JAVS Fall 2022

Feature Article

2021 Dalton Competition Winner: “To Christabel”: Exploring the Origins of William Walton‘s Viola Concerto by Sachin Shukla

narrative I am advancing could have been true of him. It describes how he came from humble origins and went on to spend his early adult life as a commoner who mingled amongst the elite of London, without quite belonging to their class. In the second section, I analyze the first movement of the concerto to show that this narrative is in fact embedded in the music itself. The Life and Times of WilliamWalton William Walton’s early life saw him transplanted from humble origins into elite circles. He was born in 1902 and wrote the Viola Concerto between 1927 and 1929, while in his mid-twenties. He was born in the town of Oldham, a former industrial town in Lancashire that had become provincial by the time Walton was born. In addition, Walton’s family was not well-o and his father had a violent temper. Understandably, throughout his adolescence and early adulthood, he did whatever he could do to get out, and stay out, of his hometown. 6 As a boy, he auditioned at the Christ Church Cathedral School, in Oxford, where his considerable musical talent earned him a scholarship to attend. Just like that, he found himself whisked away from his humble origins and plunged into high society, first at Christ Church and then at Oxford University, where he was admitted at the young age of 16 years old. His abilities were not lost on his elite classmates—most notably, Osbert, Sacheverell, and Edith Sitwell, heirs of a wealthy noble family. They took a liking to William and took him into their home, sponsoring him and his work. 7 Walton’s relationship with the Sitwell family, as far as class was concerned, was likely quite complicated and beset with contradictions. In some ways, Walton was like a member of the Sitwell family, staying with them for 15 years. 8 In fact, when his wife Susana met the Sitwells for the first time years after Walton had left, she remarked that it was as if “they had seen each other only yesterday.” 9 In other ways,

Introduction “To Christabel.”

Those two cryptic words adorn the first page of the Walton Viola Concerto. Other than this dedication, little is known about Christabel, Walton’s relationship with her, and precisely what it had to do with the concerto. He was a budding young composer under the patronage of the Sitwell family; she was a noblewoman from a well respected Irish family, and the wife of the Second Baron Aberconway. 1 We know that they met in the 1920s, and that there was some involvement between the two of them, but exactly what sort of involvement is not clear. Walton’s biographer, Michael Kennedy, claimed that the two were physically attracted to each other. 2 Christabel’s family referenced Walton’s a ections as unreciprocated. 3 Walton’s own wife never mentioned any attraction at all— although a letter written by Walton to Christabel reads, “I have no news to tell you, nothing except what you already know, and what is supposed to be unwise to commit to paper.” 4 Regardless of the true nature of their relationship, it soon ended: Walton began a long-term relationship in 1931 with Baroness Imma von Doernberg. 5 I first encountered this mystery when I began studying Walton’s Concerto as a Junior at Northwestern. My article, however, goes further than attempting to pin down the nature of Walton’s relationship with Christabel. It instead argues that the concerto—while it very likely does have something to do with Christabel—tells a much bigger story. I argue that, through the story of his relationship with Christabel, the first movement of Walton’s Viola Concerto is actually a narrative describing the dysphoria he experienced being a commoner in a society of elites.

This paper is comprised of two sections. In the first, I examine the particulars of Walton’s life to establish that the

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 2, Fall 2022

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