Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph (IPA: /reɪf/[1]) Vaughan Williams OM (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song; this also influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, which began in 1904, many folk song arrangements being set as hymn tunes, in addition to several original compositions.

Contents

Life

Early years

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on 12 October 1872 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-granddaughter 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. Though born into the privileged intellectual upper middle class, Vaughan Williams never took it for granted and worked all his life for the democratic and egalitarian ideals in which he believed.[2]

The Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton family tree, showing Vaughan Williams's relationships to Charles Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood

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 friend. One of his fellow pupils at the RCM was Leopold Stokowski and during 1896 they both studied organ under Sir Walter Parratt. Stokowski later went on to perform six of Vaughan Williams's symphonies for American audiences, making the first recording of the Sixth Symphony in 1949 with the New York Philharmonic, and giving the U.S. premiere of the Ninth Symphony in Carnegie Hall in 1958.

Vaughan Williams's composition 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 took a big step forward in his orchestral style when he studied in Paris with Maurice Ravel.

In 1904, Vaughan Williams discovered English folk songs, which were fast becoming extinct owing to the increase of literacy and printed music in rural areas. He travelled 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, Vaughan Williams conducted the first concert of the newly founded Leith Hill Music Festival at Dorking which he was to conduct until 1953, when he passed the baton to his successor, William Cole[3].

In 1909, he composed incidental music for the Cambridge Greek Play, a stage production at Cambridge University of Aristophanes' The Wasps. The next year, he had his first big public successes conducting the premieres of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (at The Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral) and his choral symphony A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1). He enjoyed a still greater success with A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) in 1914, conducted by Geoffrey Toye.

Two World Wars

A statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams in Dorking.

Vaughan Williams was 41 when World War I erupted. Though he could either have avoided war service entirely, or have tried for a commission he chose to enlist as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After a gruelling time as a stretcher bearer he was commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery. On one occasion, though too ill to stand, he continued to direct his battery while lying on the ground. Prolonged exposure to gunfire began a process of hearing loss which eventually caused severe deafness in old age.[2] 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 somewhat mystical style in A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3), which draws on his experiences as an ambulance volunteer in that war; 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: A Masque for Dancing, which is drawn not from the Bible but from William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job. He also composed a Te Deum in G for the enthronement of Cosmo 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 "pastoral" orchestral works with which he is associated; indeed, its almost unrelieved tension, drama, and dissonance have 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), his only commercial recording. During this period, he lectured in America and England, and conducted the Bach Choir. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in the King's Birthday Honours of 1935,[4] having previously declined a knighthood.[2]

Vaughan Williams was an intimate life long friend of the famous British pianist Harriet Cohen. His letters to her reveal a flirtatious relationship, regularly reminding her of the thousands of kisses that she owed him. Before Cohen's first American tour in 1931 he wrote "I fear the Americans will love you so much that they won't let you come back."[5] He was a regular visitor to her home and often attended parties there. Cohen premiered Vaughan Williams' "Hymn Tune Prelude" in 1930 which he dedicated to her. She later introduced the piece throughout Europe during her concert tours. In 1933 she premiered his Concerto in C major for pianoforte and orchestra, a work which was once again dedicated to her. Cohen was given the exclusive right to play the piece for a period of time. Cohen played and promoted Vaughan William's work throughout Europe, the USSR, and the United States.

His music now entered a mature lyrical phase, as in the Five Tudor Portraits; 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. His very successful Symphony No. 6 of 1946 received a hundred performances in the first year. It surprised both admirers and critics, many of whom suggested that this symphony (especially its last movement) was a grim vision of the aftermath of an atomic war: typically, Vaughan Williams himself refused to recognise any program behind this work.

Late harvest

Before his death in 1958, he completed three more symphonies. His seventh, Sinfonia Antartica, which was based on his 1948 film score for Scott of the Antarctic, exhibits his renewed interest in instrumentation and sonority. The eighth, first performed in 1956, was followed by the much weightier Symphony No. 9 in E minor of 1956-57. This last symphony was initially given a luke-warm reception after its first performance in May 1958, just three months before the composer's death. But this dark and enigmatic work is now considered by many devotees[6] to be a fitting conclusion to his sequence of symphonic works.

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. He also wrote an arrangement of The Old One Hundredth Psalm Tune for the Coronation Service of Queen Elizabeth II. 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).

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."[7] It is noteworthy that in his opera The Pilgrim's Progress he changed the name of the hero from Bunyan's Christian to Pilgrim. He also set Bunyan's hymn Who would true valour see to music using the traditional Sussex melody "Monk's Gate". For many church-goers, his most familiar composition may be the hymn tune Sine Nomine written for the hymn "For All the Saints" by William Walsham How. The tune he composed for the mediaeval hymn "Come Down, O Love Divine" (Di­scen­di, Amor san­to by Bi­an­co of Si­e­na, ca.1434) is entitled "Down Ampney" in honour of his birthplace.

He also worked as a tutor for Birkbeck College.[8]

In the 1950s, the composer supervised recordings of all but his ninth symphony by Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Decca.[9] 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.[10] He was to supervise the first recording of the ninth symphony (for Everest Records) with Boult; his death on 26 August 1958 the night before the recording sessions were to begin provoked Boult to announce to the musicians that their performance would be a memorial to the composer.[11] These recordings, including the speeches by the composer and Boult, have all been reissued by Decca on CD.

