Ralph Vaughan Williams

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A statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams in Dorking.
A statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams in Dorking.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (October 12, 1872 – August 26, 1958) was an influential English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also an important collector of British folk music and song.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, where his father, the Rev. Arthur Vaughan Williams, was vicar . Following his father's death in 1875 he was taken by his mother, Margaret Susan Wedgwood (1843–1937), the great grand daughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, the Wedgwood family home in the North Downs. He was also related to the Darwins, Charles Darwin being a great-uncle. Ralph (pronounced "Rafe"[1]) was therefore born into the privileged intellectual upper middle class, but never took it for granted and worked tirelessly all his life for the democratic and egalitarian ideals he believed in.

The Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton family tree, showing Vaughan Williams's relationship to Charles Darwin
The Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton family tree, showing Vaughan Williams's relationship to Charles Darwin

As a student he had studied piano, "which I never could play, and the violin, which was my musical salvation."

After Charterhouse School he attended the Royal College of Music (RCM) under Charles Villiers Stanford. He read history and music at Trinity College, Cambridge where his friends and contemporaries included the philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. He then returned to the RCM and studied composition with Hubert Parry, who became a close friend. His composing developed slowly and it was not until he was 30 that the song "Linden Lea" became his first publication. He mixed composition with conducting, lecturing and editing other music, notably that of Henry Purcell and the English Hymnal. He had further lessons with Max Bruch in Berlin in 1897 and later a big step forward in his orchestral style occurred when he studied in Paris with Maurice Ravel.

In 1904 he discovered English folk songs, which were fast becoming extinct owing to the increase of literacy and printed music in rural areas. He traveled the countryside, transcribing and preserving many himself. Later he incorporated some songs and melodies into his own music, being fascinated by the beauty of the music and its anonymous history in the working lives of ordinary people. His efforts did much to raise appreciation of traditional English folk song and melody. Later in his life he served as president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) which in recognition of his early and important work in this field, named its Vaughan Williams Memorial Library after him.

In 1905 RVW conducted the first concert of the newly founded Leith Hill Music Festival at Dorking and thereafter held that conductorship until 1953 when he passed the baton to his successor.

In 1909, he composed incidental music for a stage production at Cambridge University of Aristophanes' The Wasps, and the next year, he had his first big public successes conducting the premieres of the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (at The Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral) and A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1), and a greater success with A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) in 1914, conducted by Geoffrey Toye. Although at 40, and as an ex-public schoolboy, he could easily have avoided war service or been commissioned as an officer, he enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps and had a gruelling time as a stretcher bearer before being commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery. On one occasion he was too ill to stand but continued to direct his battery lying on the ground. Prolonged exposure to gunfire began a process of loss of hearing which was eventually to cause deafness in old age. In 1918 he was appointed Director of Music, First Army and this helped him adjust back into musical life.

After the war he adopted for a while a profoundly mystical style in the Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3) and Flos Campi, a work for viola solo, small orchestra, and wordless chorus. From 1924 a new phase in his music began, characterised by lively cross-rhythms and clashing harmonies. Key works from this period are Toccata marziale, the ballet Old King Cole, the Piano Concerto, the oratorio Sancta Civitas (his favourite of his choral works) and the ballet Job (described as "A Masque for Dancing") which is drawn not from the Bible but from William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job. He also composed a Te deum in G for the enthronement of Cosmo Gordon Lang as Archbishop of Canterbury. This period in his music culminated in the Symphony No. 4 in F minor, first played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1935. This symphony contrasts dramatically with the frequent "pastoral" orchestral works he composed; indeed, its almost unrelieved tension, drama, and dissonance has startled listeners since it was premiered. Acknowledging that the fourth symphony was different, the composer said, "I don't know if I like it, but it's what I mean." Two years later Vaughan Williams made a historic recording of the work with the same orchestra for HMV (His Master's Voice), one of his very rare commercial recordings. During this period he lectured in America and England, and conducted the Bach Choir. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1935.

