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In 1994, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony commissioned Walker to compose ORPHEUS, which premiered the following year. This work adds to a long tradition of musical representations of the Greek legend of Orpheus, the lyre player and epitome among musicians. The earliest surviving opera (1600) used this story, and it recurred frequently in operas and cantatas through the next 300 years. In the 20th century, Strvinsky+s ORPHEUS ballet of 1948 was perhaps the best representative before Walker+s composition.

Walker+s ORPHEUS begins with a narrator summarizing the tale. The music then protrays the story through six parts:
I. A pensive introduction features the (lyre-like) harp, and a fanfare announces the wedding of Orpheus and his beloved Euridice. The initial celebratory dancing becomes gradually frenetic, full of fore-boding.
II. A delicate musical description of Euridice leads to the tender sadness of her death descent to the Underworld. 
III. The music portrays that region, where soon we hear voices of its inhabitants. Then the plea of Orpheus is answered by Hades+ command that he may not look back while guiding Euridice into the land of the living.
IV. Briefly, we hear the ascent of Orpheus and Euridice.
V. Orpheus has not been able to resist looking at his beloved. Now he becomes agitated, knowing he will lose her forever.
VI. Euridice cries out to her husband, but to no avail. The music and narration now relate the hopeless fate of Orpheus and he dies.

-Dr. Michael Fink (appeared in San Jose Symphony program, 2/99)

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