No. 17 February 2000

Michael Kennedy concluded by remindingthe audience that Vaughan Williams wouldhave wanted to be judged on his music.Understanding and appreciation of his workhad undergone a sea-change since 1958 andall the signs were that this would continue.Vaughan Williams was indeed a composerfor the New Century.

A great composer

o Piano Concerto (original version) - aremarkable work showing the influencesof Ravel, Bart6k and Stravinsky.

o The Pilgrim's Progress - the inspiredRoyal Northern College of Musicperformance had shown the dramaticnature of this work.

o A London Symphony - a symphony whichfulfilled Mahler's all-embracing definitionfor this form.

o The Lark Ascending - idealising anEngland that vanished in 1914. Itsspiritual and universal qualities occupy aunique place in English music.

o Film Music - recognised today aswonderful examples of versatility andcraftsmanship.

Rehabilitated works

Michael Kennedy continued his presentationwith reference to a number of works whosestature had increased since 1958:

Ninth Symphony is now widely recognisedas one of the greatest of the cycle. Hismusic at the tum of the century is morewidely appreciated than ever before.

ylte1co

1958 to 2000

Despite critical reactions, performanceroyalties have steadily increased since 1958.Several cycles of his symphonies have beenrecordeq. In a remarkable turnround, the

With these words, Michael Kennedyconcluded his presentation VaughanWilliams - Then and Now to a large andappreciative audience at the British LibraryConference Centre on 19th of November,1999. His keynote address set the tone forthe two days of lectures and discussions inthe Vaughan Williams in a New CenturyConference sponsored by the BritishLibrary, The Royal Musical Associationand The Royal College of Music.

Michael Kennedy began his talk bycomparing reactions to the composer at hisdeath in 1958 with the position today. Inthe 1950s, critics had referred to VaughanWilliams's 'clumsy technique' and hadspoken of him as a 'major minorcomposer'. Hodie was reported as 'grosslyover-composed' at its premiere. VaughanWilliams was the Grand Old Man ofEnglish music, a label VW hated - 'I'm notold and I'm not grand' he would say. TheBBC viewed him as insular. Yet asMichael Kennedy pointed out, he was theantithesis of the parochial establishmentcomposer. To the left-of-centre politically,he was broad-minded on social issues andhad refused a knighthood.

'He was a great man, a man of sternintegrity and high principles, modest butknowing his own worth. He wasavuncular, benign and stoic, with asteely courage and determination.Vaughan Williams was a mighty figureand a very great composer.'

IJournal of the I

Is

CHAIRMANConnock

Maratl10n House,Malrvlehrme Road,

NW15PL567413)

plus news and reviews

In this issue...

VW as Conductorby Lewis Foreman - page 18

• Recordings of FiveMysticalSongsby Jonathon Pearson - page 7

• George Herbert It ArthurVaughan Williams atBemerton, Salisburyby Stephen Connock - page 14

Focus on George Herbert

Charity No. 1017175

\7aughan Williams ina New Centurll

Vaughan Williams admirers owe a debt ofgratitude to Hugh Cobbe, Head of MusicCollections at the British Library fororganising an excellent 2-day Conference on19_20th of November in London. Thefollowing abstracts capture the breadth anddepth ofthe occasion.

Day One - 19th November 1999

Andrew HerbertVaughan Williams: the foundations ofA SeaSymphony

Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony, based onthe poetry of Walt Whitman, dominated hisearly output. With a gestation period ofapproximately seven years, the process ofcomposition was hesitant and a substantialamount of material was rejected. A largenumber of relevant manuscripts survive and,using these, it was possible to shed a gooddeal of light on the composer'sthought-processes as he carefully andpainfully sculpted his most ambitious workto-date.

Although the issues raised were never simple,it was clear that Vaughan Williams reliedheavily on ideas derived from the work ofother composers. That this is hardly surprisingonly serves to increase the impact ofs~lf-derivations revealed or implied by thepreliminary material. Furthennore, manyreferences to other models were seen to begradually excised as Vaughan Williamsbecame more adept at covering his tracks andkicked away his props.

This paper in particular traced the influence ofWagner and Tchaikovsky. It also exploredwhy Vaughan Williams felt the need to hidesome of his models whilst letting others stand.A greater understanding of these issues addedto a more general awareness of how he forgedhis compositional voice.

Stephen ConnockThe death of innocence: Vaughan Williamsand the First World War

The paper explored Vaughan Williams's.,wartime experiences concentrating on the"period ITom June - November 1916, when he

served with the 2/4 London Field Ambulancein the front line north of Arras. Using archivematerial and photographs of his locations innorthern France, Mr. Connock described howVaughan Williams's war years impacted uponboth the man and his music.

Eric SaylorThe nature of spirit: subtexts in the PastoralSymphony

Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphonyproved to be a remarkable piece on a number

PAGE 2

of different levels; .in tenns of structuralcoherence, thematic unity, and expressivecharacter, it was revealed as one of his greatestmasterworks, and certainly one of his mostoriginal at the time of its composition.However, many researchers have beenconfounded by a more overarching concern,one which has accompanied the piece ITom itsfirst perfonnance: what does the PastoralSymphony mean?

Through a careful consultation of materialsheld in the archives of the British Library(including Vaughan Williams's personalcorrespondence and autograph scores andsketches of the Pastoraf), as well as examiningstatements of VW, his biographers, and otherresearchers, Eric Saylor presented a betterunderstanding of not only the work's genesis,but its ultimate expressive rationale. Byexamining the events leading up to the work'scomposition, as well as Vaughan Williams'sintellectual and emotional state of mind duringthe period of its creation, a more detailed andmultifaceted understanding of the work wasgained.

