Sir William Turner Walton (1902-1983) was one of the principal composers among the enlightened conservatives of 20th-century England.

William Walton received his first music lessons from his father, who was a singing teacher. At the age of 10 William was enrolled in the Cathedral Choir School at Oxford; at 16 he entered the university, where it appears that he received little systematic training in music. From an early age, however, he was composing, and this self-tutelage must have been effective, for at 20 he wrote a String Quartet that was accepted for performance at a Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. In the same year (1922) he collaborated with the poet Edith Sitwell on Facade, a clever "entertainment" for speaking voice and six instrumental players, which epitomizes certain aspects of the smart set in the era after World War I.

During the next decade Walton's reputation was solidly established with...