Robin Walker

Robin Walker is an English composer from York, born in 1953. He attends schools attached to York Minster for ten years, then studies composition at the University of Durham with the Australian composer David Lumsdaine. His training also includes study at Oxford University and the Royal College of Music. He later teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the University of Manchester.

Career and influences

In the 1980s, Walker makes two visits to India, where he studies Buddhist temple music from the far north and religious dance music from the south. He describes the rhythmic effect of these visits as central to Dance/Still (1982), a two-part chamber work combining ritual vitality with religious stillness. In the late 1980s he leaves his academic post in Manchester and rejects the idea of composition as an intellectual activity, instead following a Jungian spiritual path that reshapes his style and ambitions.

Works and performances

Walker’s music includes commissions and performances by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hilliard Ensemble and the English Chamber Orchestra. Among his notable works is The Stone Maker (1996), a 30-minute orchestral piece that receives a live broadcast by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Another landmark is the forty-part motet I have thee by the hand O man, performed by the Tallis Scholars at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in 2003. A carol is also performed by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge at the same venue in December 2005.

Style

His output includes music for orchestra, brass band, organ, choir and pianola. His style brings together influences associated with Vaughan Williams, Wagner, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Messiaen, alongside rhythmic complexity linked to South Indian music. His writing often uses ritual elements, folk-like melody and simple harmonies drawn from archaic modes. Musical ideas are frequently arranged in blocks and developed through repetition and variation, giving the music a changing, sometimes improvisatory quality.