Friday, August 24, 2018

National Public Radio: George Walker, Trailblazing American Composer, Dies At 96

Composer George Walker takes a bow at a performance of his Pulitzer winning piece, Lilacs, in California in 1996.
Luis Sinco/LA Times/Getty Images


Tom Huizenga

August 24, 2018


Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, pianist and educator George Walker has died at the age of 96. Walker's death was announced to NPR by one of his family members, Karen Schaefer, who said he died Thursday at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J. after a fall.

Walker's music was firmly rooted in the modern classical tradition, but also drew from African-American spirituals and jazz. His nearly 100 compositions range broadly, from intricately orchestrated symphonic works and concertos to intimate songs and solo piano pieces.

"His music is always characterized by a great sense of dignity, which is how he always comported himself," says composer Jeffrey Mumford, who, as a music professor at Lorain County Community College in Ohio, uses examples of Walker's music in his classes. "His style evolved over the years; his earlier works, some written while still a student, embodied an impressive clarity and elegance."

Walker was a trailblazing man of "firsts," and not just because of the Pulitzer. In the year 1945 alone, he was the first African-American pianist to play a recital at New York's Town Hall, the first black instrumentalist to play solo with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the first black graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

The following year, Walker wrote his first string quartet. In 1990, he revised the second movement into a new piece, Lyric for Strings, which has become his most often-performed work.

In 1996, Walker broke new ground again when he became the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music. Lilacs for voice and orchestra, set to a text by Walt Whitman, is a moving meditation on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

George Theophilus Walker was born June 27, 1922 in Washington, D.C. to a father from the West Indies and a mother who started him off with piano lessons at age five. At 14, Walker gave his first public recital at Washington's Howard University. In 1937, he entered Oberlin College in Ohio on a scholarship and graduated at age 18. He then enrolled at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Samuel Barber, graduating in 1945. In the late 1950s, he traveled to Paris to study for two years with the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. (Her other students ranged from Aaron Copland to Quincy Jones.)

Mumford likes to recall a story about Walker's Paris years with Boulanger. "She was so impressed with his musicianship that she waived the regular requirements she made of students," Mumford says. "He could bring anything he wanted to show her at lessons."

Walker's reputation as a composer of works for orchestras like the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Symphony slowly grew, but Mumford says Walker's fame was hard-won.

"We have a great deal of work to do regarding orchestra programming of composers of color," Mumford says. "Walker deserved many more performances than he has received thus far. Sad to say the even the work that earned him the Pulitzer has not graced the concert hall nearly enough." It was only seven years ago that Walker became the first African-American composer to have a work performed at the Cabrillo Festival in California, a celebrated annual gathering of new music composers and performers.            

Walker is often identified as an "African-American" composer instead of simply an American composer. In a 1987 interview with broadcaster Bruce Duffie, Walker said there are two sides to that label.

"I've benefited from being a black composer in the sense that when there are symposiums given of music by black composers, I would get performances by orchestras that otherwise would not have done the works," Walker said. "The other aspect, of course, is that if I were not black, I would have had a far wider dispersion of my music and more performances."

Comment by email:
I was terribly saddened to hear that George Walker, one of the brilliant composers of my generation, has passed away, and despite the fact that he was close to 100 years old and had many first achievements in his list of credits, his music was not heard and performed extensively during his lifetime. One would think that a Pulitzer Prize would be more than enough for him to be recognized as a pre-eminent composer and pianist, but I must admit that he was probably filed away and neglected because he was African-American.
 
Unfortunately, this is a very distressing commentary regarding the current state of affairs with black composers, except that we can hear their music for special tributes during Black History/ Heritage month, or when a critic decides to write an occasional piece about their contributions.

Hale Smith, another outstanding composer from my generation who passed away recently, wrote an excellent essay entitled “Here I Stand” in which he made a strong and compelling case for mainstreaming the music of African-American composers with the works of Bach,Stravinsky,Brahms and anyone else in the Western canon.

He also said that race and national origin should not necessarily be included as points for identification…in other words, let the music speak and express the composer’s art, and let the listener/audience form their own impressions about what they hear.

Finally, I must say that after 60 + years of performing and teaching, I continue to play music that resonates with me, regardless of who wrote it, and I perform the music of African-American composers because they deserve more recognition, nevertheless, I agree with Hale Smith’s premise that their music must be mainstreamed on concerts and classical radio stations throughout the world. It must stand on its own merit and not because it happens to have been written by an African-American composer. This is probably the best way to bring an end to years of neglect and musical racism.

Althea Waites 
Keyboard Faculty/ Steinway Artist
Cole Conservatory@California State University/Long Beach 

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