composer; pianist; college teacher

Personal Information

Born George Theophilus Walker on June 27, 1922, in Washington, DC; married; children Gregory, Ian
Education: Oberlin College, bachelor of music, 1941; Curtis Institute, artist diploma, 1945; American Academy, Fontainebleau, France, artist diploma; composition study with Nadia Boulanger; Eastman School of Music, doctor of musical arts degree, 1956.
Memberships: American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

Career

Made debut as pianist at Town Hall auditorium, New York, 1945; signed with National Concert Artists management firm, 1950; became seriously interested in composing, early 1950s; taught music at Smith College, 1961-68; taught at Rutgers University and became music department chair, 1968-92; has published more than 80 works for various instrumental and vocal combinations; performed and recorded widely as pianist.

Life's Work

A major voice in contemporary classical composition, George Walker became the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996. That award put the capstone on a five-decade career during which Walker won acclaim but also experienced frustration as a composer. Contemporary classical music has always had difficulty in finding audiences--a difficulty intensified in his case, Walker was convinced, by racial discrimination. Nevertheless, Walker could look back on a lifetime of honors, commissions from major ensembles, and music that showed a constant evolution in style. "I try to avoid duplicating what I have already done," he told the Washington Post. "Even if there is something I have done before and liked, I find ways of changing it, disguising it. I like variety."

Born June 27, 1922, in Washington, D.C., Walker was the son of a Jamaican immigrant father who arrived in the U.S. with $35 in his pocket but managed to teach himself to play the piano. He was also shaped musically by his mother--"a brillian woman, full of high spirits," he told the New York Times. "Every Sunday I accompanied her from a book of folksongs, and those sessions became one of the most important aspects of our home life. Walker graduated from academically competitive Dunbar High School at 14, by which time he was already giving piano recitals. He won a four-year music scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio, a school known for its openness to African-American music students.

Dedicated Work to Grandmother

Walker blazed through Oberlin, graduating with highest honors at 18 in 1941 and aiming toward a career as a concert pianist. He attended graduate school at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied for five years with top-flight concert pianist Rudolf Serkin. His own skills soon ascended to the highest level, but he chafed against Serkin's distant manner and found unexpected enjoyment in composition courses with Curtis professor Rosario Scalero. While at Curtis, Walker performed major classical concertos with the Baltimore Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also wrote a short string-orchestra piece called Lyric for Strings; dedicated to his grandmother, it was performed on the radio and remained one of his most popular works.

Although he became (in 1945) the first African-American performer to appear at New York's Town Hall auditorium, Walker struggled once he was out on his own as a concert pianist. "It was then I discovered the stigma of race ...," he told the New York Times. He signed on with the National Concert Artists booking agency, but, he recalled to the Times, "from the outset they explained that getting concerts for me--a black pianist playing classical music--would be an uphill battle." Discouraged, he saw classmates garner several times as many bookings as he did, and in 1953 he hit a low point during a European tour. Suffering from the effects of an ulcer, he returned home and re-evaluated his career options.

Walker's ailing parents advised him to seek out a teaching career, and he enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Rochester, New York's Eastman School of Music; in 1956 he became the first black student to receive a doctoral degree there. Walker was reinvigorated when he found opportunities at Eastman to compose music and hear it performed. A concerto for trombone and orchestra became another frequently performed Walker work. In 1957, with the help of a Fulbright Scholarship, Walker headed for France and embarked on two years of study with the famous Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger, who had guided the early careers of some of America's most famous composers. Boulanger, Walker told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, was impressed by his compositions at their first meeting and told him "You are a composer."

Influenced by European Styles

That set Walker firmly on the path of composing. Upon returning to the United States. he landed teaching jobs at New York's Dalcroze School of Music and New School for Social Research, and later at Smith College in Massachusetts. At Smith, an Atlanta Symphony concert of works by black composers resulted in strong praise for Walker's Address for Orchestra. Walker began to master the complex, dissonant idioms of contemporary music. His works showed the influence of the highly structured European style known as serialism and of the cool, balanced aesthetic of Neo-Classicism, fusing these styles with occasional references to spirituals and other music of African-American origin. "There's no way I can conceal my identity as a black composer," he told the New York Times.

But, Walker told the Plain Dealer, he sometimes submerged the African-American element "The way I do it, it often isn't recognized. It's often like an inside joke." That statement pointed to more general aspects of Walker's music, which often took several hearings to grasp fully. After moving from Smith to Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1969, Walker gradually began to gain prestige. Walker's works were featured on a series of recordings of classical music by blacks created in the 1970s by African-American conductor Paul Freeman, and in 1981 the New York Philharmonic premiered his In Praise of Folly.

Walker retired from the Rutgers faculty in 1992, and in the 1990s, as declining attendance prompted orchestras to seek out new audiences, several of his works received high-profile performances. The Baltimore Symphony performed his Four Spirituals for Orchestra in 1992, and the Detroit Symphony programmed the Library of Congress-commissioned Sinfonia No. 2 the following year. In 1995 came a major commission--a tribute to the pioneer black classical vocalist Roland Hayes, who thrilled audiences nationwide in the 1920s with his interpretations of spirituals and whom Walker had met as a youth. Walker responded with Lilacs, a piece that set stanzas of a commemorative poem by Walt Whitman.

