Alan Walker (musicologist)

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.”

Walker has written over 100 articles for scholarly music journals, and provided the biographical entry on Liszt for Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001). Journal articles include:

The first volume won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in biography for 1983 and best book on music from the Yorkshire Post Newspapers in 1984. The three-book series was given the Royal Philharmonic Society Book Award in 1998.

From 1958 to 1961 Walker lectured at the Guildhall School of Music, having studied piano there with Alfred Nieman, noted for teaching improvisational techniques. 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. Seeking to return to his "first love", teaching, he gave up radio production and took an appointment as Professor of Music at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he chaired the department of music from 1971 to 1980, and from 1989 to 1995. In 1981, he was responsible for the establishment at McMaster of the first graduate program in music criticism in Canada. Since 1995, he has been professor emeritus at McMaster. From 1984 to 1987, he was a distinguished visiting professor of music at City University in London.

Walker was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. He received an LGSM certificate in 1949, ARCM in 1950, a Bachelor of Music from University of Durham in 1956, and a Doctor of Music in 1965. Between 1957 and 1960 he studied privately with Hans Keller, an association which he has always acknowledged as formative. These lessons were resumed, albeit irregularly, once Walker joined Keller at the BBC in 1961.

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. Other topics Walker has engaged in are writings 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.