thumb|upright=1.3|right|alt=painting of a biblical banquet interrupted by divine intervention|[[Rembrandt's depiction of "Belshazzar's Feast", used on the cover of the vocal score and of many recordings of the cantata]]
Belshazzar's Feast is a cantata by the English composer William Walton, depicting the Babylonian captivity of the people of Israel, the death of their oppressor Belshazzar and the collapse of the Babylonian kingdom. It was first performed at the Leeds Triennial Festival on 8 October 1931, with the baritone soloist Dennis Noble, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Leeds Festival Chorus, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.
Osbert Sitwell selected the text from the Bible, primarily the Book of Daniel and Psalm 137. The work is dedicated to Walton's friend and benefactor Lord Berners. Belshazzar's Feast has remained one of Walton's most celebrated compositions, but for many years after its premiere it was deemed unsuitable for church performance and in England it was banned from the Three Choirs Festival until 1957.
Background
thumb|From left: [[Osbert Sitwell|Osbert, Edith and Sacheverell Sitwell, and William Walton, with Neil Porter of the Old Vic 1926|alt=group photograph on exterior steps of a building]]
The work was conceived in response to a commission by the BBC. The invitation came in a letter of 21 August 1929 from the BBC programme planner Edward Clark, who asked Walton for a work suitable for broadcasting, written for a small choir, soloist, and an orchestra not exceeding fifteen players. Walton and Clark knew each other, as they had had dealings in relation to the premiere of the composer's Viola Concerto, which was given in the same year with Paul Hindemith as soloist. Walton's friend and sometime patron Osbert Sitwell suggested the writing on the wall at Belshazzar's feast as a subject and produced a libretto from biblical – mainly Old Testament – sources.
Walton – generally a slow and painstaking worker – struggled with the composition for well over a year, and it grew from its original conception as a short work for small forces, as commissioned by the BBC, to its eventual form. As the length and scale of the work grew during its composition, it became clear by mid-1930 that it was too big to meet the BBC's modest requirements.
Early in 1931 it was announced that Belshazzar's Feast would be premiered at the Leeds Triennial Festival. The director of the festival was the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who said to Walton, "Well, my boy, as you will probably never hear this work again, you might as well chuck in a couple of brass bands". Recalling this in 1972 Walton said, "I've always liked brass bands, so I did". the extra brass would be on hand in any case, for a performance of Berlioz's Requiem under Beecham, two days after the premiere of Walton's work. The extra brass sections are placed on either side of the platform and join in antiphonally at strategic points of the score, in the same way as they are used in the Berlioz work.
By March 1931 the work was complete and the members of the Leeds Festival Chorus were sent their parts. In September Walton attended one of the rehearsals and thanked the chorus for the trouble they had taken and the progress they had made. Sargent added that Berlioz's Requiem (which the chorus were to sing at the festival) and Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (which they had sung in previous years) were both considered impossible at one time. The Yorkshire Post reported, "The singers, now that the toil of learning the notes is over, are beginning to feel pleased with themselves, and actually to like the music". The work was an immediate success and has remained one of Walton's most celebrated compositions. Walton dedicated the cantata to his friend and benefactor Lord Berners.
The London premiere was at the Queen's Hall on 25 November 1931. Adrian Boult conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the National Chorus, with the baritone soloist Stuart Robertson. Between the two premieres, the music critic of The Times, H. C. Colles, wrote:
In Kennedy's view these words "made their mark on the ecclesiastical powers of the Three Choirs Festival, who refused to admit Belshazzar's Feast into their cathedrals". Plans to perform it at the 1932 festival were abandoned at the insistence of Ivor Atkins, organist of Worcester Cathedral, who considered Sitwell's libretto unsuitable for church performance. The festival authorities maintained the ban for twenty-five years. Leopold Stokowski conducted performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra in January 1934. Sargent regularly programmed it throughout the rest of his career, and took it as far afield as Australia, Brussels, Vienna and Boston. Not only British conductors from Sargent to Simon Rattle, but also Eugene Ormandy, Maurice Abravanel, André Previn, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin and Andrew Litton have recorded the work. In 1947 Herbert von Karajan called it "the best choral music that's been written in the last 50 years". Karajan only performed the work once, in 1948 in Vienna, but it was a performance that moved Walton to tears and he expressed amazement that he could ever have written such a wonderful work.