Алан Уокер: Листтің өмірі мен шығармашылығының зерттеушісі

English Canadian musicologist (born 1930)

Alan Walker, FRSC (born 6 April 1930) is an English Canadian musicologist and university professor best known as a biographer and scholar of composer Franz Liszt. Walker has also written on composers Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, as well as conductor Hans von Bülow. He has held posts at a variety of institutions, including the Guildhall School of Music, the University of London, McMaster University and City, University of London.

Walker was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. He also taught at the University of London from 1954 to 1960. Walker worked at the BBC Radio Music Division as a producer between 1961 and 1971. he gave up radio production and took an appointment as Professor of Music at McMaster University From 1984 to 1987, he was a distinguished visiting professor of music at City University in London. and "magisterial", and it is said to have "unearthed much new material and provided a strong stimulus for further research". and best book on music from the Yorkshire Post Newspapers in 1984. Time magazine praised the biography as "a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival", saying that Walker's work was "equally strong on the music and the life", and discussed Liszt's corpus "with greater understanding and clarity than any previous biographer". The New York Times, reviewing the second volume, said of Walker's passion for his subject, "Mr. Walker can see only the good, and will stand for no criticism of his hero", but still called Walker's extensive research "incredible Mr. Walker seems to know everything about Liszt, and anything connected with Liszt, during every single day of the long life of that genius." The Washington Post music critic Tim Page, including the third volume in his best books of the year list, called it "unquestionably a landmark" and "meticulously detailed, passionately argued and sometimes wrenchingly moving". The technique of biography, and how it differs from other literary genres, has always been of interest to Walker and he has written about it. When asked about the genesis of his Liszt biography he wrote: “I had always been immensely attracted to Liszt’s magnetic personality, and in my childhood I was drawn to the legend of his piano playing as to few other topics. They say that in every biography is an autobiography trying to get out. The idea would be diverting if it were not so sobering. I have come to believe that the best biographies choose their biographers, not vice versa. The lucky biographers write their work not because they have a choice but because they have no choice at all.”

Walker has also written substantially about Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, and continues to lecture in Canada, the US, and UK on all three musicians. In October 2018 he brought to completion a large scale biography of Fryderyk Chopin, a book on which he worked for ten years. It has been described as “a biographical masterpiece”, and was named Classical Music Book of the Year by the Sunday Times of London. James Penrose in The New Criterion wrote: “With Liszt, and now Fryderyk Chopin so well cared for, one can but hope that Walker will try for the hat trick.” On the other hand, he was also criticised for downplaying or idiosyncratically interpreting private aspects of Chopin's life, such as the erotic letters to men. Walker lives in Ancaster, Ontario.

Honorary Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music, 1974.