Tags: Classical Music Composition.
Lilacs for voice and orchestra (or Lilacs) is a musical composition by George T. Walker Jr. (b. 1922) that was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The work scored for soprano soloist and orchestra was the unanimous choice of the Pulitzer prize jury. Walker was the first African-American composer to be awarded the prize.Walker set the 1865 poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by poet Walt Whitman.