Julian RushtonThe gritty lyricism ofthe Fourth Symphony

The opening of Vaughan Williams's FourthSymphony is famously gritty, and thecomposer's note draws attention tomodernistic elements, including thenot-quite-BACH motive and the motive basedon superimposed fourths. These havecontinued to attract critical attention, as theyprovide a marked contrast with the Third andFifth Symphonies. But as with Beethoven,who may have provided the model for someaspects of the Fourth, Julian Rushton said itwould be a critical mistake to overlook thelyrical impulse which develops from theopening, flowers in later themes, and towardsthe end of the first movement, generates apeculiarly original fonn of symphonic'breakthrough' into transcendence.

Eric HungNational Hero or Self-Involved Zealot?Robert Falcon Scott in Film and Symphony

In 1947-48, Vaughan Williams wrote themusical score for Scott ofthe Antarctic - a filmabout Robert Falcon Scott's fatal journey tothe South Pole. Over the next four years, heconstructed Sinfonia Antartica using materialfrom the film score.

This paper argued that Sinfonia Antartica wasa negative response to the heroic image ofScott in the film. Vaughan Williams often leftclues about the programmatic meaning of hisworks to close friends and perfonners. Wehave two such clues about Sinfonia Antartica.He told conductor Raymond Leppard that thesymphony can be perfonned with narrated

that theabout

Additional Hung's readingcomes from an symphony'sgenesis and an analysis .the. "heroismtheme" in the film and the symphony. In thefilm, the "heroism theme" is constantlyjuxtaposed with themes depicting Antarcticlandscapes. In the symphony, this themeappears only in the Prelude and Epilogue.The contrasting uses of the "heroism theme"suggested that, while the film was concernedwith Scott's heroic struggle against naturalforces, the symphony asks whether Scott evenis a hero. The ultimate collapse of the"heroism theme" in the Epilogue answers thequestion in the negative.

Roger SavageThe Scholar Gipsy: An Unwritten Opera

For much of his life, Vaughan Williams, awarm admirer of the work of Matthew Arnold,nursed the desire to make an opera out ofArnold's poem The Scholar Gipsy (1853).This session looked at the parallels betweenthe careers of the two men, at analogues toVaughan Williams's thoughtab?ut music andsociety in Arnold's. cultural/critical writingsand at the several Arnoldian compositionalprojects - all butane of them subsequentlydiscarded but all leaving distinct traces behindthem - which Vaughan Williams worked onbetween 1899 and 1908: a setting of DoverBeach especially significant among them. Theappeal of The Scholar Gips)i to the composerwas then considered; also, the problems andpotential rewards of making a viable operaticscenario and libretto out of such theatricallyrecalcitrant material, and the relevance of sucha scenario to Vaughan' Williams's 'grandnarrative' - traceable in many works from theSongs ofTravel and the Bunyan pageant to theSeventh Symphony and Hodie - of a redeemingjourney towards some kind of transcendence.Matters of ideology and practical 'opera-craft'were equally touched on. Also considered wasthe possibility that Vaughan Williamsconnected his Arnoldian operatic project withone for a musical treatment of GeorgeBorrow's Lavengro (1851) - subtitle: TheScholar, the Gipsy, the Priest - and its sequelThe Romany Rye. (Togetller with the earlierZincali of Borrow, Lavengro - VaughanWilliams's favourite novel made acontribution to the genesis of Hugh theDrover, and the composer proposed it at thattime as the subject of a subsequent opera.)The significance of Vaughan Williams's not inthe end writing a Borrovian or Arnoldianopera was considered in connection with hisuse in the late concert-piece An Oxford Elegyof spoken extracts from The Scholar Gipsyitself and from Arnold's companion-poemThyrsis (both of them fonnal 'pastoralelegies', whose genre may throw light on thevexed use of 'pastoral' in the ThirdSymphony), and in connection finally with themarked modification. of the VW GrandNarrative in the still later, uncompleted operaThomas the Rhymer.

(See more details 0/1 page 4)

Stephen BanfieldVaughan Williams and plain speaking

Jochen EisentrautVaughan Williams: National Music, ArtMusic and the Vernacular.

Malcolm TaylorThrough Bushes, Briars - and Brentwood:RVW and the folk-song J'evival

asWilliamsVaughanHugh CobbeYrs RVW:letter-writer

Commentators on Vaughan Williams havelong acknowledged the central importance ofEnglish folksongs and English hymn tunes tohis 'nationalist' vision. Indeed, observing thathe adapted folksongs for use in The EnglishHymnal and in other hymnbooks, they havecome to see the two as twin components ofthat vision. Vet none of the commentatorsespousing this view has examined the editorial

(Continued on page 12)

Hugh Cobbe has been working for some yearson an edition of the letters of VaughanWilliams. At present the corpus collectedamounts to some 3000 letters, certainly afraction of the number he wrote. The lettersare distributed unevenly over his lifetime andare now to be found in many differentlocations. His habits as a letter writer weredescribed and some general account was givenof the recipients and of the topics discussed.Finally, some general conclusions about theman and his music were drawn from thishitherto largely unpublished body of material.

This talk covered VW's connection with theearly folk song revival, in particular hismethods of collecting of folk songs andrelationship to contemporary collectors suchas Cecil Sharp.

