Walker, George
George Walker
Composer, pianist
Raised with Classical Influences
Left Performing for Creating and Teaching
An accomplished and prolific classical music composer, George Walker has achieved many “firsts” in his career, mostly related to his race. He was the first African American to perform at New York City’s Town Hall and with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the first African American instrumentalist to be signed by a major management company, the first African American graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, and the first African American composer to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music. “I believe that music is above race,” Walker is quoted as saying in his American Classical Music Hall of Fame biography. “I am steeped in the universal tradition of my art. It is important to stress one’s individuality beyond race, but I must do it as a black person who is aspiring to be a product of a civilized society.”
Walker’s published catalog exceeds 80 works and includes instrumental and vocal solos, chamber music, orchestral works, and choral music. Many of his compositions were commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Eastman School of Music, Fromm Foundation, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Boys Choir of Harlem. Nearly every major orchestra in the United States has performed his work, as well
For the Record…
Born George Theophilus Walker on June 27, 1922, in Washington, D.C.; children: Gregory and Ian. Education: Bachelor of Music degree, Oberlin College, 1941; Artist Diploma, Curtis Institute, 1945; Artist Diploma, American Academy, Fontainbleau, France, 1947; Doctor of Musical Arts degree, Eastman School of Music, 1956.
Made debut at New York’s Town Hall, 1945; signed with National Concert Artists management company, 1950; began career as composer, 1954; taught music at Smith College, 1961–68; chairman of Music Department at Rutgers University, 1969–92; premiere of In Praise of Folly, performed by New York Philharmonic and broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 1981; has published more than 80 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, woodwinds, and chorus; has performed with orchestras and in solo recitals throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Awards: Pulitzer Prize in Music for Lilacs, 1996; Composers Award from Lancaster Symphony, 1998; Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center, 1998; Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award from the Harlem School of Arts, 2000; inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, 2000.
Member: American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).
Addresses: Record company —Summit Records, P.O. Box 26850, Tempe, AZ 85285-6850.
as several orchestras in Europe. Over the years, his pieces have been recorded on several record labels, including Columbia, CRI, Desto, Mercury, Orion, Summit, and Albany Records.
Several fellowship programs recognized Walker’s talent. He received a Fulbright, MacDowell Colony, two Guggenheim, and two Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships. He also earned several National Endowment for the Arts grants and two Koussevitzky Awards. Walker has been awarded a number of honorary doctorate degrees, including those from Lafayette College in 1982, Oberlin College in 1983, Bloomfield College in 1996, Curtis Institute of Music in 1996, and Montclair State University in 1996.
Raised with Classical Influences
Walker developed his interest in music from a young age. It helped that he was born into a musical family. He learned a strong sense of dedication to his goals from his father, George Walker, who taught himself to play the piano. The elder Walker was an immigrant from Jamaica who moved to the United States with $35 and a desire to become a physician. He put himself through medical school at Temple University. At the time, the American Medical Association (AMA) did not accept African American doctors as members, so the elder Walker formed his own medical associations to create dialogue and shared research among colleagues. Walker’s mother, Rosa King Walker, played the piano and gave her son his first lessons when he was five years old. Walker’s sister, Francis, eventually became the professor emerita for pianoforte at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. “We had nothing but classical music growing up,” Walker recalled to Mavis Clark in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine (OAM).
When Walker was just 14 years old, he played in his first public recital at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel. Soon after, he graduated from Dunbar High School and received a four-year scholarship to Oberlin College. While at Oberlin, Walker studied piano with David Moyer and organ with Arthur Poister. In 1939, Walker became the organist for the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College. Two years later at the age of 18, he earned his Bachelor of Music degree with the highest honors.
From there, Walker attended the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied piano with Rudolph Serkin, composition with Rosario Scalero, and chamber music with William Primrose and Gregor Piatigorsky. In 1945, he received his Artist Diplomas in Piano and Composition and was the first African American graduate of the Curtis Institute. Later that year, Walker performed his debut recital at the Town Hall in New York City, the first African American instrumentalist to perform there. A New York Times reviewer, as quoted in Walker’s American Classical Music Hall of Fame biography, described the composer as “an authentic talent of marked individuality and fine musical insight… a rare combination of elegance and sincerity, an understanding, a technical competence, and a sensitiveness rarely heard at debut recitals.”
