Façade (poem)

Façade is a series of poems by Edith Sitwell, best known as part of Façade – An Entertainment in which the poems are recited over an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton. The poems and the music exist in several versions.

Sitwell began to publish some of the Façade poems in 1918, in the literary magazine Wheels. In 1922 many of them were given an orchestral accompaniment by Walton, Sitwell's protégé. The "entertainment" was first performed in public in 1923, and achieved both fame and notoriety for its unconventional form. Walton arranged two suites of his music for full orchestra. When Frederick Ashton made a ballet of Façade in 1931, Sitwell did not wish her poems to be part of it, and the orchestral arrangements were used.

After Sitwell's death, Walton published supplementary versions of Façade for speaker and small ensemble using numbers dropped between the premiere and the publication of the full score in 1951.

Façade exists in several strongly contrasted versions, principally:

It is sometimes said that the Façade verses are nonsense poetry, in the tradition of Edward Lear. But despite the experiments with sound and rhythm, there is meaning in Sitwell's poems. The literary scholar Jack Lindsay wrote, "The associations are often glancing and rapid in the extreme, but the total effect comes from a highly organized basis of sense." Other writers have detected personal references in the Façade poems. Christopher Palmer lists many references to Sitwell's unhappy childhood, from the kind Mariner Man (her father's valet who entertained her with seafaring stories) to the implacable Mrs Behemoth (her mother).

The Façade poems published by Sitwell in her 1950 collection, Façade and other Poems, 1920–1935 are:

The "entertainment" Façade, in which Sitwell's poems are recited over an instrumental accompaniment by Walton, was first given privately in the Sitwell family's London house on 24 January 1922. The first public performance was given at the Aeolian Hall, London, on 12 June 1923. On both occasions, the author recited the verse and the composer conducted the ensemble.

Walton made changes to the instrumentation for the entertainment between its premiere and the publication of the first printed score nearly thirty years later, but in both 1922–23 and 1951 he scored for six players. The published score specifies flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), alto saxophone, trumpet, percussion, and cello. Walton quotes a range of earlier composers in his score, from Rossini (the William Tell overture appears in the Swiss Jodelling Song) to George Grossmith (whose comic song, "See me dance the polka", is present throughout Walton's Polka).

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