Julian OnderdonkHymn Tunes fl'om Folksongs: VaughanWilliams and English Hymnody

'I don't know whether I like it, but it's what Imeant': truth above beauty, honesty overdiplomacy, duty before desire. VaughanWilliams's musical idiom, and tile vauntedlack of 'technique', can be seen asrepresentative of all these values; but wheredid the values corne from, and why were theyimperative? Stephen Banfield explored thesequestions and the search for an answer quicklyled away from music to historical, politicaland philosophical aspects of VW's culturaland class formation.

In his lectures on National Music, VaughanWilliams made a strong case for rooting artmusic in traditional music. He posits'folk-song' as the distillation of a musicallanguage over many generations. Therelationship with the vernacular was strainedor even severed in mainstream modernism andre-emerged as a' post-modem option. JochenEisentraut reviewed VW's folk song and itsproximity to the vernacular.

Day Two Saturdav 20th November 1999

Jenny DoctorVW and the BBC

(This presentation will be reproduced injitll inthe June issue ofthe RVWS Journal- EditOl~

Vaughan Williams's attitude towards Bach,the 'universal musician', 'the greatestcomposer the world has yet produced', hecalled him, gave a glimpse of what heconsidered the nature of musical experience tobe at its most elevated and profound. Hisviews on the nature of true musical experiencewere also illuminated by his criticisms of theattempts being made in the late 1940s and'50sto re-create eighteenth-century sonorities andperfonning styles. Why did he dislike the'early music movement' so much?

Timothy DayVaughan Williams and 'the greatest of allcomposers'

While valuable work has been done byscholars investigating the connections amongfolk song, pastoralism and nationalism in themusic of Ralph Vaughan Williams, less workhas focused on tlle composer's understandingof the music of England's past and how hisideas about so-called "Tudor music" compareto those of folk song and national music. As apoint of entry into the important issue ofVaughan Williams's understanding of Tudormusic, both on the formal and ideologicallevel, Deborah Heckert focused on the masquegenre which figures prominently amongVaughan Williams's stage works. Severalareas were explored: the contemporaryacademic sources for the composer'sknowledge of period and genre, VaughanWilliams's own writings on the subject ofEnglish musical history, and the period andgeneric characteristics which were conflated toserve as compositional models for thecomposer's masques. Works examined rangedfrom the very early realisation of Ben Jonson'sPan's Anniversmy, through the pageant-likemasques written for various amateur groups,to the most ambitious and complex of theworks within the genre, Job, a masque fordancing.

Deborah HeckertThe composer as historian: VaughanWilliams, Tudor music, and the genre ofmasque

The development of radio - in particular ofradio broadcasting by the BBC - ran in parallelwith the unfolding of Vaughan Williams',scareer. For him and composers of hisgeneration, the growth of the new sound mediahad profound effects on their musicalconceptions and their professional identities.Vaughan Williams listened frequently to thewireless, and had strong convictions about theBBC's responsibilities to British musical life.Jenny Doctor reviewed how he attempted tomanipulate BBC music policies in tlle 1940sand 50s, how he viewed the Third Programmein particular once it was established in 1946,and the effectiveness of his efforts.

Duncan Hinnells supported the generalapproach of recent revisionist discussions.However, he suggested that recent work on thecomposer's reception history, although highlysignificant, emphasised the criticalconstruction of Vaughan Williams's receptionso exclusively that it neglected the role playedby a wider field of cultural production, inwhich not only critics but also institutions,markets and the composer himself werc allinvolved. The speaker briefly outlined someof these processes by using examples drawnfrom Duncan Hinnells' recently-submitteddoctoral thesis. He then moved on to the morecomplex question of how we might begin, tore-approach Vaughan Williams's music in thelight of his own engagement - as a leader andas a victim - of English musical nationalism.

Duncan HinnellsVaughan Williams and the politics ofEnglish nationalism: should we read him asa leader or victim?

A number of recent studies have sought tore-cast traditional images of VaughanWillianls. In particular, it has been argued thatlong-established associations of him withEnglishness, folk song and pastoralismover-simplify a much more complex reality.A central theme has been to explore VaughanWilliams's national identity as a criticalconstruction, which reflects at least as muchabout cultural pressures in modem Britain as itdoes about the composer himself.

The significance of Vaughan Williams'sstrong transatlantic ties has been largelyoverlooked, both in the literature on thecomposer himself and in studies of Americanmusic. Yet the New World played a crucialrole in Vaughan Williams's career andphilosophical outlook, and his music has beenembraced more widely and consistently inAmerica than anywhere else outside Britain,by composers as well as performers andaudiences. Whatever the intrinsically musicalattractions of his works, Alain Frogley arguedthat mid-century American interest inVaughan Williams also received a powerfulimpetus from broader cultural and politicaldevelopments. The desire amidst sections ofthe American elite to reassert Anglo-Saxonhegemony in tlle national self-image; as a foilto increasing cultural diversity; the growingstrength of tlle Anglo-American alliance ininternational affairs; the widespread interest inAnglo-American folksong and hymnody thatemerged during this period: all these trendsinevitably drew Vaughan Williams, asperceived ambassador of Englishness andchampion of folk-song, into the debatesurrounding American national identity, andthe politics of race, class and gender thatshaped this. Yet his relationship to such issueswas not simple, and the appeal of his musicultimately went beyond tile ,:onfines ofspecial-interest groups.

Alain FrogleyThe Wasps for WASPs: Vaughan Williamsand American musical politics

PAGE 3

8MOOom

MAIN HAL.L

Stephen Connock

199C}NOVEI'1'8EF~

A rare performance ofVaughan Williams's Piano Quintet

ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC

."'" .'

