# William Walton: Belshazzar's Feast Premiered 8 October 1931 at the Leeds Festival, conducted by Malcolm Sargent with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Leeds Festival Chorus. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" This anguished question lies at the heart of Walton's oratorio. How do we hold on to our values and traditions in the face of a bewildering world? How can we endure the arrogance of the powerful? Can we hope for justice? Will we ever be free? The story, from the Old Testament Book of Daniel, takes place during the Israelites' captivity in Babylon. Walton begins in the sorrows of exile: the chorus vows to never forget home and twice sings the famous lament, "By the waters of Babylon / There we sat down: yea, we wept." King Belshazzar then hosts a decadent feast, and to further humiliate the Israelites, desecrates their sacred temple vessels. A supernatural scene unfolds: a disembodied hand appears and scrawls the original "writing on the wall," foretelling Belshazzar's doom. That very night he is slain, his kingdom collapses, and the Israelites rejoice. Walton wrestled with these themes throughout 1930. Composition was slow; he later recalled that he spent months stuck on a single word. Yet as he worked, his musical imagination expanded. What began as a BBC commission for a short choral piece requiring no more than fifteen instruments ultimately grew into a monumental score of vivid dramatic contrasts. The Israelites' lament haunts from the shadows, while Babylon's revels erupt in the fierce rhythms, dazzling brass, and syncopated energy of the Jazz Age. At the climactic cry of "Slain!" chorus and orchestra release a shock of sound that still startles modern listeners. Unable to accommodate the size and expense, the BBC recommended it to the Leeds Festival, whose Music Director told Walton to make the most of the occasion because he would "never hear it again." Instead, the premiere caused a sensation. Though some religious and musical authorities resisted the work, the piece quickly became a beloved fixture of the choral repertoire. _Belshazzar's Feast_ stands firmly in the English oratorio tradition, sacred narrative shaped for the concert hall, and reinvigorates it with a modern dramatic force. Its story of exile, hubris, and liberation still resonates today, carried by music of astonishing brilliance and power.