Lyric for Strings
George Walker
(b. June 27, 1922 in Washington, DC; d. August 23, 2018 in Montclair, New Jersey)
George Theophilus Walker checked all the boxes as he developed musically. Oberlin College in 1936 when he was 14 where he dedicated himself to becoming a concert pianist. Then the Curtis Institute in 1940 where composition began to dominate his interests. Famed teacher Nadia Boulanger observed and affirmed his talent. His first successful composition was his String Quartet No. 1. As he worked on it, he learned that his grandmother, to whom he was very close, had died. She was in his heart as he wrote the second movement, Molto Adagio, emotions welling up. When he heard his work performed by string orchestra, he added the dedication “To my grandmother” to the slow movement and subtitled it “Lament” which premiered with that title in a 1946 radio performance. It was later published as a separate piece, with the title Lyric for Strings for string orchestra. Even though all his life Walker referred to it as “my grandmother’s piece,” as Lyric for Strings it was and remains his most popular work.
Six years earlier Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings had already claimed an honored place as America’s mourning song after he excerpted it from his first string quartet. When Walker did the same with his Lyric for Strings the comparison was unavoidable. For Walker, however, it was more deeply personal. He dives into his own grief and constructs a memorial to the most important woman in his life. The complexity of his work is obvious, filled with melodies and countermelodies weaving in and out. A shockingly strenuous climax slowly subsides, the intricacies unwind, and we are left with abiding hope and deep peace.
Walker is unfamiliar to most audiences. Very. A Guardian headline, August 27, 2015, reads “George Walker: the great American composer you've never heard of” and giving him a fair introduction will make some people uncomfortable. He was African-American, born into Jim Crow, the worst time for Black Americans since slavery. Nevertheless he accumulated a blue-ribbon set of firsts: first Black graduate of Curtis, the first Black musician to play in New York’s Town Hall, the first Black to receive a doctorate from Eastman School, the first Black to earn tenure at Smith College, and the first Black to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. The one obvious race barrier that he did not fully overcome was his inability to have the career he deserved as a concert pianist. He toured Europe successfully but finding US gigs was problematic.
As for disappearing from view, he fared somewhat better than many of his peers, if only for his long life, where he could count on his supporters to pay attention to his continuing work. The highly-regarded, mid-century American symphonists, other than Bernstein, are a long list of dimly remembered names: Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, William Schuman, David Diamond, and Walter Piston, to cite a few. These privileged white men received rich recognition in their lifetimes and deservedly so. Because the musical establishment has been woke to start rediscovering worthy Black composers, like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Grant Still, Florence Price, and, yes, George Walker, their revival is running ahead of the renewed interest in the white guys.