b'Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras. In 1996 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his work Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999 and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2000, and he was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from seven schools including the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Montclair State University, and the Curtis Institute of Music. Despite these successes, Walker felt that the music world did not value or support his work as it merited, and his works did not receive repeat performances, recording opportunities, and television broadcasts. As he said in an interview in the Musical Quarterly in 2000: Racism is alive and well in classical music. Its legacy, which has affected society in general, has left its imprint on performers [and] academics as well as marketing moguls. There appears to be a systematic and exclusionary view of the importance and value of Black composers works by musicologists and music critics. Walkers last piece, which he completed in 2016, was his Sinfonia No. 5, Visions, written as a response to the Charleston church shooting in 2015.Lyric for Strings begins very softly with a slowly moving descending line passed through the voices of the ensemble. Already in the first few measures of the piece, Walker establishes a poignantly bittersweet ambivalence between the major and minor modes of the home tonality of F-sharp. The primary theme of the piece begins in the first violins with the second violins and the violas taking turns responding. The three overlapping parts create the effect of an idle conversation between family members or close friends. In the second iteration of the theme, the cellos and basses join the dialogue, and the range of pitches, dynamics, and harmonies expands. A series of static alternating chords creates a pause in the conversation, followed by the third entrance of the theme, in which the violas take the lead. This time the theme has a greater sense of purpose, with more forward momentum as it ascends and grows. The cellos start the theme a fourth time, and their greater intensity drives to an anguished climax. The high violin sections wail together before eventually subsiding down into an echo of the prayerfully static chords and a return to the original key of F-sharp major. This tonal homecoming features a more lyrically effusive version of the theme, with greater warmth and rhythmic freedom. The second statement of the theme is simpler, closer to the version that began the piece, and this time the climax is open and generous rather than fraught. The static chords make a final appearance before the piece concludes, much as it began, but now peacefully at rest in the major mode.princetonsymphony.org/ 13'