Façade - An Entertainment
with Poems by Edith Sitwell
Fanfare
I. Hornpipe
I II. En Famille
III. Mariner Man
IV. Long Steel Grass
II V. Through Gilded Trellises
VI. Tango-Pasodoble
VII. Lullaby for Jumbo
III VIII. Black Mrs. Behemoth
IX. Tarantella
X. A Man from a Far Countree
IV XI. By the Lake
XII. Country Dance
XIII. Polka
V XIV. Four in the Morning
XV. Something lies beyond the Scene
XVI. Valse
VI XVII. Jodelling Song
XVIII. Scotch Rhapsody
XIX. Popular Song
VII XX. Fox-Trot "Old Sir Faulk"
XXI Sir Beelzebub
Façade is an entertainment devised by Edith Sitwell and her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell for performance in their house at 2 Carlyle Square, Chelsea. The 19-year old William Walton had been taken up by Sacheverell at Oxford, and, as their "adopted, or elected brother" was the obvious choice for the music. The way in which the Sitwells "adopted" Walton was typical of how this gifted family looked after its own. They maintained a united, defiantly Bohemian stance in the face of criticism and mockery from press and public, and Façade, according to Osbert, originated as a counterblast to a critic who wrote that Edith was "clever but only a façade". Walton and the Sitwells set about the venture in a spirit of bravado; Façade was designed knowingly to be off-beat, avant-garde and of the moment – Walton wrote the original score in just three weeks. The performance took place on 24th January 1922; Edith declaimed her poetry through a megaphone set in a painted curtain; Walton directed four instrumentalists, also behind the curtain. After a series of revisions Walton increased the number of performers to six, with the option (taken today) of using an additional ‘cello.
The character of Façade is undoubtedly light hearted; it is, as its title declares, "An Entertainment". But it is not a light-weight work. Sitwell’s poems are not just "nonsense verse", they can be pastoral, melancholic and even lugubrious in mood, and they represent a genuine attempt to create a poetry which, through its emphasis on tone-colour and rhythm, aspires to the condition of music. Walton’s music catches to perfection the distinctive mood of each poem, drawing on the influences of Stravinsky, the Schoenberg of Pierrot Lunaire and Ravel – most notably in the parodies of "Spanish" music ("Long Steel Grass", "Tango-Pasodoble") and the haunting mood-pieces ("By the Lake", "Four in the Morning"). The jazzy high-spirits of the more up-tempo numbers ("Old Sir Faulk", "Sir Beelzebub" "Something lies behind the Scene"), are, however, the mark of a very young and very confident composer – a contemporary parallel might be the Ecstasio movement of Thomas Adès’ Asyla. And after the première of Façade Walton spent a year writing and scoring fox-trots for the Savoy Orpheus Band!
R. G. Bratby 2000
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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