Just two weeks after his debut recital, Walker won the Philadelphia Youth Auditions. He performed with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in a performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto. His performances as a pianist continued from there. He played Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony under the direction of Reginald Stewart. In 1946, Walker composed Lyric for Strings, which became one of his most well-known and frequently performed early works. He dedicated the piece to his grandmother.
In 1947, Walker earned an Artist’s Diploma at the American Academy in Fontainbleau, France, where he had studied with Robert Casadesus. He continued to perform in solo recitals and with leading symphony orchestras and signed with the National Concert Artists management company in 1950. Four years later, he toured seven European countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and England.
Left Performing for Creating and Teaching
While on tour, Walker suffered several ulcer attacks which contributed to a change in his creative direction. “I became ill in the course of my first European tour… and I came back to the United States, realizing that I would be severely handicapped in attempting to pursue to appear when I wasn’t physically at my best,” Walker told Jim Lehrer on the Public Broadcasting System’s (PBS) NewsHour television program. In addition to his health concerns, Walker’s performances were not frequent enough to further his career. So, his father suggested that he consider supplementing his music career by teaching. “I never got the opportunities that would have allowed me to concertize like a white pianist,” Walker told Ralph Blumenthal in the New York Times. “I never felt bitter. I strongly felt if I continued to press for what I hoped to achieve, I would achieve it.”
Walker taught music at Dillard University for one year before enrolling at the Eastman School of Music where he studied with José Echániz. In 1956, he received an Artist Diploma in Piano and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music. He was the first African American student to receive that degree from the school. In another first, Walker was the first composer to receive the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1957. He also received a Fulbright Fellowship around the same time. He spent the next two years in Paris, France, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. Then, he embarked on another, less extensive tour of Europe which included performances in France, Holland, and Italy. When he returned to the United States, Walker received a faculty appointment to the Dalcroze School of Music, The New School for Social Research, where he introduced a course in aesthetics. The following year, he joined the faculty at Smith College, where he taught until 1968. After leaving Smith College, Walker taught for a year at the University of Colorado as a visiting professor.
Although he had taken his father’s advice about teaching, Walker continued to pursue his own musical career at the same time. In 1963, after a performance at Wigmore Hall in London, Walker received an honorary membership in London’s Frederic Chopin Society. However, he had received few commissions and his works were not performed frequently. In 1968, Walker participated in a symposium in Atlanta, Georgia, on African American composers. “It was the first time that black composers had ever gotten together and the first time to hear our music performed well, to have discussions about common problems, and to simply meet each other,” Walker told Ebony. The symposium inspired Walker even more, and he began to infuse his own work with references to African American music and the African American experience, particularly with old spirituals and folk songs.
The following year, Walker took the position of chairman of the Music Department at Rutgers University, which he held until his retirement in 1992. In addition to that position, he was on the faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University from 1975–78 and was the recipient of the first Minority Chair established by the University of Delaware from 1975–76.
Recognized in Classical Style
In the 1980s, Walker began to receive more exposure and commissions in the classical music community. In 1981, In Praise of Folly was premiered by the New York Philharmonic. The performance was televised throughout the United States on PBS’ Great Performances program. Four Spirituals for Orchestra (previously titled Folksongs) was premiered in May of 1992 by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David Zinman. In April of the following year, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra premiered Walker’s Sinfonia No. 2 under the direction of Neeme Jaervi. The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress commissioned the piece.
In 1995, the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned Walker to compose a tribute to renowned African American tenor Roland Hayes. For the text, Walker used four stanzas of Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” which was a reflection on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. On February 1, 1996, the Boston Symphony premiered Lilacs under the direction of maestro Seiji Ozawa. Faye Robinson performed with the orchestra as the soprano soloist.
Two months later, Walker earned the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Lilacs. Walker’s son Ian had submitted the piece to the Pulitzer Prize Committee for consideration. Walker was the first African American composer to receive the honor. “It’s always nice to be known as the first doing anything,” Walker told USA Today, as quoted in Jet magazine, “but what’s more important is the recognition that this work has quality.”
After receiving the Pulitzer Prize, Walker continued to receive more awards and recognition. In 1998, he earned the Composers Award from the Lancaster Symphony and the Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center. In May of 1999, he was inducted into membership in the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. The following year, he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and received the Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award for 2000 from the Harlem School of Arts.