It was a privilege to be present on thisoccasion with three RCM scholars - TomHankey (violin), Martin Saving (viola) andNaomi Williams (cello) - together withCharlotte Hooper-Greenhill (bass) andDavid Warn (piano), all in excellent form.We look forward eagerly to further chambermusic from VW's early years from thisfruitful RVW Ltd, /Faber partnership.

The Moderato finale has the piano again asthe dominant instrument with a theme VWreused 50 years later in the Violin Sonata.The influence of Brahms is clear even asVaughan Williams's lyricism and nobilityshine through.

The central Andante is quite lovely.Opening with an extended part for solopiano, the writing is expressive and overtlyromantic. Its beauty is tempered only by themovement outstaying its welcome.

The composer's unhappiness with the workis hard to understand. The opening Allegrocon fuoco is bold and invigorating showingthe influence of Brahms. A reflectivecentral episode in this large-scale firstmovement is more characteristic. It has arapt inward quality that is reminiscent of thePhantasy Quintet.

The work was finished in October 1903 andrevised in April 1904 and again inSeptember 1905. Vaughan Williams had bythen finished In the fen country, The Houseof Life and the Songs of Travel so he wasproducing works of quality. MichaelKennedy tells us that the last knownperformance of the work before it waswithdrawn was on 8 June 1918.

With considerable anticipation, a largeaudience was drawn to the Royal College ofMusic on 19 November, 1999 to hear thefirst modem performance of VaughanWilliams's Quintet in C minor for piano,violin, viola, cello and double bass. ThisQuintet is the first result of a collaborationbetween Faber Music and RVW Ltd. toproduce an authorized edition of many ofVW's chamber works withdrawn by thecomposer.

VAUGHAN WILLIAMSCONCERT OF CHAt1BER MUSIC

In associati," with THE ROYAl KU5ICAL ASSOCJliTJO~and THE BRlTISH LIBRARY

emiCEPT Hii:'.L. EO'/AL e:rJL.LEGE OF ~IUSIC

F'~:INCE COnSORT PO;.iD LONDDN 8\·J7 2BS

FRIDAY

Overall, HughCobbe said, theletters providedremarkable insightsinto VaughanWilliams's opinionson a wide range ofissues includingother composers.They provide avivid picture of theman and willilluminate ourunderstanding ofhim, showing hisbreadth of vision,largeness of mindand concerns for hisfriends.

ROYAL CDLL,SEOF MUSIC

'lilUGHA1I iiILLIAHSc.mltERi OFCBAMBER MUSIC

FRIIS' NOV8.(,00111

MAIN HALLN£! 281

ROYAL COlLESEDF MUSIC

FRI 19 NO'}8 .. 00pm

VhU6HAIJ iiILLlhH5CONCERT OFCHAnBERHU,![

MAIN HALLfoJ!2 281

Thanks to help from Eric Saylor over athree-month period in 1998-99, Hugh Cobbewas hopeful that his work would becompleted in 2000. Good luck to him, andwe await the finished product with thekeenest of interest.

However, over 700 letters are still in theprocess of being edited. A major problem isoften that of dating them since VW often

'omitted any date, or if he does give a date hedoes not add the year. Dating the letters was

a challenge that heparticularly enjoyedand involved usingsuch as postmarks,addresses, writingpaper or detailedanalysis of thecontents of theletter. Of the 3000letters, 1,450 hadbeen sent to just 15people, includingfor example, 202 toFinzi, 130 to UrsulaVaughan Williamsand 150 to MichaelKennedy, Fewinward letters to thecomposer hadsurvived.

1900-1909 - 104

1910-1919 - 136

1920-1929 - 178

1930-1939 - 588

1940-1949 - 596

1950-1958 - 612

Reproduced with the kind permission ofUrsula Vaughan Williams and the Oxford UniversityPress

An early ]eLLer from Vaughan vVilliams Lo Holst (about 1895).

Vaughan Williams's Letters

Hugh Cobbe's monumental effort to edit forpublication Vaughan Williams's letters hasinvolved examining over 3000 examples.Many owners of letters inspected for theproject have generously presented them tothe British Library to join the growingcollection there, though many remaindispersed throughout the UK, America andeven Australasia. Hugh Cobbe reported thatthe letters which had been edited werespread over the following time periods:

Hugh Cobbe told the audience at theBritish Library Conference that his workon editing YW's letters was nearingcompletion. Stephen Connock sends thisreport from the Conference.

To Be RetaIned

PAGE 4

VWat the time ofwritillg his Fifth Symphony(photograph courtesy of Ursula Vaughall Williams)

A study of genesis and genreby Arnold Whittall

Arnold Whittall, in an insightful specialmeeting in 1998 at the Royal College ofMusic, reflects on aspects of the. FifthSymphollY·

