5 Bagatelles for guitar (1971)

Alla cubana

Sempre espressivo

Con slancio

The unprecedented interest taken in the guitar by some of the most distinguished British composers in the second half of the last century – Arnold, Bennett, Berkeley, Britten, Rawsthorne, Tippett, Walton – was not just a happy coincidence. All those composers, and more than a few others, were inspired by the rare artisty of Julian Bream, who not only commissioned pieces from them but also helped them with the many technical problems involved. Walton’s Five Bagatelles, for example, were, according to the score, “edited by Julian Bream.” Taking into account, on the one hand, the composer’s frank admission that he knew so little about the instrument that he had to “ask Julian for a chart which would explain what the guitar could do” and, on the other hand, the highly resourceful colouring of the finished score, the guitarist’s specialist contribution to the work seems fairly clear. At the same time these “rather pretty pieces,” as composer described them, are (in most cases) no less clearly authentic Walton creations.

Perhaps the most characteristic is the opening Allegro with its brilliantly contrived rhythmic energy and its vivid melodic gesture in the outer sections and its contrastingly lyrical middle section. The least characteristic is the Lento, a slow waltz which has been compared to a Satie Gymnopédie but which is perhaps even closer to the second of Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane. The Alla cubana demonstrates that Walton was just as capable of tuneful pastiche in his late 60s as he was in his early 20s when he wrote Façade. The Sempre espressivo is an irresistibly sentimental love song and the Con slancio (“impetuously”) a suitably brisk, ostinato-driven finale. Only Walton would have thought of re-arranging these slender pieces for orchestra – as he did when he presented them as Varii capricci on the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Royal Festival Hall in 1976.