JAVS Fall 2022

Fig. 3: Walton Viola Concerto I. mm. 19-22.

down in half steps to what could be loosely heard as a dominant function.

referred to in its text or title. As we shall see, this lament bass topic plays a key role in the Walton Concerto, particularly the opening. 15

Putting two and two together, then, the opening of this concerto consists of a musical depiction of Walton’s provincial origins, juxtaposed against music of lament. I argue that this was Walton’s way of describing through music how he must have felt as a commoner in a society of elites, and as an ineligible suitor for Christabel—a lament of his rural lower-class origins. Following the intuition that there may have been a personal narrative within this piece—now supported by our analysis of topical content in the opening—it becomes very easy to carry this logic forward for the entire movement, when combined with an understanding of the form of the work. What follows is more speculative, but it serves as a good example of how topic theory can help us easily construct a plausible narrative with fairly solid evidence for our conjectures. I will manipulate the topics of the opening theme, as well as identifying a few additional ones. and form come together to tell a story. For the sake of review, sonata-allegro compositions have three main sections: an exposition, development, and recapitulation. In each section, the composer cycles through a set of themes, in a certain order—typically a primary theme, a transitional theme, a secondary theme, and a closing theme. This “rotational” aspect of the sonata form plays a key role in its narrative power. 18 The primary theme of the Walton Concerto has been discussed above in the examination of topics, the “pauper’s lament.” As it proceeds, interspersed with snippets of a falling motive in minor sixths which create the famous cross relation, it gradually becomes more and more anxious, until As the analysis continues, an understanding the conventions of sonata forms will be a useful tool to tease out how topic

The concerto opens with a tune played by the soloist, shown in Fig. 1.

At “a comfortable walking pace,” as indicated by Walton’s tempo marking, this tune has the lilting pulse and meandering feel of a pastoral country dance - perhaps the kind that might have been common where Walton was born. I argue that this is no coincidence. This music bears a striking resemblance to the gigue and siciliano topics, dance types common through the 18th and 19th centuries which carried associations of peasant or lower-class status, especially when combined with the pastorale style. 16 Meanwhile, the strings in the orchestra provide a somber counterpoint to this tune, descending in slow, chromatic steps, as shown in Fig. 2 and 3. This excerpt is an instance of the lament topic alluded to earlier. Formally speaking, as defined by William Caplin, “the lament [topic] is characterized by a bass line that descends stepwise from the tonic scale-degree to the dominant, thus spanning the interval of a perfect fourth … typically, the expressive quality of lament is made more manifest when the [topic] is chromaticized.” 17 The passages above fit this description remarkably well, especially when accounting for the fact that Caplin’s description primarily applies to 18th century music. The mode of the Walton Concerto is definitely minor, and since the low strings simply hold a pedal on A, the violas function as a bass line. While Walton’s concept of tonality is quite loose in this piece and this bassline does not necessarily move from scale-degree 1 (tonic) down to scale-degree 5 (dominant), it certainly takes us from a tonic function

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

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