W. Walton. Collection of 21 letters to Stewart Craggs, including a 4-bar autograph music manuscript, 1968-1982

Walton, William

Collection of 21 letters signed ("William Walton"), to his biographer Stewart Craggs

comprising 20 autograph letters signed (six on cards), and 1 typed letter signed, providing sometimes reluctant answers to his requests for information, concerning Façade, the music for the films Henry V, The Battle of Britain, As You Like It, and Major Barbara, the Sinfonia Concertante ("...the original version was better & more interesting than the revised one..."), The Boy David, the Violin Sonata, Troilus and Cressida, the overture Portsmouth Point, the brass ensemble work Roaring Fanfare, revealing his irritation at Craggs's bibliographical sleuthing, asking him to refrain from discovering his 'youthful efforts' ("...A most irritating habit I find it, so please stop..."), enquiring testily where he found the manuscript of the The First Shoot, which he admits he made further use of 'like Rossini', asking him to discover who the bogus 'William Walton' was who wrote an article for The Sackbut in 1931, admitting to his own deficiencies when it came to writing ("I perhaps should be ashamed to admit it, but I was & for that matter still am incapable of putting pen to paper in a coherent way"), referring to Arnold, Rawsthorne, Michael Kennedy, Frank Bridge ("...it was a difficult meeting & in fact we never hit it off at all..."), Bliss, Debroy Somers, Poulenc ("...I've come to realise what a good composer he was, especially his choral pieces..."), Bernard Shaw ("I was slightly irritated by him...& my reply was to the effect that the music [to Major Barbara] was not up to much, but nor was his verse..."), Menuhin, Gabriel Pascal, Constant Lambert ("...a most remarkable man, the most of our generation I should say..."), Parry, Elgar ("...I remember someone (who?) telling me that Elgar liked [Parry's] symphonies a lot & wished he had scored them for him..."), George Sassoon, Auden, Frederick Ashton, Walter Legge, providing details of his forebears ("I remember my grandfather not too well...really a bit mad I'd have said...") and of musicians involved in performances of his music, refusing to give permission to quote from the correspondence he discovered between Walton and Siegfried Sassoon, criticising his thesis ("...I don't find the book very satisfactory..."), referring to the 'marvellously good progress' he is making [after an operation to remove a cancer on the lung], ONE LETTER ENCLOSING A 4-BAR AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT SIGNED OF A DUETTINO FOR OBOE AND VIOLIN ("William Walton 2.10.82.")

...In any case when I gave permission for you to examine them [the scores of the film The Battle of Britain] I did not realise you were going into them in (to me) such stupid detail...I wish that instead of devoting your energies to unearthing useless information about my film music you could do something more useful...And tho' of course I knew 'Pierrot Lunaire' from the small score I never actually heard it, till it was done in conjugation with "Façade" at the Festival Hall some years ago. I denied to the "Sackbut" at the time that I did not write the article, but the editor didn't reply or believe me! Nor I'm afraid M. Kennedy as I've written to him & he doesn't reply either...I am not at all in favour of a collection of my letters being made by you or anyone else. It is bad enough to have every note scrutinised & I don't relish the idea of my past correspondence being put through the same process!...For anything else, it is better to refer to me direct. You may or may not get a truthful answer!...

36 pages in all, various sizes, 16 autograph envelopes, most letters on printed stationery ("La Mortella...Forio d'Ischia..."), one newspaper cutting, Forio, 1968-1982

A very informative and revealing collection of letters to Walton's indefatigable bibliographer Stewart R. Craggs, warily referred to as 'Mr Scraggs' by the not-always-forthcoming composer. Enclosed with one letter, thanking Craggs for his good wishes for Walton's 80th birthday, is an autograph manuscript of one of Walton's last compositions, the beginning of a Duettino for oboe and violin (4 bars, Craggs no.101) for Craggs's children Barnaby and Cordelia; in the letter Walton playfully suggests that the children might like to continue the piece (which was intended as an exercise in Grade V music theory).

The bulk of Walton's surviving correspondence is preserved today in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, in the archives of the BBC, the Walton Museum in Ischia, and Oxford University Press.

LITERATURE

Stewart R. Craggs, William Walton. A Catalogue, third edition (2014), passim