Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was an English poet, writer and performer, one of the most distinctive literary figures of the twentieth century. Her public manner was as unmistakable as her verse.

In the Pristine catalogue she appears in Walton’s Façade, the work in which her poems and speaking voice became part of a theatrical-musical experiment.

Sitwell’s contribution to Façade is not conventional singing but rhythmic speech, verbal colour and cultivated theatrical strangeness. The piece depends on exactly that poised eccentricity.

Her page belongs here because Façade is a collaboration of words, music and personality. Sitwell brings the masks, the angles and the silver cane.