daily Express loathed the work, but admitted that it was naggingly memorable.^[17] The Manchester Guardian wrote of "relentless cacophony".^[18] The Observer condemned the verses and dismissed Walton's music as "harmless".^[19] 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."^[20] In The Sunday Times, Ernest Newman said of Walton, "as a musical joker he is a jewel of the first water".^[21] 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.^[22] The players did not like the work: the clarinettist asked the composer, "Mr Walton, has a clarinet player ever done you an injury?"^[23] Nevertheless, the work soon became accepted, and within a decade Walton's music was used for the popular Façade ballet, choreographed by Frederick Ashton.^[24]

Portsmouth Point by Thomas Rowlandson 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."^[25] Sir Henry Wood programmed the work at The Proms the following year, where it made more of an impression.^[26] 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."^[27] 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.^[28]

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.^[29] 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.^[30] 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.^[31][32]

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.^[33] 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?"^[34] 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.^[35] The first performance was a triumph for the composer, conductor and performers.^[36] 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."^[37] The work has remained a staple of the choral repertoire.^[10]

1930s[link]

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.^[4] 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.^[38] 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.^[39][40] 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.^[40]

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.^[2] Harty persuaded Walton to let him perform the three existing movements, which he premiered in December 1934 with the London Symphony Orchestra.^[10] 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.^[41] 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.^[42] 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.^[43][44]

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.^[45] 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.^[46] Its strong romantic style caused some critics to label it retrogressive,^[47] 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."^[48]

In the late 1930s, Walton became aware of a younger English composer whose fame was shortly to overtake his, Benjamin Britten.^[2] 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."^[49] 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.^[50]

World War II[link]

The Manor House, Ashby St. Ledgers, Walton's main base during 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),^[51] 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).^[10] 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.^[52] 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.^[53] 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;^[4] and, for the concert hall, a suite of orchestral miniatures, Music for Children,^[54] and a comedy overture, Scapino, composed for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.^[10]

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.^[55] 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.^[56] 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."^[57]

Post-war[link]

In 1947, Walton was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal.^[58] In the same year he accepted an invitation from the BBC to compose his first opera.^[58] 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.^[59] 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.^[60]

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.^[61] 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.^[62]

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".^[63][64] 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.^[65] 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.^[66]

The view from the Waltons' house on Ischia

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.^[67] 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).^[68] However, it has entered the regular repertoire, performed by Paul Tortelier, Yo Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell and Pierre Fournier, among others.^[69]

In 1966 Walton successfully underwent surgery for lung cancer.^[70] Until then he had been an inveterate pipe-smoker, but after the operation he never smoked again.^[71] 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."^[72] Walton received the Order of Merit in 1967, the fourth composer to be so honoured, after Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten.^[9]

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.^[73] 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.^[74]

Last years[link]

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.^[75] 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.^[76] 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.^[77][78]

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.^[79] 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.^[80]

Walton died at La Mortella on 8 March 1983, at the age of 80.^[6] 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.^[81]

Legacy[link]

In 1944, it was said of Walton that he summed up the recent past of English music and augured its future.^[82] Later writers have concluded that Walton had little influence on the next generation of composers.^[83] 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.^[84] Throughout his life, Walton held no posts at music conservatoires; he had no pupils, gave no lectures, and wrote no essays.^[85] 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.^[86][87]