William Walton: TOUCH HER SOFT LIPS AND PART from HENRY V (NJ All-State Orchestra, Patrick J. Burns)

Touch Her Soft Lips and Part from HENRY V (1944) by William Walton. Performed by the 2014 New Jersey All-State Orchestra, Patrick J. Burns, Director.

William Walton (1902-1983) was a titan among British composers of the 20th century. Although his output is relatively small, particularly in light of his exceptionally long creative life (130 works composed over a nearly 67-year period), the meticulous craft of his orchestrations and brute force of his musical imagination have secured him a permanent place among the pantheon of great writers of the last century.

Walton possessed a lifelong flair for the dramatic, so it stood to reason that he was called on twice by the British Royal Family to compose coronation marches for the installation of new monarchs - Crown Imperial in 1937 for King George VI, and Orb and Sceptre in 1953 for Queen Elizabeth II. His music often possesses an unrelenting, even unnerving rhythmic energy which propels his music to increasing points of tension and ultimately epic conclusions. His melodies reflect the same edginess in their angular and imploring character. Walton's friends and colleagues found it difficult to square such explosive music coming from a man of quiet, nearly reclusive, character. Walton's longtime friend, Sir Laurence Olivier, described the compose in a 1979 interview:

"His exterior and his personality is remote, removed, distant - rather chill - and his look is the same - rather cold ... and what comes out of him is the most gutsy bash and crash and bang you've ever heard in your life - and it doesn't go at all with his face, it doesn't go at all with his personality."

Film scores account for over 10 per-cent of Walton's total compositional output, some 14 movie soundtracks spanning a total of 35 years of his productive life. One of the biggest of these was written for the film Henry V (1944), an adaptation of the Shakespeare play of the same name. The film, starring Laurence Olivier in the title role, was nominated for several Academy Awards including best score - an award which Walton did not win.

Touch Her Soft Lips and Part is a very short interlude taken from a scene where Henry's retinue prepares to leave Southampton for and invasion of France; soldiers and court members say farewell to their wives and lovers before setting sail for the continent. The music which Walton has composed for this very short scene is tender, loving, bittersweet - everything that his music is usually not. It is as brief and lovely as a passing breeze. -- Program note by Patrick J. Burns