1 want to address two very different aspectsof this marvellous work. They can besummarised in two seven-letter words thatdiffer by only one letter: genetic andgeneric. The genetic approach to the workconcerns the various stages it went throughbefore completion - and I'm introducing thiswith the source materials divided betweenthe British Library and the Royal College ofMusic Library very much in mind.The generic approach is more to dowith the nature and the character ofthe completed work - as we think ofit, and as it is performed and widelyenjoyed. So, if the genetic looks atthe. work in progress, the genericlooks at the work as a completeentity, which has now been with usfor some 55 years or so. As far as 1know (1 don't pretend to be anexpert on the genetic side of thistopic) there is as yet no reallyexhaustive or authoritative reviewof the sources for the work and it isvery clear, from what MichaelKennedy has said in his VaughanWilliams Catalogue, that study ofthe symphony's genesis wouldinvolve working on the sketchmaterials which are in the BritishLibrary, looking at the full scorewhich is also in the British Library,and looking at the earlier draft fullscore which is in the library of theRoyal College of Music. The scorethat we have here at the RCM is thatlittle less polished, that little bit lessfinished in terms of what waseveJ;ltually printed and published.But that means that it yields all sortsof particularly interesting materials forthe scholar. The RCM score gives us avery good and vivid picture of thecomposer as self-critic, scratching out,rubbing out, writing over the actual draftthat he is working on at the time. From thebrief period that 1 spent with this material,it's clear to me that the over-riding factor inVaughan Williams's mind, as he worked onthis draft, was the need not to go over thetop, to be under-stated rather than over­stated, to simplify, to compress, and theseare aspects of his musical character whichmany of us find particularly attractive. Theway he avoids blatancy and tries to beexpressive through restraint rather thanthrough flamboyancy is most distinctive.

The character of the RCM draft is also

dominated by a great sensitivity to the actualsound of the music. You find the composermaking many fine adjustments of texture,altering doublings in various ways,changing doublings in thirds to doublings insixths - for example, in the secondmovement where he decides that it is aslightly more transparent and betterbalanced sound with sixths rather thanthirds. The composer is aiming, not forelegance, but for under-statement, forsomething which doesn't draw attention toitself in any awkward way. This is what 1am calling the genetic side of research intothe symphony and there are many otherinteresting examples that could be given.

Of course, it would be dangerous to suggestthat these examples provide an exactreproduction of Vaughan Williams'sworking methods. 1 believe passionatelythat the study of drafts and sketches has tobe undertaken with enormous caution: thereis always the danger that musicologists startto believe that they know what the composerwas actually thinking. We can never claimto reproduce the decision-making processexactly, and 1 don't think we should attemptto, but we can still draw conclusions fromthe changes and corrections we find indrafts. It is an interesting question, ofcourse, to ask whether all the changes andcor.rections are for the good: with some

composers, 1 sometimes think that changesoften do more harm than good. But 1 don'tthink that is so with Vaughan Williams,from what 1have seen of his materials in theRCM library!

1 now move on to the subject of genericanalysis, and to certain endlessly fascinatingquestions about this work - what issymphonic about it? Does it have the righttitle? 1 want to consider the symphoniccohesiveness of the work, whether there areambiguities, and whether consideration ofthese topics actually enhances ourappreciation of the symphony. Let's startwith the normal idea of something calledSymphony in D Major. We expectsymphonies in D Major, any work whichclaims to be in D Major, to have a relativelyopen and sunny character. Yet if there isone thing that we all know and remember

about the Vaughan Williams score,it's that it doesn't begin with astraightforward statement of the DMajor chord, but with somethingmuch more indefinite andambiguous. This must be one of themost memorable and also one of themost unemphatic symphonicopenings ever conceived. It comesas no surprise to realise that thecomposer considered calling thework Symphony in G, and if he hadwritten the first movement as it isnow and had done something elsefor the fourth movement, thenSymphony in G as the title wouldn'tworry us too much. We would say:'oh well, you know, it is more in Gthan anything else.' It is not in G inthe way that Dvorak's EighthSymphony is in G, or Haydn'sOxford Symphony is in G - but 'G'is one way of explaining the firstmovement's opening in terms oftonality. Yet there are other aspectsto this opening that are perhapsmore germane to the composer'sway of thinking than the question ofwhether it was in G or D major orany other key. It has a haunting,serious quality to it, and it's notsurprising that it should mean somuch to the composer. We knowthat Vaughan Williams dedicated the

symphony to Sibelius, who had been silentfor quite a while by 1943, but was still alive,and still frequently performed and highlyregarded, certainly in this country. So theidea of a tribute to Sibelius is something thatmade sense: and a good way of celebratillgSibe1ius is by a veiled reference to his work.My suggestion is that Vaughan Williams'sopening subtly recalls the opening ofSibelius's Fourth Symphony, with its darkbrooding texture in the cellos and basses,and a sustained C moving on to D, F sharpand E. The characters of the t\,,:o openingscould hardly be more different. TheSibelius is dour and overtly tragic in mood,the Vaughan Williams, far from that. So I

PAGE 5

am not saying that Vaughan Williams wasconsciously alluding to Sibelius's FourthSymphony: rather that these two openingsare technically comparable.

There are other examples of a comparablesonority in different music of the time. Onework, which comes to mind in this respect,is the First String Quartet by BenjaminBritten, which was composed 'in 1941 andfirst performed in the UK in London in theWigmore Hall in April 1943. This was threemonths before the Vaughan Williamssymphony was premiered, so there was noquestion of borrowing, and Britten uses thesonority in his own very different way, withan E inserted between the D and F sharp andthe whole transposed up several octaves. Alow C against D major harmony is also avery important feature of Britten's firstmovement. The object of drawing attentionto these similarities is not to suggest thatBritten influenced Vaughan Williams, orvice versa, but rather to identify a certainkind of harmony, a certain kind of procedurethat was in the air at the time. Yet the maineffect of finding these similarities is actuallyto enhance the differences between them.One finishes up by saying yes, of course,there is a certain fundamental resemblancebetween the Sibelius, Britten and VaughanWilliams works, but their context and theircharacter could hardly be more different.They do point to a certain way of thinkingabout tonality, I think, which you can find inall three composers. It's a way of thinkingwhich seeks to resist any tendency to movein the direction of the expressionism orintense fragmentation of other contemporarymusic. So it is in the best sense of the worda conservative procedure, a conservativeway of thinking, but a conservatism whichrenews and doesn't simply reproduce well­established procedures mechanically andunimaginatively.

