Reshaping the ballad: William Wallace's musical re-figuring of Rossetti's 'Sister Helen'

Of the various musical re-figurings of the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the relatively unfamiliar symphonic poem Sister Helen (1897) by the Scottish composer William Francis Stuart Wallace (1860–1940), based on Rossetti’s poem of the same name, is one of the most fascinating. Connections between Rossetti and Wallace are unsurprising, given that both men demonstrated a wide-ranging interest and expertise in the creative arts in general. However, Wallace’s views on the benefits of a ‘subjective’ approach to representing a text musically, in preference to an ‘objective’ event-driven narrative might suggest that the musical re-figuring of a ballad was an unlikely project for him. After tracing the background of both poem and orchestral work, this article offers an in-depth analysis of Wallace’s music, confirming that although a central rotational structure offered an effective representation of the driving narrative of Rossetti’s text, Wallace rebalanced his musical re-figuring by incorporating two introspective episodes that offered the more subjective vision that Wallace preferred. The specifics of Wallace’s composition are then further contextualized via Wallace’s 1899 lecture to the Musical Association, ‘The Scope of Programme Music’ (where he expanded upon the subjective/objective divide), as well as his other five symphonic poems that explored a range of paratexts. In addition to reassessing Wallace’s status as a composer, and identifying his re-figuring as a significant addition to the reception history of Rossetti’s poem, this study allows us to consider the nature of the ballad as a genre, and its suitability for musical representation more generally.