Belshazzar's Feast is a cantata by the English composer William Walton, depicting the Babylonian captivity of the people of Israel, the death of their oppressor Belshazzar and the collapse of the Babylonian kingdom. It was first performed at the Leeds Triennial Festival on 8 October 1931, with the baritone soloist Dennis Noble, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Leeds Festival Chorus, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.
Osbert Sitwell selected the text from the Bible, primarily the Book of Daniel and Psalm 137. The work is dedicated to Walton's friend and benefactor Lord Berners. Belshazzar's Feast has remained one of Walton's most celebrated compositions, but for many years after its premiere it was deemed unsuitable for church performance and in England it was banned from the Three Choirs Festival until 1957.
The work was conceived in response to a commission by the BBC. The invitation came in a letter of 21 August 1929 from the BBC programme planner Edward Clark, who asked Walton for a work suitable for broadcasting, written for a small choir, soloist, and an orchestra not exceeding fifteen players. Walton and Clark knew each other, as they had had dealings in relation to the premiere of the composer's Viola Concerto, which was given in the same year with Paul Hindemith as soloist. Walton's friend and sometime patron Osbert Sitwell suggested the writing on the wall at Belshazzar's feast as a subject and produced a libretto from biblical â mainly Old Testament â sources.
Walton â generally a slow and painstaking worker â struggled with the composition for well over a year, and it grew from its original conception as a short work for small forces, as commissioned by the BBC, to its eventual form. As the length and scale of the work grew during its composition, it became clear by mid-1930 that it was too big to meet the BBC's modest requirements.
Early in 1931 it was announced that Belshazzar's Feast would be premiered at the Leeds Triennial Festival. The director of the festival was the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who said to Walton, "Well, my boy, as you will probably never hear this work again, you might as well chuck in a couple of brass bands". Recalling this in 1972 Walton said, "I've always liked brass bands, so I did". "Brass bands" in this context meant two extra brass sections, each comprising three trumpets, three trombones and a tuba; the extra brass would be on hand in any case, for a performance of Berlioz's Requiem under Beecham, two days after the premiere of Walton's work. The extra brass sections are placed on either side of the platform and join in antiphonally at strategic points of the score, in the same way as they are used in the Berlioz work.
By March 1931 the work was complete and the members of the Leeds Festival Chorus were sent their parts. A myth grew up â which Walton believed for many years â that the chorus, rebelling against the difficulties of the choral writing, refused to go on rehearsing the piece and that consequently Beecham had to send his colleague Malcolm Sargent to pacify them. In a biography of Sargent published in 1968, Charles Reid reported that he had interviewed surviving members of the 1931 chorus, who said that the story was untrue, and that although some of the older singers "muttered resentfully about the score's irregular metres and other hazards", the chorus had enjoyed mastering the work. In September Walton attended one of the rehearsals and thanked the chorus for the trouble they had taken and the progress they had made. Sargent added that Berlioz's Requiem (which the chorus were to sing at the festival) and Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (which they had sung in previous years) were both considered impossible at one time. The Yorkshire Post reported, "The singers, now that the toil of learning the notes is over, are beginning to feel pleased with themselves, and actually to like the music".
The premiere was given on 8 October in Leeds Town Hall. Sargent conducted the festival chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra, with the baritone soloist Dennis Noble. The work was an immediate success and has remained one of Walton's most celebrated compositions. Walton dedicated the cantata to his friend and benefactor Lord Berners.
The London premiere was at the Queen's Hall on 25 November 1931. Adrian Boult conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the National Chorus, with the baritone soloist Stuart Robertson. Between the two premieres, the music critic of The Times, H. C. Colles, wrote:
In Kennedy's view these words "made their mark on the ecclesiastical powers of the Three Choirs Festival, who refused to admit Belshazzar's Feast into their cathedrals". Plans to perform it at the 1932 festival were abandoned at the insistence of Ivor Atkins, organist of Worcester Cathedral, who considered Sitwell's libretto unsuitable for church performance. The festival authorities maintained the ban for twenty-five years.
The work was performed at the ISCM Festival in Amsterdam in 1933, conducted by Constant Lambert. Leopold Stokowski conducted performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra in January 1934. Sargent regularly programmed it throughout the rest of his career, and took it as far afield as Australia, Brussels, Vienna and Boston. Not only British conductors from Sargent to Simon Rattle, but also Eugene Ormandy, Maurice Abravanel, André Previn, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin and Andrew Litton have recorded the work. In 1947 Herbert von Karajan called it "the best choral music that's been written in the last 50 years". Karajan only performed the work once, in 1948 in Vienna, but it was a performance that moved Walton to tears and he expressed amazement that he could ever have written such a wonderful work.
The work was finally admitted to the Three Choirs Festival on 2 September 1957 in Worcester Cathedral, performed by the baritone Hervey Alan. the festival choir and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Willcocks. As late as 1973, in his study of Walton's music Frank Howes wrote, "Deans and Chapters are more broad-minded in these matters than formerly ⦠but a sense of what is fitting does indicate that its place is not in church".
In the story of Belshazzar's Feast, the Jews are in exile in Babylon. At a feast at which Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, commits sacrilege by using the Jews' sacred vessels to praise the heathen gods, his doom is foretold by a ghostly hand writing on the wall. That night he is killed and his kingdom collapses.
Although not specified in the published score, the text forms a triptych, each section of which is sub-divided.
The first section of the work illustrates the plight and despair of the exiled Jews; the second shows the state of Babylon, its sensual revelling and its downfall; the third is about the liberation and rejoicing of the Jews in which according to a 2004 analysis "jubilation is combined with hatred, delight combined with loathing".
The music throughout is strongly rhythmic and richly orchestrated. The rhythms and harmonies reflect Walton's interest in jazz and other popular music pressed into service to tell a religious story. Despite its jagged rhythms and strident orchestral effects, the work is essentially conventional in its tonality, although it is scored without a key signature and passes through many keys. Walton's biographer Michael Kennedy writes, "diatonicism is at the root of the matter ⦠string tremolandi, brass fanfares, and masterly use of unaccompanied declaration work their customary spell." Kennedy adds that the chilling orchestral sounds that introduce the writing on the wall derive from Richard Strauss's Salome.
Walton's huge orchestra allows him to take advantage of many orchestral timbres to make the narrative more vivid. In the section where the Babylonians are worshipping their gods each iteration of "Praise ye the god of ..." is completed with a noun such as silver, iron, wood, and brass. Each statement is followed by a different orchestral interlude, featuring a timbre appropriate to the noun. The noun "silver" is followed with the playing of the glockenspiel and triangle, "iron" is represented by the striking of an anvil, "wood" is followed by xylophone and wood block, and for "brass" there is an array of horns, trumpets and trombones.
By contrast Walton uses silence at strategic points to build suspense, as in the passage where the Jews express outrage at the sacrilegious use of their sacred vessels: their exclamation of horror is followed by a whole bar of complete silence, allowing the heinousness of the Babylonians' actions to sink in. At one point, singing is abandoned altogether: the soloist sings, "In that night was Belshazzar the King slain and his kingdom divided" but before his last four words the whole chorus shouts the word "slain". After a short silence the singing resumes with the Jews' exultant "Then sing aloud to God our strength".
The playing time of the cantata is about 35 minutes.