Walker also continued to receive commissions for more compositions. In October of 1997, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra premiered Walker’s 1987 composition Pageant and Proclamation, which it had commissioned for its seventy-fifth anniversary in celebration of the orchestra’s move into the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The Columbus Pro Musica commissioned Tangents for Chamber Orchestra, which premiered in January of 2000. In the late 1990s and into 2000, Walker’s work and performances were also released on several CDs, including Recital, Portrait, Chamber Music, and Lilacs.
Despite his occasional commissions and performances, Walker announced his retirement in the 1990s and enjoyed it from his home in Montclair, New Jersey. Though not fully recognized until later in his life, his extensive body of work and influence on American classical music reverberated into the twenty-first century.
Selected compositions
Lyric for Strings, 1946; revised, 1990.
Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, 1957.
Address for Orchestra, 1959; revised, 1991.
Antifonys, 1968.
Variations for Orchestra, 1972.
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, 1975.
Mass, 1977.
Dialogus, 1976; revised, 1996.
In Praise of Folly, 1981.
Cantata, 1982.
Cello Concerto, 1982.
An Eastman Overture, 1983.
Serenata, 1983.
Sinfonia No. 1, 1984.
Sinfonia No. 2, 1984; revised, 1996.
Pageant and Proclamation, 1987.
Four Spirituals for Orchestra, 1990.
Poeme, 1991.
Orpheus, 1994.
Lilacs, 1995.
Tangents for Chamber Orchestra, 1999.
Selected discography
Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, BIS, 1957.
Antifonys, Albany, 1968.
Variations for Orchestra, Mastersound, 1972.
Cantata, Albany, 1982.
An Eastman Overture, Albany, 1983.
George Walker: Portrait, Albany, 1995.
George Walker: Chamber Music, Albany, 1996.
George Walker: Recital, Albany, 1996.
Walker: Serenata/Poeme/Orpheus/Folk Songs, Albany, 1998.
George Walker: Lilacs, Summit, 2000.
Sources
Periodicals
American Record Guide, July-August 1995; September-October 1997; November-December 1997.
Ebony, March 1985.
Jet, April 3, 1989; April 29, 1996.
New York Times, April 11, 1996.
Oberlin Alumni Magazine (OAM), Summer 1996.
Online
“ASCAP Composer George Walker Wins Pulitzer,” ASCAP Playback, http://www.ascap.com/playback/1996/april/walker.html (June 16, 2001).
“Composer George Walker,” NewsHour, http://www.newshour.com (June 16, 2001).
“George Walker,” African American Art Song Alliance, http://www.uni.edu/taylord/walker.bio.html (June 16, 2001).
“George Walker,” American Classical Music Hall of Fame, http://www.classicalhall.com (June 16, 2001).
“George Walker,” http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/1617/ (June 16, 2001).
“George Walker Biography,” MMB Music, http://www.mmbmusic.com (June 16, 2001).
—Sonya Shelton
Walker, George 1922–
George Walker 1922–
Classical composer
Refused to Alter Prizewinning Work
A major voice in contemporary classical composition, George Walker became the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996. That award put the capstone on a five-decade career during which Walker won acclaim but also experienced frustration as a composer. Contemporary classical music has always had difficulty in finding audiences—a difficulty intensified in his case, Walker was convinced, by racial discrimination. Nevertheless, Walker could look back on a lifetime of honors, commissions from major ensembles, and music that showed a constant evolution in style. “I try to avoid duplicating what I have already done,” he told the Washington Post. “Even if there is something I have done before and liked, I find ways of changing it, disguising it. I like variety.”
Born June 27, 1922, in Washington, D.C., Walker was the son of a Jamaican immigrant father who arrived in the United States with $35 in his pocket but managed to teach himself to play the piano. He was also shaped musically by his mother— “a brillian woman, full of high spirits,” he told the New York Times. “Every Sunday I accompanied her from a book of folksongs, and those sessions became one of the most important aspects of our home life. Walker graduated from academically competitive Dunbar High School at 14, by which time he was already giving piano recitals. He won a four-year music scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio, a school known for its openness to African-American music students.
