William Walton was a well-known English composer in the 19th century. In his early career, he gained many of his musical contacts through the patronage and support of the Sitwell family, and it was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell that created Façade. Walton was only nineteen when he wrote this piece, a chamber work to accompany the poetry of Sitwell. However, the work has undergone several decades of revision to reach the form in which it is currently recorded, and perhaps it is this evolving time that has kept it from being noticed in the Canon. While the music is intriguing, it is really the amalgamation of several art forms in the creation of Façade that makes it a captivating study.
Façade was first performed in the Sitwell home in order to enhance the poetry that was rhythmically entwined in the piece. Sitwell’s short poems are know for word-rhythms and onomatopoeia and are sometimes defined as “nonsense verse.” Most times it seems that Sitwell cared more for the sound and rhythm of the words that she strang together than for the meaning of the poems. Perhaps this placement of priorities reflects the musical trend for using harmonies as color rather than in traditionally functional ways. Regardless, her poems are quite modern in this respect, making it fitting that they were performed along with modern music and artwork. She convinced Walton to write the accompaniment and is said to have spent hours reading them to him so that he could understand the exact rhythm and nuance she intended. Each poem is no longer than three minutes in length, the songs’ used as well as their order varied from performance to performance. When Façade premiered in Sitwell’s home, she hid the musicians and herself behind an enormous curtain on which a grotesque head was painted (the original by Gino Severini). In addition to all this, in place of the mouth, a Sengerphone[1] (through which she recited her poems) was affixed to the curtain. The result of this was a satirical chamber piece featuring the nonsense poetry of a disembodied voice behind a Cubist painting.
Reception of Façade has been mixed since its premiere. At the actual premiere in Sitwell’s parlor, Michael Kennedy, author of Portrait of Walton, found that the audience was “naturally enthusiastic in their reception of Façade, for it was essentially an entertainment for artists and people of imagination” (28). Despite this enthusiasm, Walton would later point out that the audience talked through the entire performance and thought that he and Edith were crazy. The short pieces that make up Façade would seem very characteristic of the period, including lively and individualistic parts for the instrumentalists and several catchy tunes amidst increasing chromaticism along with some ambiguity of meter and tonal center. However, the intoned recitation of the speaker (in addition to the spectacle of the curtain and Sengerphone) pushed the limits of many audiences of the time. This poetry was not the beautiful verse of the German Romantics that composers had set to music in the past; it was “drivel they paid to hear” (headline of newspapers after the Aeolian Hall performance in 1923). Façade certainly is not a piece that most people would listen to for its catchy tunes—it can be most appreciated for its innovation in integrating poetic and musical rhythm.
By the time Façade evolved to its current published form, the instrumentation was for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, percussion (side drum, cymbal, triangle, Chinese block castanets, tambourine, jingles), and cello (two cellos if the part for single cello was “too arduous”). This evolution, while fascinating to study, makes it difficult for the listener to realize what the original melodic intent of the pieces was. As Walton revised and added more pieces to Façade, they became increasingly satirical and were based on dances, while his original works more closely resembled “atonal” works. In fact, only six of the original eighteen works in Façade made it to the current publication. By listening to the works in Façade 2 (which were re-added to the work as part of 75th birthday celebration for Walton), one notices that the parts were more frugal and do not have nearly so defined a rhythm as pieces like “Old Sir Faulk” (a fox trot), “Scotch Rhapsody” (a Highland reel), and more obviously, “Valse,” “Tango,” and “Polka.” This makes one think that perhaps Walton had originally been going for a more atonal aesthetic to accompany the poetry and later conformed more to what the listening public wanted to hear—music with catchy pulses.
A large number of Walton’s songs from Façade include traditional forms that he contorts to fulfill his own purposes. For example, his “Valse” clearly was influenced by the waltz form dating back to the 18th century. Walton certainly takes the waltz in a new direction. One would expect the first beat of each measure to be accented, but instead, the movement begins with a rest followed a trumpet playing a syncopated rhythm with grace notes followed by falls in the cello. The waltz thus begins with an uncertain meter but settles definitively into triple meter by the time the reciter enters. Walton also used a traditional compositional form,
Perhaps the most “catchy” of the songs in Façade is one aptly named “Popular Song.” An educated listener can pick up references to Sousa march form again with a heavy jazz influence (diminished intervals on strong beats, side drum and cymbals filling gaps, diminished thirds abounding, etc.). Walton still manages to contort the standard four bar phrases, adding “hiccups” on occasion.” In addition, this is one of the many songs in which he uses an odd tempo marking (quarter=138).[2] Nevertheless, it actually became “popular” like the forms it is satirizing and was actually used as the theme song for the British television show Face the Music.[3]
Façade is certainly an extremely creative project about which dozens of people have found worth studying and writing books.[4] Walton composed for a long period of time in several genres, and his impact on music has been well-chronicled. However, I do not think that I can give a strong endorsement for the inclusion of Façade in the Canon simply for its musical merit. It cannot be separated for the poetry and artwork of which it was comprised. This considered, Façade cannot be truly appreciated through CD—its value as a composition seems very reliant on its public performance aspects. It was created to be performed in a parlor, among friends, and this aesthetic cannot be recreated well in the concert halls (as evidenced by its poor reception in the concert hall) or through a simple sound recording. It is because the music does not stand alone (with the possible exception of “Popular Song”) that I believe it has not made the Canon. When listening to the pieces as a cycle, the novelty of the compositional ideas wears off quickly, leaving one bored by the time one reaches the half-way mark on the CD. That said, Façade is certainly worth a listen to consider the integration of the arts as well as the progression of poems set to music from the Romantic Goethe to the modern Sitwell.
[1]The Sengerphone was invented to magnify the voice of Fafner the dragon in Richard Wagner’s Siegfried.
[2]Perhaps the oddest of Walton’s tempo markings is the quarter=63 for “A Man from a Far Contree”
[3] Face the Music was a popular quiz show, running from 1966 to 1979, about classical music. Oddly enough, it did not award points for correct answers and had no winner. Walton appeared on the show as a guest twice (Humphrey Burton, William Walton: The Romantic Loner, 162).
[4]These are startlingly similar books at that, most of them referencing each other to a great extent.
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