George Walker
- Born: June 27, 1922, Washington, D.C.
- Died: August 23, 2018, Montclair, New Jersey
Lyric for Strings
- Composed: 1946; reorchestration for string orchestra of the Adagio movement of String Quartet No. 1
- Premiere: 1946, Washington, D.C. (National Galley of Art) by the National Gallery Sinfonietta, Richard Bales conducting
- Instrumentation: strings
- CSO notable performances: This is the first performance of the work on a CSO subscription concert. First: June 2002 at St. Francis Seraph as part of the Classical Roots series, John Morris Russell conducting. Most Recent: July 2023, John Morris Russell conducting, at the Ezzard Charles Park Brady Block Party.
- Duration: approx. 6 minutes
As one of the more acclaimed and celebrated American and Black composers of the late 20th century, George Walker challenged the ways in which both distinctions were categorized and heard. His professional achievements and the larger cultural narrative that is scripted through his music are rooted in the vibrant cultural and intellectual ecosystem Walker engaged with during his formative years in Washington D.C.
George Theophilus Walker was born into a family that embodied the spirit of perseverance and quest for upward mobility underscoring the Black intellectual community in Washington D.C. prior to World War II. George’s father was a Jamaican immigrant and doctor who ran a successful practice out of the family’s home. His mother, Ruby, who recognized George’s musical talent early on, worked for the Government Printing Office.
Walker began piano lessons as early as age 5 and gave his first formal recital at age 11 at Howard University. His sister, Francis Walker-Slocum, was also a celebrated pianist who, after a successful performing career, became the first Black woman to receive tenure at Oberlin Conservatory. Following Walker’s graduation from Dunbar High School, he enrolled at the Oberlin Conservatory, where, in 1941, he graduated with a degree in piano performance. Soon afterward, he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he continued his study of piano and also began studying composition.
In 1945, he became the first Black graduate of the Curtis Institute, earning artist diplomas in piano performance and composition. That same year, he became the first Black concert artist to give a recital at Town Hall in New York and the first Black instrumentalist to appear with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Despite acclaimed performances in the U.S. and Europe, Walker surmised that his professional trajectory as a concert pianist would be significantly undermined by race, so he turned his attention to composition. He enrolled at Eastman, where, in 1956, he became the first Black to receive a DMA. A year later, Walker went to France, where he studied for two years with famed teacher Nadia Boulanger.
For the next six decades, Walker focused on teaching and composing, serving on the faculties of Dillard University, Smith College, the University of Colorado, the University of Delaware and Rutgers University-Newark, where he became Distinguished Professor in 1976 and retired in 1992. In 1996, Walker became the first Black composer to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra.
George Walker’s oeuvre consists of over 100 works written for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds and chorus.
The origins of Lyric for Strings, which remains his most celebrated and performed work, extend back to Walker’s years at Curtis, when, in 1941, he began work on what would become his first string quartet. Just as he was beginning to write the second movement, Walker received word that his maternal grandmother, Malvina King, had died. King was a remarkable woman, who cast an enormous shadow of influence over her family, especially her grandson. She was born into slavery in Virginia sometime around 1858. Like many enslaved people, her life was defined by both trauma and pain, which was punctuated by the selling of her first husband to another plantation. Determined to be free, King escaped to the North and eventually settled in Washington D.C. As a young child, George spent a great deal of time with his grandmother, who not only contributed to the development of his racial consciousness but also nurtured his love of Negro spirituals. She provided the most direct link to a historical past that underscored Walker’s music and consciousness about what it meant to be a Black composer and an American composer. Walker’s grief over the death of his grandmother is immortalized in the middle “Lament” movement of his String Quartet No. 1.
Shortly after completing the quartet in 1946, Walker reorchestrated the “Lament” movement for string orchestra. It was first performed by the Curtis student orchestra in 1946, but received a more formal debut a year later when it was programmed during the annual American Music Festival at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This string orchestra version went through a number of title changes—from Lament to Adagio for Strings—before becoming known as Lyric for Strings. For some seven decades, Walker referred to the elegiac work as his “grandmother’s piece.”
Critics and listeners often note similarities between the work and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Walker rejected these comparisons, insisting that this work was influenced by Beethoven. Lyric for Strings is often characterized as being Neo-Romantic. However, it should be noted that Walker’s embracing of traditional forms and tonality was considered conventional among American composers during the 1940s. It opens with the violins presenting the lyrical, but hauntingly melancholy, melody that is subsequently taken up by each of the string groups. The cellos and basses emphasize the rich, dark tonality of F-sharp major.
Much of the identity of this work lies in contrapuntal interplay, but there are instances where moments of homophony interrupt the contrapuntal texture. These cadential points mark the changing emotional energy of the work, as the sorrow and grief represented in the opening melody give way to joy and transcendence and, finally, peace, reflected in the quiet closing chords. Although this composition contains no direct quotations of spiritual melodies, the spectrum of emotion represented exemplifies the ethos and theology that underscored those songs: death is not the end, but the beginning of new life.
Dr. Tammy Kernodle