Dedicated Work to Grandmother
Walker blazed through Oberlin, graduating with highest honors at 18 in 1941 and aiming toward a career as a concert pianist. He attended graduate school at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied for five years with top-flight concert pianist Rudolf Serkin. His own skills soon ascended to the highest level, but he chafed against Serkin’s distant manner and found unexpected enjoyment in composition courses with Curtis professor Rosario Scalero. While at Curtis, Walker performed major classical concertos with the Baltimore Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also wrote a short string-orchestra piece called Lyric for Strings; dedicated to his grandmother, it was performed on the radio and remained one of his most
At a Glance…
Born George Theophilus Walker on June 27, 1922, in Washington, DC; married; children: Gregory, Ian. Education: Oberlin College, bachelor of music, 1941; Curtis Institute, artist diploma, 1945; American Academy, Fontainebleau, France, artist diploma; composition study with Nadia Boulanger; Eastman School of Music, doctor of musical arts degree, 1956.
Career: Made debut as pianist at Town Hall auditorium, New York, 1945; signed with National Concert Artists management firm, 1950; became seriously interested in composing, early 1950s; taught music at Smith College, 1961-68; taught at Rutgers University and became music department chair, 1968-92; has published more than 80 works for various instrumental and vocal combinations; performed and recorded widely as pianist.
Memberships: American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).
Selected awards: Pulitzer Prize in Music for Lilacs, 1996; Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award, Harlem School of Arts, 2000; inductee, American Classical Music Hall of Fame, 2000.
Addresses: Recording company—Summit Records, P.O. Box 26850, Tempe, AZ 85285.
popular works.
Although he became (in 1945) the first African-American performer to appear at New York’s Town Hall auditorium, Walker struggled once he was out on his own as a concert pianist. “It was then I discovered the stigma of race…,” he told the New York Times. He signed on with the National Concert Artists booking agency, but, he recalled to the Times, “from the outset they explained that getting concerts for me—a black pianist playing classical music—would be an uphill battle.” Discouraged, he saw classmates garner several times as many bookings as he did, and in 1953 he hit a low point during a European tour. Suffering from the effects of an ulcer, he returned home and re-evaluated his career options.
Walker’s ailing parents advised him to seek out a teaching career, and he enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Rochester, New York’s Eastman School of Music; in 1956 he became the first black student to receive a doctoral degree there. Walker was reinvigorated when he found opportunities at Eastman to compose music and hear it performed. A concerto for trombone and orchestra became another frequently performed Walker work. In 1957, with the help of a Fulbright Scholarship, Walker headed for France and embarked on two years of study with the famous Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger, who had guided the early careers of some of America’s most famous composers. Boulanger, Walker told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, was impressed by his compositions at their first meeting and told him “You are a composer.”
influenced by European Styles
That set Walker firmly on the path of composing. Upon returning to the United States, he landed teaching jobs at New York’s Dalcroze School of Music and New School for Social Research, and later at Smith College in Massachusetts. At Smith, an Atlanta Symphony concert of works by black composers resulted in strong praise for Walker’s Address for Orchestra. Walker began to master the complex, dissonant idioms of contemporary music. His works showed the influence of the highly structured European style known as serialism and of the cool, balanced aesthetic of Neo-Classicism, fusing these styles with occasional references to spirituals and other music of African-American origin. “There’s no way I can conceal my identity as a black composer,” he told the New York Times.
But, Walker told the Plain Dealer, he sometimes submerged the African-American element “The way I do it, it often isn’t recognized. It’s often like an inside joke.” That statement pointed to more general aspects of Walker’s music, which often took several hearings to grasp fully. After moving from Smith to Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1969, Walker gradually began to gain prestige. Walker’s works were featured on a series of recordings of classical music by blacks created in the 1970s by African-American conductor Paul Freeman, and in 1981 the New York Philharmonic premiered his In Praise of Folly;.
Walker retired from the Rutgers faculty in 1992, and in the 1990s, as declining attendance prompted orchestras to seek out new audiences, several of his works received high-profile performances. The Baltimore Symphony performed his Four Spirituals for Orchestra in 1992, and the Detroit Symphony programmed the Library of Congress-commissioned Sinfonia No. 2 the following year. In 1995 came a major commission—a tribute to the pioneer black classical vocalist Roland Hayes, who thrilled audiences nationwide in the 1920s with his interpretations of spirituals and whom Walker had met as a youth. Walker responded with Lilacs, a piece that set stanzas of a commemorative poem by Walt Whitman.
Refused to Alter Prizewinning Work
During rehearsals for the piece, the tenor soloist bemoaned its dissonance and complexity. “I like pretty music,” the singer complained (as Walker recalled to the New York Times), and asked Walker to change the music. “Not a chance,” Walker retorted, adding “I don’t intend to change for anybody,” but refraining from saying “I don’t like pretty music.” A soprano more attuned to Walker’s music was brought in, and the 1996 premiere of Lilacs led to Walker’s being awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music that year. He was the first African American so honored.
