{"id":50146,"date":"2024-12-02T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/78eecfd5-127c-4092-87b1-5fbdfd3b9342"},"modified":"2024-12-02T13:09:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T12:09:23","slug":"william-waltons-facade-the-bizarre-work-that-shocked-1920s-high-society","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/william-waltons-facade-the-bizarre-work-that-shocked-1920s-high-society\/","title":{"rendered":"William Walton’s Fa\u00e7ade: the bizarre work that shocked 1920s high society"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Monday, 02 December 2024 at 11:00 AM<\/p>

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I\u2019m looking through a small, round hole that may be the most celebrated hole in music history. It\u2019s in the middle of a canvas cloth, forming the open mouthpiece of a roughly painted face. And it\u2019s the hole through which, in 1922, the poet Edith Sitwell thrust a megaphone and entertained a room in Chelsea to the first performance of Fa\u00e7ade<\/em>: her collection of arcane verse written to be rhythmically declaimed against a jazzy score by the composer William Walton<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>

That the cloth survives \u2013 in something like pristine condition \u2013 is surprising. But then it\u2019s been hidden away for decades, with people wondering where it was. The hiding place turned out to be a cupboard in the home of film-maker Tony Palmer, who had been lent the cloth by the Sitwell family for a TV documentary about Walton. \u2018We used it for an onscreen re-creation of that first Fa\u00e7ade<\/em>,\u2019 Palmer tells me. \u2018Then the Sitwells didn\u2019t seem to want it back. So, I hung on to it \u2013 carefully wrapped in tissue paper.\u2019<\/p>

<\/div> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A bizarrely powerful encounter with the past<\/h2> <p>Now the cloth is back in business, as part of a Sitwell show put together by the group Art Sung and touring around festivals such as Barnes and Buckingham. After this brief outing, it will doubtless end up behind glass in a museum.<\/p> <p>Meanwhile, I can testify that peering through that hole, as Edith once did, is a bizarrely powerful encounter with the past. Here was Edith with a handful of musicians squashed behind the not-so-big cloth in a not-so-massive drawing room packed with bemused guests. Was it chaos? Was it deafening? Did it feel significant?\u00a0<\/p> <p>Let’s start at the beginning. <em>Fa\u00e7ade<\/em> was a collaboration between three young-ish siblings from an aristocratic family \u2013 Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell \u2013 and the still younger composer, William Walton, they had adopted as something between a boy-genius and a pet. Sacheverell had met Walton at Oxford, where the latter had been a Christ Church chorister.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Sitwells saw themselves as heralds of the new<\/h2> <p>When his voice broke, the young Walton was shoe-horned into undergraduate life at too early an age, leaving without a degree. Not wanting to go home to his modest origins in Oldham, he accepted an invitation to the Sitwells\u2019 London house in Carlyle Square. And Oldham was soon forgotten as he found himself swept into a glittering world.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> The Sitwells (L-R Osbert, Edith and Sacheverell) swept the young William Walton into their glittering world. Pic: Getty Images – Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018Don\u2019t worry about what to become in life. Become a friend of the Sitwells and wait to see what happens.\u2019<\/h6> <p>Chelsea\u2019s equivalent to the Bloomsbury Group \u2013 with whom they had a mutually suspicious, mostly fractious relationship \u2013 the Sitwells saw themselves as heralds of the new in London\u2019s cultural life, dividing opinion between those who admired them and those who mocked. According to the critic FR Leavis, they collectively belonged \u2018to the history of publicity rather than of poetry\u2019. But they had social clout. \u2018Don\u2019t worry about what to become in life,\u2019 said photographer Cecil Beaton. \u2018Become a friend of the Sitwells and wait to see what happens.\u2019<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018I remember thinking it was not a very good idea\u2019<\/h2> <p>What happened for Walton was the piece that made his name at a tender age \u2013 he was 19 at the time of writing it \u2013 and supported it ever after. As he would say with only slight exaggeration decades later, \u2018It keeps me.\u2019 And reciprocally, he kept working at it for decades, toying with the content, turning it into orchestral suites and ballets, generally keeping the thing alive as a work in progress. By 1942 it settled into a standard version with 21 numbers. But then, as late as 1979, Walton produced a substantial variant, <em>Fa\u00e7ade\u00a02<\/em>, for <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/peter-pears\">Peter Pears<\/a><\/strong> at the Aldeburgh Festival.