His music now entered a mature lyrical phase, as in the Five Tudor Portraits; the "morality" The Pilgrim's Progress; the Serenade to Music (a setting of a scene from act five of The Merchant of Venice, for orchestra and sixteen vocal soloists and composed as a tribute to the conductor Sir Henry Wood); and the Symphony No. 5 in D, which he conducted at the Proms in 1943. As he was now 70, many people considered it a swan song, but he renewed himself again and entered yet another period of exploratory harmony and instrumentation. Before his death in 1958 he completed four more symphonies, including No. 7 Sinfonia Antartica, based on his 1948 film score for Scott of the Antarctic. He also completed a range of instrumental and choral works, including a tuba concerto, An Oxford Elegy on texts of Matthew Arnold, and the Christmas cantata Hodie. At his death he left an unfinished Cello Concerto, an opera Thomas the Rhymer and music for a Christmas play, The First Nowell, which was completed by his amanuensis Roy Douglas (b. 1907). He also wrote an arrangement of The Old One Hundredth Psalm Tune for the Coronation Service of Queen Elizabeth II.

Despite his substantial involvement in church music, and the religious subject-matter of many of his works, he was described by his second wife as "an atheist … [who] later drifted into a cheerful agnosticism." It's noteworthy that in his opera The Pilgrim's Progress he changed the name of the hero from Bunyan's Christian to Pilgrim. For many church-goers, his most familiar composition may be the tune Sine Nomine for the hymn "For All the Saints".

During his life he also worked as a tutor for Birkbeck College. [2]

Vaughan Williams late in life (EMI)
Vaughan Williams late in life (EMI)

In the 1950s, the composer supervised recordings of all but his ninth symphony by Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Decca.[3] At the end of the sessions for the mysterious sixth symphony, Vaughan Williams gave a short speech, thanking Boult and the orchestra for their performance, "most heartily," and Decca later included this on the LP.[4] He was to supervise the first recording of the ninth symphony (for Everest Records) with Boult; his death the night before the recording sessions were to begin resulted in Boult announcing to the musicians that their performance would be a memorial to the composer.[5]

He died in 1958 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Vaughan Williams is a central figure in British music because of his long career as teacher, lecturer and friend to so many younger composers and conductors. His writings on music remain thought-provoking, particularly his oft-repeated call for everyone to make their own music, however simple, as long as it is truly their own.

He was married twice. His first wife, Adeline Fisher (daughter of the historian Herbert William Fisher), died in 1951 after many years of suffering from crippling arthritis. In 1953 he married the poet Ursula Wood (b. 1911), whom he had known since the late 1930s and with whom he collaborated on a number of vocal works. Ursula later wrote Vaughan Williams's biography RVW: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, which remains the standard work on his life.

Vaughan Williams appears as a character in Robert Holdstock's novel Lavondyss.

[edit] Style

Vaughan Williams' music has often been said to be characteristically English, of the same genre as the works of Gustav Holst, Frederick Delius, George Butterworth, William Walton, and others.

If that Englishness in music can be encapsulated in words at all, those words would probably be: ostensibly familiar and commonplace, yet deep and mystical as well as lyrical, melodic, melancholic, and nostalgic yet timeless. Ackroyd quotes Fuller Maitland, who noted that in Vaughan Williams's style "one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new."

There is in Vaughan Williams often a tangible flavour of Ravel (VW's mentor over a 3-month period spent in Paris in 1908), though not imitation. Ravel described VW as "the only one of my pupils who does not write my music."

Vaughan Williams's music expresses a deep regard for and fascination with folk tunes, the variations upon which can convey the listener from the down-to-earth (which VW always tried to remain in his daily life) to that which is ethereal. Simultaneously the music shows patriotism for England in the subtlest form, engendered by a feeling for ancient landscapes and a person's small yet not entirely insignificant place within them.