He 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 all persons to make their own music, however simple, as long as it is truly their own.

Marriages

He was married twice. His first marriage was in 1896 to Adeline Fisher (daughter of the historian Herbert William Fisher). She died in 1951 after many years of suffering from crippling arthritis.

In 1953 he married the poet Ursula Wood (1911-2007). At this time they moved from Dorking, Surrey back to London and occupied a house at 10 Hanover Terrace, Regents Park. She had met Vaughan Williams in 1938 and they had begun an affair whilst still married to their respective spouses. After her husband's death, Wood continued her relationship with Vaughan Williams, apparently with the tacit approval of Adeline.[12] Ursula became Ralph's literary advisor and personal assistant, writing the libretto to his choral work The Sons of Light, and contributing to that of The Pilgrim's Progress and Hodie.[13] There were no children by either marriage.

Popular References

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

Style

Vaughan Williams's music has often been said to be characteristically English, in the same way as that of Gustav Holst, Frederick Delius, George Butterworth, and William Walton.[14] In Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Peter Ackroyd writes, "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 music critic John Alexander Fuller Maitland, whose distinctions included editing the second edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the years just before 1911, as having observed that in Vaughan Williams's style "one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new."

His style expresses a deep regard for and fascination with folk tunes, the variations upon which can convey the listener from the down-to-earth (which he always tried to remain in his daily life) to the ethereal. Simultaneously the music shows patriotism toward England in the subtlest form, engendered by a feeling for ancient landscapes and a person's small yet not entirely insignificant place within them.[2] His earlier works sometimes show the influence of Ravel, his teacher for three months in Paris in 1908. Ravel described Vaughan Williams as "the only one of my pupils who does not write my music."[14]

Works

See also: Category:Compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Operas

  • The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (1921). Libretto: Ralph Vaughan Williams (from John Bunyan) (Later incorporated, save for the final section, into The Pilgrim's Progress)

Ballets

Orchestral

Concerti

Choral

Arrangements of Christian Hymns

Vaughan Williams was the musical editor[16] of the English Hymnal of 1906, and the co-editor with Martin Shaw of Songs of Praise of 1925 and the Oxford Book of Carols of 1928, all in collaboration with Percy Dearmer.

Vocal

Chamber and Instrumental

Organ

Film, radio, and TV scores

Band

A note on recordings

Vaughan Williams enjoys an extensive recorded legacy. Early recordings of individual symphonies made by Henry Wood (London), John Barbirolli (Fifth), Adrian Boult and Leopold Stokowski (Sixth), and the composer's own recording of the Fourth, preceded several complete cycles. Boult's cycle (twice in all) was the first, recording for Decca in the 1950s. Others have followed from André Previn, Bernard Haitink, Bryden Thomson, Vernon Handley and Richard Hickox. A first official release of the Fifth Symphony conducted by the composer in 1952 was recently issued in the U.K. by Somm Recordings.
David Wilcocks recorded much of the choral output for EMI in the 1960s and 1970s. Award-winning performances of the string quartets have followed on Naxos, which along with the Hyperion and Chandos labels have recorded much neglected material, including works for brass band and the rarely performed operas.

EMI Classics has issued a budget 30-CD set (34+ hours) with virtually all of RVW's works, including alternative settings.

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 Rayf, any other pronunciation used to infuriate him."
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Frogley, Alain (September 2004 — online edition May 2006). "‘Williams, Ralph Vaughan (1872–1958)’" (subscription required). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36636. Retrieved on 2008-01-16.
  3. ↑ "Leith Hill Music Festival website". Retrieved on 2008-04-14.
  4. ↑ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 34166, page 3596, 31 May 1935. Retrieved on 2008-01-16.
  5. ↑ Fry, Helen (2008). Music and Men, the Life and Loves of Harriet Cohen. The History Press. 
  6. ↑ Journal of the Vaughan Williams Society, No.39, June 2007
  7. ↑ Hugh Ottaway/Alain Frogley, "Ralph Vaughan-Williams": Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (subscription required). Retrieved 2008-01-16
  8. ↑ Birkbeck, University of London Continuing Education Courses 2002 Entry. Birkbeck External Relations Department. 2002. pp. 5. 
  9. ↑ The Gramophone
  10. ↑ Decca Records/Eclipse reissue
  11. ↑ Everest Records' release of the 1958 recording.
  12. ↑ John Bridcut (20 May 2008). "Sonata for three", Daily Mail. Retrieved on 2008-07-19. 
  13. ↑ "Ursula Vaughan Williams (obituary)", The Times (25 October 2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-24. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 [1] Roger S. Gordon, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Film Music, review, Positive Feedback on Line Issue 29, accessed May 12, 2008
  15. ↑ see "YouTube videoclip" under External Links
  16. ↑ see "1956 audio interview" under External Links
  17. ↑ 17.00 17.01 17.02 17.03 17.04 17.05 17.06 17.07 17.08 17.09 17.10 17.11 17.12 17.13 17.14 17.15 17.16 http://songsandhymns.org/people/detail/ralph-williams Center for Church Music songs and hymns entry for Ralph Williams

External links