Alan Walker (musicologist)

Alan Walker, FRSC (born 6 April 1930[1]) 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.

From 1958 to 1961 Walker lectured at the Guildhall School of Music,[1] having studied piano there with Alfred Nieman,[1] noted for teaching improvisational techniques.

Common adjectives attached to the work include "monumental"[6][7] and "magisterial",[8] and it is said to have "unearthed much new material and provided a strong stimulus for further research".

"[4] The first volume won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in biography for 1983[9] and best book on music from the Yorkshire Post Newspapers in 1984.

"[12] 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".

In October 2018 he brought to completion a large-scale biography of Fryderyk Chopin, a book on which he worked for ten years.