[edit] Works

See also Category:Compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

[edit] Operas

  • Hugh the Drover / Love in the Stocks (1910-20)
  • Sir John in Love (1924-28), from which comes an arrangement by Ralph Greaves of Fantasia on Greensleeves
  • The Poisoned Kiss (1927-29; revisions 1936-37 and 1956-57)
  • Riders to the Sea (1925-32), from the play by John Millington Synge
  • The Pilgrim's Progress (1909-51), based on John Bunyan's allegory

[edit] Organ

  • Three Preludes on Welsh Hymntunes (Bryn Calfaria, Rhosymedre, Hyfrydol) (1920)
  • A Wedding Tune for Ann (1943)
  • Two Organ Preludes (The White Rock, St. David's Day) (1956)
  • The Old Hundredth Psalm-Tune (?)

[edit] Ballets

[edit] Orchestral

[edit] Concertante

[edit] Choral

  • Toward the Unknown Region, song for chorus and orchestra, setting of Walt Whitman (1906)
  • Five Mystical Songs for baritone, chorus and orchestra, settings of George Herbert (1911)
  • Fantasia on Christmas Carols for baritone, chorus, and orchestra (1912; arranged also for reduced orchestra of organ, strings, percussion)
  • Mass in G Minor for unaccompanied choir (1922)
  • Sancta Civitas (The Holy City) oratorio, text mainly from the Book of Revelation (1923-25)
  • Te Deum in G (1928)
  • Benedicite for soprano, chorus, and orchestra (1929)
  • In Windsor Forest, adapted from the opera Sir John in Love (1929)
  • Three Choral Hymns (1929)
  • Magnificat for contralto, women's chorus, and orchestra (1932)
  • Five Tudor Portraits for contralto, baritone, chorus, and orchestra (1935)
  • Dona nobis pacem, text by Walt Whitman and other sources (1936)
  • Festival Te Deum for chorus and orchestra or organ (1937)
  • Serenade to Music for sixteen solo voices and orchestra, a setting of Shakespeare (1938)
  • A Song for Thanksgiving (originally Thanksgiving for Victory) for narrator, soprano solo, children's chorus, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1944)
  • An Oxford Elegy for narrator, mixed chorus and small orchestra (1949)
  • Three Shakespeare Songs for SATB unaccompanied composed for The British Federation of Music Festivals National Competitive Festival (1951)
  • Hodie, a Christmas oratorio (1954)
  • Epithalamion for baritone solo, chorus, flute, piano, and strings (1957)

[edit] Vocal

  • Linden Lea, song (1901)
  • The House of Life (1904)
  • Songs of Travel (1904)
  • "The Sky Above The Roof" (1908)
  • On Wenlock Edge, song cycle for tenor, piano and string quartet (1909)
  • Along the Field, for tenor and violin
  • Three Poems by Walt Whitman for baritone and piano (1920)
  • Four Poems by Fredegond Shove: for baritone and piano (1922)
  • Four Hymns for Tenor, Viola and Strings
  • Merciless Beauty for tenor, two violins, and cello
  • Four Last Songs to poems of Ursula Vaughan Williams
  • Ten Blake songs, song cycle for high voice and oboe (1957)

[edit] Chamber and Instrumental

  • String Quintet in C minor for violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano (1903)
  • String Quartet No. 1 in G minor (1908)
  • Phantasy Quintet for 2 violins, 2 violas and cello (1912)
  • Six Studies in English Folk-Song, for violoncello and piano (1926)
  • Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes, for organ (1956)
  • String Quartet No. 2 in A minor ("For Jean, on her birthday," 1942-44)
  • Romance for Viola and Piano (undated)

[edit] Film, radio, and TV scores

[edit] Band

  • English Folk Song Suite for military band (1923)
  • Toccata Marziale for military band (1924)
  • Flourish for Wind Band (1939)
  • Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus, arr.
  • Sea Songs

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Vaughan Williams, Ursula. (1964) R.V.W. A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Oxford University Press. The preface, Notes on Names, says "Ralph's name was pronounced Rafe, any other pronunciation used to infuriate him."
  2. ^ (2002) Birkbeck, University of London Continuing Education Courses 2002 Entry. Birkbeck External Relations Department, 5. 
  3. ^ The Gramophone
  4. ^ Decca Records/Eclipse reissue
  5. ^ Everest Records' release of the 1958 recording.
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