\u00a0<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/benjamin-britten-and-peter-pears\">‘A perfect gay marriage before the concept was invented’: Britten and Pears, gay pioneers<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>It was a robust outcome for something that, by Walton’s own claim, he first threw together and wouldn\u2019t have written at all without the competitive neurosis that was always his spur to creativity. \u2018I remember thinking it was not a very good idea,\u2019 he recalled, \u2018but when I said so, they told me they\u2019d get Constant [Lambert] to do it if I didn\u2019t \u2013 and of course I couldn\u2019t let that occur.\u2019<\/p> <p>How the words and music came together isn\u2019t clear: it was a domestic experiment that proceeded haphazardly. And though Edith later claimed that the precocious Walton (15 years her junior) would present her with rhythmic structures and say, \u2018See what you can do with that,\u2019 everything seems to have evolved at roughly the same time, with significant input from the Sitwell brothers. The original idea for speaking Edith\u2019s verse alongside music was Sacheverell\u2019s. And it was Osbert who proposed the cloth screen to shroud the participants in a modernist aesthetic of impersonality.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The megaphone was sourced from a man in Hampstead<\/h2> <p>It was also Osbert who dreamed up the hole, the megaphone (sourced from a man in Hampstead who in fact called it a Sengerphone), and the painted face \u2013 for which he recruited the services of the artist Frank Dobson, who had recently been absorbed into the Sitwell circle.<\/p> <p>Dobson was principally a sculptor, becoming famous for stylised heads of enigmatically expressionless serenity. In 1921 his bust of Osbert Sitwell, fashioned out of polished brass, created a sensation: TE Lawrence (of Arabia) liked it so much he bought it \u2013 subsequently giving it to the Tate Gallery, who then passed it on to the National Portrait Gallery where it still resides.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2024\/12\/Untitled-design-2024-12-02T100906.308.jpg\" alt=\"Sculptor Frank Dobson\" class=\"wp-image-216738\"\/> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> Sculptor Frank Dobson. Pic: Getty Images – Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <p>The head that Dobson painted, loosely, on the canvas for <em>Fa\u00e7ade<\/em> looks vaguely African and is perhaps a reference to the old colonial imagery that haunts so much of Edith\u2019s texts. In their kaleidoscopic, carnivalesque way, they endlessly refer to \u2018shady ladies\u2019, \u2018negresses\u2019 and \u2018hottentots\u2019: verbal offences these days but arising from an attitude of Empire that celebrated, in its way, the\u00a0otherness of distant cultures.\u00a0<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/music-inspired-orient\">Cultural appropriation, or evocative escapism? 15 musical works inspired by the ‘exotic’ East<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Echoes of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Satie<\/h2> <p>It isn\u2019t easy to imagine what the invited audience made of it all \u2013 the cloth, the face, the hole, the megaphone, the noise \u2013 as they squeezed into the Sitwell drawing room in Carlyle Square for that first performance, on 24 January 1922. Walton\u2019s score \u2013 conceived and orchestrated with an ear to <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/igor-stravinsky\">Stravinsky<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s <em>Soldier\u2019s Tale<\/em>, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/arnold-schoenberg\">Schoenberg<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s <em>Pierrot lunaire<\/em> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/erik-satie\">Satie<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s <em>Parade<\/em> \u2013 used only six players, but with instruments designed to penetrate. And it\u2019s telling that after the performance, everybody was served hot rum punch: intended, Edith said, as a restorative for \u2018those who had lost their way in a voyage of discovery\u2019.