TOGETHER with Ernest Newman and Edward Dent, Ernest Walker (1870–1949) was one of the most prolific critics of his generation. The little we know of Walker's life is contained in the somewhat sketchy, hagiographical account by his loyal disciple, Margaret Deneke, published by Oxford University Press two years after his death in 1951. A university man through and through, Walker remained wedded to the intellectual world of Oxford and Balliol College for his entire career; Balliol both shaped and nurtured his profession as a writer, commentator, composer and pianist for more than sixty years. Entering the College in 1887, he read Classics before devoting himself to musical study in the 1890s, taking his BMus (1893) and DMus (1898) degrees at the University. After his studies, he was appointed assistant organist at Balliol to the college's Director of Music, John Farmer, and became organist after Farmer's death in 1901.

Continuing Farmer's pioneering work of establishing a Sunday Concert series at Balliol (which attracted the ire of strict Sabbatarians in Oxford), Walker raised the Concerts’ profile to a national level, took part in them and featured his own compositions in the programme. Walker held the Directorship of Music at Balliol until 1925, when he gave up the position to devote himself to composition. He resigned the organistship of the chapel in 1913, however, when he clearly underwent a major crisis of religious faith. For Walker this event proved to be of major significance, for it steered his attitudes to musicology in a new direction and shaped his views towards music and its relationship to religion with a more radical, vituperative edge.

Together with his work as a practitioner, and his participation in the Oxford University Musical Club, Walker was also a teaching member (and for a few years Choragus) of the Music Faculty during the times of Parry, Parratt and Allen. His work, consequently, contributed in a significant way to musical life in Oxford, but more importantly to the recognition of music as an academic discipline, an independent faculty of which was founded at the University five years before his death in 1949. At this juncture Walker had contributed hundreds of articles, columns and reviews to newspapers and journals (many of them unsigned).