I wonder how many amateur choirs have commissioned new music from a contemporary composer? Perhaps they are celebrating a big anniversary, or received funding from the Arts Council (back when they weren’t busy redrawing the cultural map of Britain without rhyme or reason). I’m sure many will have one or two pieces that have been written just for them, collecting dust in the libraries and brought out on the odd occasion.
What happens, then, when an amateur choir is co-founded and conducted by a contemporary composer, who brings his extensive back catalogue of original compositions to new audiences in rural Pembrokeshire? This, the inaugural Debut Podcast blog post is the story of that composer, Edmund ‘Wally’ Walters.
Now, first things first: Wally doesn’t fit the Patribachy mould – he was very much as white and male as they come. That’s why I’m writing about him here, as an alternative St David’s Day composer you don’t know so well.
Wally was born in 1920 in Hakin, a coastal village near the port town of Milford Haven. A naturally gifted violinist, he accompanied African-American bass-baritone Paul Robeson in a one-off visit to Haverfordwest in 1938, an occasion that lives long in the memory of Pembrokeshire residents to this day. Shortly after this, he began his studies at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, graduating as a Bachelor of Music in 1941, before he was commissioned into the Royal Air Force, serving overseas in Canada for a year. His new position didn’t appear to come naturally to him – in one diary entry, from October 1941, he writes:
‘In spite of the rain this morning, I got in 40 mins flying – I was feeling ill and by the time we got back to camp I was feeling thoroughly fed up with flying & with the RAF as a whole.’
The next few days weren’t much better:
‘More rain this morning – no flying; what a wet dump this is! This evening the whole camp went to an American Football game – Tulsa University vs. Norsemen. Bit of a mix up – we couldn’t understand it.’
‘More rain – no flying. I can’t understand why they sent us here for perfect flying weather!’
‘Something else tells me that I’m not particularly fond of flying, especially in these little matchboxes.’
After the war, and following his marriage to Pauline in 1944, he returned to his beloved music and was appointed Head of Music at Milford Haven Grammar School in 1946, a position he held until 1960. It was here that Wally’s compositional creativity began to flourish, writing music for the school’s girls choir, which he conducted to great acclaim with numerous performances on BBC Children’s Hour and the Welsh Home Service. Most notable of his works during his tenure in Milford was his Cantata ‘Song for St Cecilia’s Day’, performed by the 200-strong choir as part of the town’s Festival of Britain celebrations in May 1951. When he wasn’t inspiring the next generation of young musicians, he was writing incidental music for Shakespeare plays and his own opera, ‘Distant Cousins’, which was first performed and subsequently broadcast on BBC radio in 1956. Wally’s time in Milford was typical of a bygone era when music education was not merely appreciated but supported and encouraged. The various newspaper cuttings kept by his librarian, Pauline Metcalfe, provide a wonderful testimony of his much-lauded work during this time.
Pembrokeshire couldn’t keep Wally forever however, and in 1960 he took up the position of Lecturer in Music at I. M. Marsh College in Liverpool. Once again, he led his musicians to great success, with members of the College Choir joining the chorus for the BBC Proms premiere of Mahler’s 8th Symphony under the baton of Sir Charles Groves in 1964. Wally obviously caught the eye of Groves, then conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and he was appointed Chorus Master of the Philharmonic Society in 1968.
Among his many responsibilities was to conduct the annual Christmas Carol Concerts at Philharmonic Hall, and it is during this time that the cream of Wally’s compositional output was crafted. With a full orchestra and chorus at his disposal, he gradually began incorporating his own carols into the programme, alongside his arrangements of the usual favourites. His skills as a programmer were equally attuned, with each concert featuring an opening and closing sequence. The concert began with organ and a child soloist singing the opening verse of Darke’s ‘In the bleak midwinter’, followed by verses from Luke’s gospel, a triumphant gloria and Hark the Herald Angels Sing. The closing sequence added the fourth verse of ‘In the Bleak’, before verses from Laurie Lee’s ‘Christmas Landscape’:
Tonight the wind gnaws
With teeth of glass,
The jackdaw shivers
In caged branches of iron,
The stars have talons…
…Tonight there is no moon,
But a new star opens
Like a silver trumpet (cue harp) over the dead.
Tonight in a nest of ruins
The blessed babe is laid.
Wally’s spine-tingling arrangement of ‘Stille Nacht’ follows, a beautifully simple arrangement filled with jeopardy, including a remarkably high cello counter-melody in the second verse that captures the beautiful fragility of the Christmas story. Without giving the audience or the performers a chance to recover from such an emotional onslaught, the introductory bars to O Come all ye Faithful are played, and the concert finishes on a high.