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/stravinskys-ballets-a-guide-to-all-his-masterpieces\">All the Stravinsky ballets, ranked<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/satie-jail\">‘You’re nothing but an arse’: why Erik Satie was sentenced to eight days in jail<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>Here’s the great <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/glenn-gould-2\">Glenn Gould<\/a><\/strong> exploring <em>Fa\u00e7ade<\/em>:<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Glenn Gould - Walton, Fa\u00e7ade (OFFICIAL)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xp65jJ2uVNA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Dobson\u2019s screen came out again just two weeks later, for a second private performance at a house in Montagu Square. But not until June 1923 did it really come under the spotlight, with <em>Fa\u00e7ade\u2019s<\/em> first public performance at Aeolian Hall: an event that proved explosive, although on a scale that varies from one eye-witness to another.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘We went about London feeling as if we had committed a murder\u2019<\/h2> <p>The Sitwells \u2013 always happy to be persecuted in the cause of art \u2013 recorded the event as a tumultuous scandal. \u2018I was warned to stay\u2026 hidden behind the curtain, until they [the hostile public] got tired of waiting for me and went home,\u2019 wrote Edith. \u2018For several weeks we were obliged to go about London feeling as if we had committed a murder,\u2019 wrote Osbert. \u2018When we entered a room there would fall a sudden, unpleasing hush.\u2019<\/p> <p>Walton, more laconically, thought it a \u2018shambles\u2019. And the truth seems to be that it fell apart in a mixture of embarrassment and giggles \u2013 which would be unsurprising, given how difficult a piece it is. Some of the texts are near-impossible to speak at speed. The instrumental writing can be virtuoso.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/greatest-virtuosos-all-time\">The greatest virtuosos of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>Either way, the press enjoyed a priceless opportunity for disapproval. \u2018Drivel they paid to hear,\u2019 complained the <em>Daily Graphic<\/em>, with advice that it was \u2018time this sort of thing were stopped\u2019. \u2018Very depressing, but raises the status of the megaphone,\u2019 thought the <em>Sunday Express<\/em>. And adding lustre to a celebrity audience (which included Evelyn Waugh, Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf) was No\u00ebl Coward, who was moved to write a joyous parody of the whole event in his next revue, <em>London Calling!<\/em>\u00a0<\/p> <p>It featured a Miss Hernia Whittlebot with her brothers Gob and Sago, reciting verse with lines like: \u2018Your mouth is my mouth\/ And our mouth is their mouth\/ And their mouth is Bournemouth.\u2019 Edith was appalled, not least because she imagined (for no obvious reason) that it depicted her as lesbian. Walton, cool as ever, thought it \u2018really not unfunny\u2019.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Walton’s music has an infectious, upbeat vigour<\/h2> <p>Quite how funny the original <em>Fa\u00e7ade<\/em> was meant to be is questionable. Edith made great claims for it as an experiment in rhyme and rhythm, freighted with \u2018violent exhilaration and veiled melancholy\u2019. And to the extent that meaning can be plucked from the texts\u2019 tangled webs of nonsense, there\u2019s an undoubted darkness lurking in the images. As one of the poems puts it, \u2018Something lies behind the scene.\u2019<\/p> <p>But the salon-chic of Walton\u2019s music offers safer space. It may be spikily acerbic, but its cheerful parodies of well-known <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-is-a-melody\">melodies<\/a><\/strong> and dance forms come with an infectious, upbeat vigour. As\u00a0<em>Fa\u00e7ade<\/em>\u2019s collaborators all agreed, because they authorised the word, it was an \u2018entertainment\u2019. And Frank Dobson\u2019s cloth tells you as much.\u00a0<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"William Walton : Facade, Suites for orchestra (1921-22 arr. 1926\/1938)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BX0BLdAFV-c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>It got replaced in 1943 by a more detailed, dreamily romanticised successor \u2013 painted by John Piper, who had recently been painting dreamily romantic views of Renishaw, the Sitwells\u2019 country house in Derbyshire. But the original by Dobson has a frivolity and raw bravado. It provoked attention back in 1922, and still does. Now the tissue-paper wraps are off.<\/p> <p\/> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Monday, 02 December 2024 at 11:00 AM I\u2019m looking through a small, round hole that may be the most celebrated hole in music history. It\u2019s in the middle of a canvas cloth, forming the open mouthpiece of a roughly painted face. 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It\u2019s in the middle of a canvas cloth, forming the open mouthpiece of a roughly painted face. And it\u2019s the hole through which, in 1922, the poet Edith Sitwell…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/50146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}