I've worked a lot with the analysis of 20th

century music, and the most fascinatingthing of all to me about the structure ofVW's Fifth, as opposed to its character, isthe almost tongue-in-cheek attitude ofVaughan Williams to the symphonic genre.When I say 'tongue in cheek', I don't meanthat he was sending up the symphony, farfrom it. But I think he relished the prospectof a wQrk which avoids conventionalsymphonic characteristics as much as itadopts them. Vaughan Williams distanceshimself from traditional symphonicism inthe Fifth by giving the movements titles:and those titles, certainly in the case of thefirst and third movements, called Preludeand Romanza, do not immediately suggestsymphonic movements at ali. In the case ofthe Romanza, in particular, the effect of thetitle is to make the character of themovement much more subtle, much morecomplex and much more ambiguous ­especially with respect to its rather'religious' atmosphere - than it would be ifit had no title at ali. All these matters of

PAGE 6

genre and style should be the basis forfurther consideration and further research.They seem to me to open up possibilitiesthat are still being explored and could stilllead to some very interesting and novelconclusions.

What I will do now is focus in a bit more onthe music itself, in order to try to conveysomething of what I think is most importantand valuable about the work. In order tointroduce this I would like to refer to whatMichael Kennedy said about the work in hismarvellous book on Vaughan Williamsbecause, of course, there has been so muchdiscussion about the relationship betweenthe Fifth Symphony and The Pilgrim'sProgress. Yes, I have to mention ThePilgrim's Progress, to refer to its relation tothe symphony and also to the symphony'spossible representation of pastoral - pastoralin a rather different sense from the thirdVaughan Williams symphony, called ThePastoral. Michael Kennedy summarisessome of these topics very well by sayingthat it is a "supreme work of art, the productof so many varying constituent elements."

That is the key phrase to me - the product ofso many varied constituent elements. Thisis what we need to bear in mind, and whatwe experience in a performance as a kind ofseamless entity. It really is a seamless entity- a triumph over many disparate elements.For example, Kennedy explains that parts ofit were first heard as music for a pageant,about preservation of the countryside frombungaloid growth, which the composer wasinv'olved in around 1938. That was reallywhen it got started. The symphony alsoshares several themes with The Pilgrim'sProgress: but it is easy to exaggerate theconnection between the two works. Youwill, of course, not find the whole of thesymphony in the opera. But many of theideas from the first, third and fourthmovements are there. It is perhaps mostimportant to remember that the material forthe symphony's Passacaglia, the finale,occurs in the opera early on when there is adescription of peace, the house called peace.It must therefore be the case that the endingof the symphony evokes, or encapsulates,that sense of peace and stability whichoccurs early in the opera and not at the end.

So Kennedy's point about the many variedconstituent elements is very well taken, andI don't think that we should seek to under­value the disparities and the diversities thatare present in the symphony - the urban aswell as the pastoral, the unquiet as well asthe serene. What I will focus on now are theinstances where that diversity and thattension are most effectively and powerfullydeployed by the composer. The firstmovement is, to me, one of the most radicalconceptions that Vaughan Williams evercompleted. People rather assume that it isnot radical, or progressive, to the extent thatsay the finale of the Sixth is, or the whole of

the Sixth, or much of the Fourth. Theimpression is created that the Fifth was akind of well-deserved holiday from thestresses and strains of the Fourth, before hegeared up again for number six. But I findthe closing stages of the Fifth's firstmovement to be the most bleak anddisturbing music that the composer everwrote. This is because of the context inwhich it happens. It has an eerie, very tensecharacter: and in an effective performance ofthe work, that first movement endingcontinues to haunt the music from thenonwards.

I think that the second and third movementsare best thought of as attempts to escapefrom that character in very different ways.They complement each other, but they bothcan be construed as attempts to get awayfrom the implacable (though understated)assertiveness that that ending of the firstmovement presents us with. The finale, thePassacaglia, seems at first to be the mostovertly genial and triumphant kind of musicthat you could possible wish for. Itswaggers along in its louder sections and itreally does seem to have resolved to turndarkness into light. But, of course, thecrucial thing in the finale is the darkeningthat takes place, the disturbance that comesin, the tendency to move away from D majorback towards F minor and the crisis that thiscreates, summed up most powerfully b)1 thereturn of the first movement material itself.This is the most marvellous moment, whenthe first movement material comes backwith the pounding Cs in the bass: andalthough that kind of climactic, cyclic returnis, by the mid-20th century, a familiarsymphonic trick, it is something that only acomposer who is very confident in hisability to sustain a symphonic argumentwould dare to do. Vaughan Williams does itmagnificently and is absolutely justified inbringing back this first movement materialto create a sense of crisis.

