Walter Carl Summer (1923-2015) was a composer, writer, artist, and art exhibitor. He was born March 16, 1923, in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. In 1940, he was awarded a three-year scholarship to attend the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied piano with Austin Conradi. In 1942, he received a scholarship to study with Clara Ascherfeld. Summer left Peabody in 1943 to enter the Army Air Corps. He gave piano recitals in Chicago during basic training and at Scott Field.

In 1946, Summer returned to Peabody and Johns Hopkins University. He graduated in 1947 with a B.S. from Johns Hopkins and a B.M. and certificate in Harmony from Peabody, where he won the Harold Randolph Prize. After living briefly in San Francisco, he entered the University of Maryland, where he studied Philosophy of Art, Contemporary English Literature, and advanced German, French, and Spanish literature.

Following another two-year stint in the air force as a radar navigator during the Korean War, he earned a Master of Music degree in composition, with a minor in Spanish literature, from Catholic University in 1955. He then moved to Manhattan and started an art studio. In 1970, he was appointed director of the Craft Student League, where he had worked since 1965. In this position, he organized and oversaw the centennial exhibition of the YWCA of the city of New York. He resigned from this position in 1974, and relocated to College Park. From 1977 until his retirement in 1987 he was a program analyst at the University of Maryland.

Summer wrote music, poetry, and prose throughout his adult life, often under the pen name Walter Summer d'Eté ("été" being the French word for "summer"). His works were never published. In the 1990s he created computer-generated visual art and prepared computer-engraved scores of his earlier compositions.

In 1994 Summer established the Prix d’Eté, an annual award at the Peabody Conservatory for computer music composition. He also established the collaborative Augenmusik exhibition project involving the Maryland Institute and College of Art (MICA) and the Peabody Archives. Walter Summer died on October 30, 2015, in Adelphi, Maryland.