Refused to Alter Prizewinning Work

During rehearsals for the piece, the tenor soloist bemoaned its dissonance and complexity. "I like pretty music," the singer complained (as Walker recalled to the New York Times), and asked Walker to change the music. "Not a chance," Walker retorted, adding "I don't intend to change for anybody," but refraining from saying "I don't like pretty music." A soprano more attuned to Walker's music was brought in, and the 1996 premiere of Lilacs led to Walker's being awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music that year. He was the first African American so honored.

Walker was somewhat suspicious of the award, telling the Plain Dealer that the award process entailed a series of compromises: "It wasn't very long ago that a woman was picked for the first time, so now maybe they thought it was time for a black male." But Jet quoted him as saying that "It's always nice to be known as the first doing anything, but what's more important is the recognition that this work has quality." And Walker reveled in the new opportunities the prize brought him. The New Jersey Symphony premiered his Pageant and Proclamation in 1997, and the Columbus Pro Musica ensemble commissioned a new work, Tangents for Chamber Orchestra, in 2000. Lilacs was recorded, and several other recordings followed, bringing Walker's disc total to a level well above that achieved by most other composers in his difficult genre. He had become a true elder statesman of contemporary classical music.

Awards

Selected: Pulitzer Prize in Music for Lilacs, 1996; Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award, Harlem School of Arts, 2000; inductee, American Classical Music Hall of Fame, 2000.

Works

Selected works

• Lyric for Strings, 1946 (rev. 1950).
• Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, 1957.
• Address for Orchestra, 1959 (rev. 1991).
• Variations for Orchestra, 1972.
• Dialogus, 1976 (rev. 1996).
• Sinfonia No. 1, 1984.
• Sinfonia No. 2, 1984 (rev. 1996).
• Pageant and Proclamation, 1987.
• Four Spirituals for Orchestra, 1990.
• Lilacs, 1995.
• Tangents for Chamber Orchestra, 1999.

Further Reading

Books

• Contemporary Musicians, volume 34, Gale, 2002.
• Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., Macmillan, 2001.
• Slonimsky, Nicolas, ed. emeritus, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Music and Musicians, centennial ed., Schirmer, 2001.

Periodicals

• Boston Globe, January 5, 2001, p. C15.
• Jet, April 29, 1996, p. 24.
• New York Times, January 10, 1982, section 2, p. 19; October 6, 1996, Section 13NJ, p. 12.
• The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), April 14, 1996, p. K2; May 10, 1997, p. E6.
• Washington Post, January 12, 1980, p. E1; June 8, 1997, p. G4.

On-Line

• http://allclassical.com

— James M. Manheim

Walker, George (1618-90). Walker, an elderly Church of Ireland clergyman, was the heart and soul of Londonderry's resistance to James II after the Glorious Revolution. He held a living at Donaghmore, near Dungannon, and began raising troops early in 1689. In April he went to Londonderry and acted as joint governor throughout the siege. He joined William at the start of his Irish campaign and was shot dead at the battle of the Boyne.

(1896-1993)

The status of this leading American car designer at the Ford Motor Corporation after the Second World War was confirmed by his appearance on the cover of Time magazine in 1957, like the famous American industrial designer Raymond Loewy eight years earlier. Responsible for such significant models as the 1949 Ford and the classic 1955 Ford Thunderbird, Walker was made a company vice-president and director of styling in 1955. His significance at Ford could be compared with Virgil Exner's at Chrysler or even Harley Earl's at General Motors. Walker had attended the Cleveland School of Art and the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design before embarking on a career as an art director in Cleveland. He then moved to Detroit, establishing an independent design consultancy for which, amongst a wide range of industrial products such as radios and refrigerators, he designed a number of details that were sold to Henry Ford in the early 1930s. However, his relationship with the Ford Motor Corporation did not develop seriously until after the Second World War, when he was invited to comment on the company's proposed designs for the 1949 Ford. He felt that they were uncommercial and put his own proposals forward a few months later. Walker is generally credited as the mainspring behind the styling of the 1949 Ford, a model that is widely acknowledged as one that had a significant positive effect on the Ford profile and profitability. He also headed the team that designed the 1950 Lincoln, the 1951 Mercury, and the 1952 Ford with its characteristic circular rear lights. Inspired by the European sports cars that he had seen at the 1953 Paris Auto Show of 1953 he produced the classic Ford Thunderbird in 1955. His design team at this time included Elwood Engel (later moving to the Chrysler Corporation as head of design from 1961 to 1974), Joseph Oros, and George Bordinat. Walker retired from Ford in 1961 although his contribution to design was far wider than automobiles, his Detroit design consultancy also working on more than 3,000 designs, including watches, washing machines, radios, refrigerator, and alarm clocks.

Walker, George (Revd) (?-1690), author of A True Account of the Siege of Londonderry (1689). Born in Co. Tyrone, possibly in 1618, and educated at Glasgow, he held two Church of Ireland parishes before becoming Rector of Donoghmore near Dungannon in 1674. Walker raised a regiment at Dungannon in 1688 and acted as joint Governor of Derry with Henry Baker and then John Michelburne. In July 1689 he carried a loyal address to William III in England, where he wrote the Account.

1618–90, Irish Anglican clergyman and commander. As joint governor of Londonderry (now Derry) during the siege (1689) of that city by the army of the deposed James II, Walker roused the people by his courage and inspiring sermons and was able to hold the city for 105 days until it was relieved. He received the thanks of Parliament, was given £5,000 by William III for the citizens of Londonderry, and was designated bishop of Derry. He published A True Account of the Siege of Londonderry (1689) and, in answer to charges of self-seeking, a Vindication (1690). Walker was killed in the battle of the Boyne.