The crisis adds up to the fact that the endingcould go either way. It could go in thedirection of the first movement, the bleakghostly ending, or it could go in thedirection with which the Passacaglia began.Now, which direction does it go in? This isthe question that I would like to leave youwith because we could say, without muchfear of contradiction, well of course itdoesn't end like the first movement ends, itcould hardly be more different. It doesn'tend with that oscillation between F minorand D major, with C in the bass: instead itgoes back to pure D major, it goes back tothe Passacaglia materiaL. Yes, it goes backto the Passacaglia material and we hear thePassacaglia material transformed, eventransfigured into a beautiful, ethereal, other­worldly flowing texture moving veryserenely and very slowly, opening intomusical space, until in the end you are justleft: with the· sublime strings - a huge span of

(contillued 011 page 16)

I was thoroughly nervous. When I looked at the fiddles Ithought I was going mad, for I saw what appeared to beKreisler9 at a back desk. I got through somehow, and atthe end I whispered to Reed, 10 'Am I mad, or did I seeKreisler in the band?' 'Oh yes,' he said, 'he broke a stringand wanted to play it in before the Elgar concerto andcouldn't without being heard in the Cathedral.' 11

; He was not the tirst contemporary composer to set Herbert. WalfordDavies included The Call and, Let all the World (among other poems byHerbert and Herrick) in his choral work, Noble Numbers, heard at Herefordin 1909. [Christopher Palmer, sleeve notes for Chandos CDA66420, p. 6.](, Michael Kennedy, The Works of -Ralph Vaughan Williams, OxfordUniversity Press, 2nd edn. 1980, p. 132.7 Oliver Lawson Dick (ed.), Aubrey's Brief Lives, Secker & Warburg, 3rdedn. 1958,p. 137.K Michael Kennedy, Works, pp. 131-2'J Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962). Virtuoso violinist and composer. Born inVienna, he settled I1rst in Berlin, then Paris. In 1939 he went to the USAand became an American citizen in 1940.III W. H. Reed (1876-1941). Violinist, conductor, teacher, author andcomposer. Joined LSO 1904; leader from 1912. Friend of Elgar,RVW, etc.II Quoted in Ursula Vaughan Williams, RVW, p. 97. Kreisler was to play theElgar Violin Concerto later in the concert." The following information on the musical events of 1911 is taken fromLewis Foreman (ed.), Music in England 1885-1920 as recounted in Hazell'sAnnual, Thamcs Publishing, 1994, pp. 86-88.

The Three Choirs Festival, founded in around 1715, was oneof the more permanent fixtures of the English musicalcalendar, but there was much else going on obesides. 12 Thetwo outstanding events of 1911 were the visit of the RussianImperial Ballet in April and the Coronation of King GeorgeV and Queen Mary on 22 June. "The Coronation broughtnew works by Parry, Stanford and Elgar, and on 26 July theKing and Queen attended a gala concert at Covent Garden,with excerpts from A ida, Romeo et Juliette and Jl Barbieredi Siviglia, and, of course, a performance by the sensation ofthe year, Diaghilev's Russian Ballet. In Paris, the receptionof Nijinsky and Karsavina had been ecstatic, andanticipation In London intense. The Covent Gardenaudiences were not disappointed indeed, theiranticipations were perhaps exceeded. Les Sylphides and

Anxious to build on the favourable reception of Tallis theprevious year, but with very little rehearsal time available,VW later recalled:

with the sun shining through the windows on her hairwhich looked like pure gold. It was an unforgettable sight,the two of them. I-Ie had a thick thatch of dark hair, a tall,rather heavy figure, even then slightly bowed; and hisface was profoundly moving, deep humanity and yet withthe quality of a mediaeval sculpture-'4

'The Five Mystical Songs (19JJ)... add little to thegeneral experience of Vaughan Williams's musical nature,as so far observed. These songs owe much of theirwelcome to their collocation with Herbert's homelymysticism... [T]he texture is too reactionary to bedistinctive. Harmony derived from various modes in turn(the chief feature of the much sung The Call), a restlessbut steadily pegged tonality, and a firm turn to the majorby way of epilogue, musically unpersuasive, and a weaktext, are prevailing features. Let All the World maintainsan inner exuberance without going much further. '1

I A. E. F. Dickinson, Vaughan Williams, Fabcr and Faber, 1963, pp.163-4., In a Icttcr to Vaughan Williams's pupil, Grace Williams, quoted inHumphrey Carpenter, Bel?iamin Britten: A Biography, Faber and Faber,1992, p. 62. VW, adjudicating the Farrar Composition Prize of 1931 (whichBritten won), is supposed to have described BB's effort as 'very clever butbeastly'. Ibid., p. 40.}Adeline (nee Fisher) was Vaughan Williams's I1rst wife (died 1951).4 Ursula Vaughan Williams, RVW: A Biography of Ralph VaughanWilliams, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 97.

As a result of the interest aroused by the Fantasia on aTheme by Thomas Tallis at the Three Choirs Festival atGloucester in 1910, Vaughan Williams had beencommissioned to produce a new work for Worcester thefollowing year. He decided to polish up, rewriting wherenecessary, the Five Mystical Songs on which he had beenworking sporadically since 1906. He had chosen as his textpoems by the seventeenth century religious poet GeorgeHerbert, from the collection known as The Temple,published just after his death from tuberculosis in 1633, at

Reading Professor Dickinson's description of Five MysticalSongs you might be fprgiven for dismissing them out ofhand. The opinion of Benjamin Britten2 (who facetiouslyreferred to them as 'the fifteen biblical songs'), after a radiobroadcast in 1935, that they were technically incompetent,'pi' and artificially mystic, might well put off the mostsympathetic listener. But the cold eye (or is it ear?) ofmusicological scrutiny is not directly comparable with theaesthetic rewards of real music making, or even a CDperformance. There are many subjective elements that go tomake up a rewarding musical experience - the excitementof an 'occasion', the mood of the listener, the ambience,even what one had for dinner! We do not need to worryunduly at the undertones of Elgar or the backward glances toVW's earlier Rossetti setting's, simply to enjoy the passion,the richness, the sheer beauty of sound of these songs.Certainly, Claire Mackail (the sister-in-law of baritoneCampbell McInnes who sang in the first performance) wasnot thinking of rising fourths or parallel triads as she sat inWorcester Cathedral, at one of the concerts, waiting for theperformance to begin. Ursula Vaughan Williams tells usthat Claire 'recalled seeing Adeline3 sitting in the nave ofth e cath ed ral:

the age of only forty.5 Having begun

'Tti?l-T?O ~1~U4i:tri~~ I ~rl"n4i: composing the songs around 1906, when~ J .,.-, 1...I....I'.I 6tI.1.1..,..1 CI".I.1~6tI he was in his mid-thirties, Vaughan