Walker was somewhat suspicious of the award, telling the Plain Dealer that the award process entailed a series of compromises: “It wasn’t very long ago that a woman was picked for the first time, so now maybe they thought it was time for a black male.” But Jet quoted him as saying that “It’s always nice to be known as the first doing anything, but what’s more important is the recognition that this work has quality.” And Walker reveled in the new opportunities the prize brought him. The New Jersey Symphony premiered his Pageant and Proclamation in 1997, and the Columbus Pro Musica ensemble commissioned a new work, Tangents for Chamber Orchestra, in 2000. Lilacs was recorded, and several other recordings followed, bringing Walker’s disc total to a level well above that achieved by most other composers in his difficult genre. He had become a true elder statesman of contemporary classical music.
Selected works
Lyric for Strings, 1946 (rev. 1950).
Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, 1957.
Address for Orchestra, 1959 (rev. 1991).
Variations for Orchestra, 1972.
Dialogus, 1976 (rev. 1996).
Sinfonia No. 1, 1984.
Sinfonia No. 2, 1984 (rev. 1996).
Pageant and Proclamation, 1987.
Four Spirituals for Orchestra, 1990.
Lilacs, 1995.
Tangents for Chamber Orchestra, 1999.
Sources
Books
Contemporary Musicians, volume 34, Gale, 2002.
Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., Macmillan, 2001.
Slonimsky, Nicolas, ed. emeritus, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Music and Musicians, centennial ed., Schirmer, 2001.
Periodicals
Boston Globe, January 5, 2001, p. C15.
Jet, April 29, 1996, p. 24.
New York Times, January 10, 1982, section 2, p. 19; October 6, 1996, Section 13NJ, p. 12.
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), April 14, 1996, p.K2; May 10, 1997, p. E6.
Washington Post, January 12, 1980, p. E1; June 8, 1997, p. G4.
On-line
—James M. Manheim
Walker, George
George Walker
1922–
Composer
When the 1996 Pulitzer Prize recipients were announced at Columbia University in New York, George Walker became the first African American to receive the prestigious distinction for music. It was a triumphant moment for Walker, whom the New York Times described as "a not-quite-overnight sensation," as he was more than sixty years into his career. In the Pulitzer's eighty-year history, Walker was the first black composer to win the award for music. The Pulitzer committee's selection "served to recognize an often overlooked minority group within a minority group: black musicians who compose classical music," according to the Times.
George Walker was born on June 27, 1922, in Washington D.C. His father was a Jamaican immigrant who came to the United States with no money but was determined to become a doctor. He put himself through medical school but was barred entry to the American Medical Association, which did not accept African Americans. Undeterred, he formed his own medical groups to conduct research with colleagues. George's mother, who tutored neighborhood children in math and writing, was known for her beautiful singing voice.
Walker began playing the piano when he was five years old. He gave his first concert at age fourteen at Howard University, and the next year he started at Oberlin College as a music major. He then attended the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied piano under famed pianist Rudolph Serkin. Serkin, like many others, seemed surprised that his student was a purely classical musician. "Imagine my puzzlement," Walker recalled in an article he wrote for the New York Times in 1991, when Serkin told him to play part of a Beethoven sonata "like jazz." Serkin was just as surprised to hear his protégé tell him he did not play jazz and had never even listened to jazz until college.
Gets Late Start Composing
Primarily interested in a career as a concert pianist, Walker did not start composing until he was eighteen. He made his debut at Town Hall in New York City in 1945, followed by a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Despite receiving "wonderful notices," as he recalled, it took Walker five years to find a management agency that would handle a black pianist. If not for the roadblocks facing a black performer in the 1950s, he might have made a career as a concert pianist, he told the Times: "I never got the opportunities that would have allowed me to concertize like a white pianist." But he added: "I never felt bitter. I strongly felt if I continued to press for what I hoped to achieve, I would achieve it."
In 1953, National Concert Artists booked him on his first European tour, which took him to Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Italy, and England. While on tour, he became seriously ill with ulcers and was in agony most of the time. When he came back to the United States, he realized that, if he continued to perform when he was sick, he risked seriously affecting his health. Walker's father encouraged him to teach, so in 1956 he earned a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Bulenje, who he claims was the first person to acknowledge his talent as a composer. When Walker's grandmother died in 1946, he composed the "Lyric for Strings (Lament)," his first orchestral work.
