Walton – Chamber Music for Violin.
This multi-component single output consists of two complementary items published on the Naxos website (provided here in physical form):
1. A CD released in November 2020: ‘Walton: Piano Quartet, Toccata, Two Pieces, Sonata for Violin and Piano’, on which the researcher plays violin;
2. Notes to performers on each of the works, communicating for a lay audience the results of the integrated research methodology underpinning the recording.
- Submitting institution
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- JONMATA
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- N/A - this is studio recording
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- -
- Year of first performance
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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3
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This research on the chamber works of William Walton for the violin demonstrates the hitherto underestimated importance of these works for understanding his compositional voice, especially its relationship with contemporary violin performance practice. As detailed in ‘Notes to performers’, a systematic process of investigation in practice and rehearsal, in combination with comparative analysis of manuscripts and editions, allowed:
- Walton’s performance directions to be clarified (e.g. in the 'Toccata for Violin and Piano', where the virtuosic style along with numerous instructions show that ‘improvvisando’ must refer to the whole piece);
- Walton’s use of quotation and allusion to be better understood in a performance practice context (e.g. in the Variations from the Violin Sonata and the third movement of the Piano Quartet, which, taken together, reveal a hitherto unsuspected aesthetic of citation);
- details long obscured by well-intentioned but unwieldy editing to be heard for the first time. Here the research overturned many approaches assumed to be integral to the music. For instance, in the Sonata, generations of violinists have emulated Menuhin’s near-constant vibrato and frequent audible shifts, which for him and many 20th-century string players—but not, the research suggested, Walton—were a prerequisite for expressive playing. Working systematically from the first edition to Menuhin’s personal copy and thence the William Walton Edition afforded identification of other nuances obscured by the dedicatee. Stripping away both Menuhin’s over-zealous editing and his influential tone-production permitted greater clarity of musical syntax and of expression with the bow, along with deeper scholarly understanding of Walton’s intentions.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
