‘Façade’ Revisited

Abstract

Facade is in need of revaluation. If it achieves it, it will have taken nearly 60 years for the proper appraisal to come about; but then this work has throughout its growth demanded long perspectives: a full 30 years, for instance, before the definitive ordering of items was settled and a published score produced; 55 before many of the original items were made known to the public. During this time numerous chroniclers sought to describe and place the extraordinary creation, but nearly all of them found in it little more than charm and precocity, a remarkable upbeat to the composer's serious achievement yet sharply to be distinguished in worth from the Symphony, the Viola Concerto. Some writers went further to disparage Façade, one of them a former editor of this journal:The desire for laughter in the concert hall is only a naughty whim which will soon pass, for music is not meant to make jokes consciously as in Façade, any more than unconsciously as in Rossini's William Tell Overture. Parody must always be as vulgar as what it parodies … When sanity is reestablished Façade will be recognised as no better Walton than the Musical Joke is good Mozart.