In 1961, he accepted teaching appointments at Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Colorado, and in 1969 he joined the faculty of Rutgers University, where he became the chairman of the music department. He retired in 1992 during a dispute with the university over back pay and benefits that was resolved in March 1993.
Refers to Poet for Orchestral Piece
In 1995, Walker was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to write a work for tenor and orchestra to commemorate Roland Hayes, the famous black tenor, whose career began in Boston with the symphony. Walker referred to Walt Whitman's "While Lilacs Last in the Door Yard Bloom," about the funeral train of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Walker said he had drawn inspiration from folk sources, spirituals, popular music and jazz "in small snippets so they're not recognizable," according to the New York Times. He composed the piece in his dining room at his Steinway concert grand piano.
In "Lilacs," he said, he used Whitman's piece because Lincoln represented freedom and emancipation to blacks. Lilacs, Walker has said, also have a personal tie for him, as his family used to visit relatives who lived amid lilacs in Virginia.
Walker's body of work, including overtures, symphonies, concertos, sonatas, string quartets, cantatas and a Mass, consists mostly of compositions for full orchestra, for chamber orchestra, and for instrumental combinations. "Lilacs" was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in February 1996. Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer wrote: "There is wonderful music in this cycle, which is profoundly responsive to the images in the text—you can hear the sway of lilacs in the rhythm, smell their fragrance in the harmony," according to the Washington Post.
Pulitzer Piece One of Many
"Lilacs" was Walker's seventieth published work. His commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, among many others. His works and piano interpretations have also been recorded on three CDs: George Walker: A Portrait, George Walker in Recital, and George Walker.
"Lilacs" came to the attention of the Pulitzer Prize Committee when one of Walker's two sons, a violinist in Colorado, submitted it. A rash of crank calls had been interrupting Walker at his music for the previous year, so when the telephone rang on a Tuesday afternoon in April 1996, as he worked over an organ piece, he picked it up expecting to hear the familiar click of a hang-up. Instead, he was told that he had just won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for music.
"It's something one can never expect or take for granted; it's a kind of gift," Walker told the New York Times. Members of the Pulitzer nominating jury praised the piece as "masterly and rigorous," according to the Times, "one that deepens with successive hearings yet grips an audience from the first." Richard Wernick, chairman of the five-member music panel that recommended Walker to the Pulitzer Prize board, described "Lilacs" as "an American piece," adding, "don't ask me to define that."
As television vans, photographers, and reporters flooded Walker's quiet suburban street, Walker maintained his perspective. "It's always nice to be known as the first doing anything, but what's more important is the recognition that this work has quality," Walker told USA Today.
Chronology
- 1922
- Born in Washington D.C. on June 27
- 1927
- Begins studying piano
- 1940
- Begins composing
- 1945
- Makes debut at Town Hall in New York City
- 1946
- Composes his first orchestral work, "Lyric for Strings (Lament)"
- 1953
- Makes first European tour
- 1956
- Earns a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York
- 1961
- Accepts teaching appointments at Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Colorado
- 1969
- Joins the faculty of Rutgers University
- 1992
- Retires from Rutgers University
- 1995
- Receives commission from Boston Symphony Orchestra; composes "Lilacs"
- 1996
- Wins Pulitzer Prize for music
REFERENCES
Periodicals
Blumenthal, Ralph. "A Pulitzer Winner's Overnight Success of 60 Years." New York Times, 11 April 1996.
Kandell, Leslie. "A Hometown Tribute to a Composer's Life." New York Times, 6 October 1996.
McLellan, Joseph. "Hometown Homage to a D.C. Composer; Trailblazer Returns for His Day in the District." Washington Post, 8 June 1997.
Weeks, Linton. "A Bittersweet Pulitzer Prize; Young Playwright Honored Posthumously; Music Award Goes to Black for First Time." Washington Post, 10 April 1996.
Online
"Looking Past the Pulitzer: Do African American composers have a place in the classical music world?" Oberlin Alumni Magazine. http://www.oberlin.edu/alummag/oamcurrent/oam_summer2002/feat_looking.htm (Accessed 23 March 2005).
"The Online News Hour." PBS.org. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/pulitzer_music_4-11.html (Accessed 23 March 2005).
Brenna Sanchez
Walker, George
J. A. Cannon