In one review from the early 1970s, it’s remarked that ‘if it could be regularly broadcast, the annual Philharmonic Christmas concert might well become the Northern counterpart of Kings, Cambridge carol service’. Indeed, these concerts became a regular staple of BBC Radio 4’s Christmas offering, with veteran BBC newsreader Richard Baker introducing the concerts (and occasionally singing alongside the children’s choir and orchestra).
The magic (for there really is no other word to describe it) of these Christmas concerts is Wally’s finest legacy, not least because it was through this format that he made music in Pembrokeshire once again, following his retirement from teaching in Liverpool. In 1990 he contacted local choir director and singer, Shirley Williams, whose Junior Singers had disbanded in 1987. ‘Where are those girls now?’ was Wally’s question.
Thankfully for him, many of them were still based locally, now married women raising families in the farming communities around the imaginary Landsker Line, which divides the Welsh-speaking north and the English-speaking south of Pembrokeshire. It is these women that formed what would later be named the Landsker Singers, who gave their first performance, a condensed version of Wally’s Liverpool Christmas Concerts, on 16th December 1990. Wally specially rearranged his carols for a smaller string orchestra and harp, but retained his trademark opening and closing sequences.
You may be wondering as this point (if you’re still with me), how I’ve come across Wally and his music. Well, my mother and Auntie sang in that very first concert, and along with 5 other ‘OGs’ still sing in the Landsker Singers, now a 35-strong mixed voice choir. Oh, and I’m their Musical Director, following on from Wally (who died in 2003), Shirley (who died in 2022), and local music teacher, Richard Noyce. This year, we celebrate our 35th anniversary, and this Christmas we will perform an exact recreation of the 1990 first concert, with a couple of additions for sentimental value.
As part of our anniversary year, me and Mum, along with the choir’s President Pat, travelled to Liverpool earlier this year to meet with Wally’s librarian Pauline, and Prof. Ian Tracey, who succeeded Wally at the RLPS and is as much a champion of his work as we are. In doing so, we learnt far more about this remarkable man that we’d ever expected. Many of the photos that accompany this blog post are from Wally’s scrapbook that Pauline has kept all these years. We came away with full hearts, happy to have uncovered more about someone who has had a huge impact on us all, both through his music and his unique musical tutelage. I never met Wally, but he is always remarked upon fondly by those who knew him. He managed to be both twinkly and curmudgeonly all at once, with a razor-sharp wit.
Sadly, there isn’t a large catalogue of Wally’s music available to listen to on streaming platforms. I’ve compiled a playlist from his ‘A Festival of Christmas’ disc – here are my highlights:
Three Little Birdies/Little Robin Redbreast/Hop hop hop
This trio of miniatures for children’s choir showcase Wally’s deft orchestration at its finest. Brass and woodwind fly around the beautifully-sung melody lines – look out for the piccolo bird song accompanied by mournful French horn in ‘Three little Birdies’, and the stunningly beautiful oboe solo in ‘Little Robin Redbreast’. These were some of the first songs I sang as a ‘Little Landsker’ as a child, and they never fail to bring a tear to the eye.
Ding Dong Merrily on High
Think you’ve heard every arrangement of this classic? Think again. Wally finds new colours in this jaunty arrangement. The usual floating quavers are replaced by angular dotted rhythms, quick changes into compound time and a starring role for the percussion department – particularly the tambourine!
Dance Little Goatling
Wally’s orchestration is on fine form here again, with the woodwind section front and centre in the texture. There’s a whiff of ‘Shepherd’s Pipe Carol’ here – one wonders whether we’d know this music much better if David Willcocks had caught wind of it as he had John Rutter’s?
The Landsker Singers’ 2002 Album ‘Sands of Time’ will soon be available on streaming – this album features a number of Wally’s non-Christmas compositions. When it’s available, we’ll add the tracks to the playlist – look out for ‘Summer Rain’, ‘Sands of Time’ and a rip-roaring arrangement of ‘Now is the Month of Maying’.
Wally would have been 105 this year, and whilst he had a remarkable career, it’s sad that he isn’t more widely known. His original compositions and arrangements rarely feature in the Liverpool concerts anymore, and although some of his music is published, it is here in Pembrokeshire where the flame is kept alive. When a composer starts a choir, it’s a truly unique experience - with illegible hand-written scores aplenty and stories for the ages. I hope this blog post has given you an insight into the remarkable life of Edmund ‘Wally’ Walters, and hopefully he might find his way into your own classical canon.
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