George Walker was a 24-year-old graduate student at the Curtis Institute in 1946, when his grandmother Malvania King died. He’d just just begun composing the second movement of his First String Quartet. The work immediately became an elegy and a memorial as Walker transformed his memories and emotions into notes. Born into slavery, Malvania lost her first husband when their slaver sold him. Before long, she herself escaped and made her way to freedom, and raised a large family in Washington, DC.
By the time the whole quartet was complete, Walker’s professors had programmed the Adagio movement onto a string orchestra radio broadcast. Its power was immediately recognized with a standing ovation, and, as the Lyric for Strings, it has remained one of the best-loved American string pieces. This six-minute piece weaves hope, pain, honesty, and profoundness in its endless lines. Lyric received its first performance in Paris, France in 1958 with the composer conducting the American Foundation Orchestra. Walker was the first Black American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his work Lilacs in 1996.
Lyric for Strings
Composed in 1946
By George Walker
