William Walton

Abstract In August 1929, Walton, Constant Lambert, and Victor Hely Hutchinson were each commissioned by the BBC, then rapidly expanding its musical presence, to compose a work for “small chorus, small orchestra not exceeding fifteen, and soloist.” At the suggestion of his friend Osbert Sitwell, Walton took Belshazzar as his subject and asked Sitwell to prepare the libretto for him. Drawing on the book of Daniel, Psalms 81 and 137, Revelation, and Isaiah, Sitwell did so in December 1929, and Walton, staying with Sitwell at Amalflbegan work on the music in January 1930. From May to December he suffered a severe case of writer’s block—”perched” on the word gold, he said, “unable to move either to right or left or up or down”—but was at last able to complete the score in the spring of 1931.1 By this time it had long been Sir Thomas Beecham, the festival director, assigned the work to Malcolm Sargent, who conducted the premiere at the Leeds Town Hall on 8 October 1931, with the Leeds Festival Choir, the London Symphony, and Dennis Noble as soloist. In 1948, Walton revised the orchestration extensively, making a few small compositional changes at the same time; this version was also introduced by Sargent—by then Sir Malcolm—in London, again with Noble as soloist.