Talk:Symphony No. 6 (Vaughan Williams)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Symphony No. 6 (Vaughan Williams) is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, cleanup, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that aren't covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
	This article is supported by the Compositions task force.

I'm afraid I disagree with a fair amount of this discussion. For example, "syncopation" is not the right word to describe the rhythmic style in the first movement, and the last movement, far from being boring, is extraordinarily intense in expression, but simply in a highly compressed, even "strangled" vein. Vaughan Williams is often described as being a "visionary" composer, and that defintely holds true in this symphony and particularly in the last movement...it's just that the vision being presented here is negative to the point of nihilism. This is also RVW's most Holst-influenced symphony, I think, and not just because it ends quietly like the Planets does. Wspencer11

You are not on your own in your disagreement with the article's content. I have plans to delete much of the inaccurate personal essay making up this article; if you get to it before me then more power to your elbow! --RobertG ♬ talk 09:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

There, I did it, for what it's worth. I have tried to keep the POV out but others will know better than I how successful I was in that. Wspencer11 20:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine job! That's much better. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:23, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Latest edit 2 Quotations 3 Pilgim's Progress link 4 References

[edit] Latest edit

I have moved part of this phrase: "The symphony continues to provoke much speculation about its “meaning,” which is understandable, due to it's very unique nature." from the end of the article back here for some discussion, since this remark strikes me as being essentially meaningless. The symphony undoubtedly has an extraordinarily distinctive, maybe even unique, character, but to say so in this manner (and I'm not even considering the grammatical issues present) doesn't say anything at all about what that nature is, it seems to me. Let's see if we can explain that nature in a way that clarifies the need to speculate about its meaning. And "meaning" is going to be awfully hard to pin down, so we may well fail here. Remember that somebody wrote a letter to Sibelius in the 1930s, saying he had just purchased and listened to a recording of his Fourth Symphony (another work fraught with "meaning"), and could Sibelius please explain what it meant? Sibelius responded by saying, "Listen to it again." --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 21:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've added a reference from his widow's book concerning the composer's "clue" - but the comments on "meaning", while inevitable in connection with this symphony, seem to be too nebulous - and take up too much space - as well as being duplicated towards the end. I think the article still needs to be completely rewritten. (But, I hasten to add, by someone with greater authority than me).John Hamilton 18:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quotations

According to the WPMOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MOS#Italics), "An entire quotation is not italicized solely because it is a quotation." So I have removed them. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 16:35, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Whoopsie! Glad to know Lethe 17:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pilgim's Progress link

In the sleeve note to the Chandos/Richard Hickox recording of Pilgrim's Progress, Stephen Connock comments that Pilgrim "cries 'what shall I do' in phrases which recall the Sixth symphony" - and there is an unmistakable flavour of the scherzo in the Vanity Fair music. It would be surprising if there were no links because, as Kennedy points out ^[1] "composition of both works ran parallel for the crucial years of 1944-7". But Kennedy seems to regard such links as coincidental (or subconscious) rather than a use of the same material. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oldfaw (talk • contribs) 13:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References