Williams was of a similar age to the poet.An Introduction and CD Review As Michael Kennedy has written, 'this is

by Jonathan Pearson young man's poetry and music'. 6'-- ....1 Vaughan Williams was attracted to

Herbert on two main levels. One was that the poet had alsobeen a musician - John Aubrey was told 'that he had a verygood hand on the Lute, and that he sett his own Lyricks orsacred poems'. 7 The other was a shared affinity with musicas a 'divine voice'. Vaughan Williams's mysticism 'is to befound in that self-same divinity of music through whichalone he could perceive the ultimate realities.'8 Thesettings were for baritone solo, mixed chorus and orchestra(with an alternative accompaniment of string quintet andpiano), or for baritone and piano alone, without chorus.Vaughan Williams conducted the first performance inWorcester Cathedral on Thursday 14 September 1911, withCampbell McInnes (the baritone whose voice he had had inmind when composing the songs), the Three Choirs FestivalChorus and the London Symphony Orchestra.

PAGE?

Scheherazade were among the works performed and theCompany was immediately re-engaged for the Autumn. 13

How, then, does Vaughan Williams fit into thiscosmopolitan picture? The answer is, more than one mightat first realise. It would be a grave mistake to imagine thatthe Vaughan Williams of the Tallis Fantasia and the FiveMystical Songs, the English Hymnal and Linden Lea shouldinhabit a completely different milieu from the fashionableand glitzy world of Diaghilev. Indeed, he was never insularand was always aware of the international picture. He hadstudied with Max Bruch in Berlin in 1897-8 and it was onlythree years since his time in Paris with Ravel. He had fallenunder the spell of Wagner as early as 1892 while still astudent. It is not such a surprise, therefore, to find himmeeting over lunch at the Savoy that year the great Russianimpresario himself, with Nijinsky and the theatre designerGordon Craig. 14 However, the subject of the projectedballet, Cupid and Psyche (as suggested by Craig), was notone to which Vaughan Williams naturally warmed.Furthermore, Craig demanded a finished score to which hewould fit the story but VW insisted on having the scenariofirst. The resulting impasse sealed its fate, leaving us withthe tantalising thought of what a Russian ballet by VaughanWilliams might have been like. IS

Although concert attendance that year suffered somewhatfrom the rival attractions of coronation festivities and thevery hot summer weather, there were first performances ofElgar's Second Symphony and Granville Bantock'ssymphonic poem Dante and Beatrice in its newly revisedversion. At the Festival of Empire in the Crystal Palace an'Imperial Choir' of four thousand voices performed an all­British programme. Henry Wood conducted most of thePromenade concerts and the Sheffield Triennial Festival,where he also trained the choir in Bach's B minor Mass andSt. Matthew Passion, Brahms's Song of Destiny, Bantock'sOmar Khayyam, Part I, and excerpts from Wagner's Ringand Parsifal. He also conducted Messiah, Elijah and the St.Matthew Passion at the Three Choirs, and received aknighthood.

Choral music was somewhat in the doldrums. There wereperformances of Messiah, Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha andElgar's King Olaf and Dream of Gerontius, but 'the lack offresh material... indicated a dearth in the supply ofpromising new works'. Indeed, the Queen's Hall ChoralSociety was disbanded 'owing to the difficulty of findingnovelties of sufficient attractiveness'. 16

There were, however, a number of 'novelties' at the ThreeChoirs Festival. Worcester was particularly colourful, withextra coronation decorations as well as the usual festivalflags. Elgar, the leading light, was in fine form. He hadprinted a handbill of "Side Shows", lampooning well-knownfestival personalities, public figures and friends to whomthey were distributed. 17

11 Also new at Covent Garden that year were Puccini's The Girl of theGolden West (1910) and what was considered to be an over-lavishproduction of Massenet's Thais (1894), but neither composer was judged tobe at his best in these works.14 (Edward Henry) Gordon Craig (1872-1966), actor, artist and stagedesigner, was the illegitimate son of the architect Edward William Godwinand the actress Ellen Terry. He was nearly as famous for his amatoryliaisons as for his brilliant and boldly innovative stage designs.15 Ursula Vaughan Williams, RVW, pp. 93-4.1(, Lewis Foreman (ed.), lvlusic in England 1885-1920, p. 87.17 Information on Elgar and the Worcester Festival comes from E. WulstanAtkins, The Elgar-Atkins Friendship, David & Charles, 1984. Incidentally,after the festival, Elgar [aged 54!] planned more 'high jinks' in the form of a'Flight from Worcester' a la Charles I! He and a friend were to leave the

PAGE 8

More seriously, as a result of an idea by the Festivalorganiser (and organist of the cathedral), his friend IvorAtkins,18 Elgar had arranged two Bach chorales for brass.These were played from the top of the cathedral tower tointroduce each part of the St. Matthew Passion (beingperformed in the new Elgar-Atkins edition). This was a greatsuccess and became the sensation of the festival. 19

Among recent works performed at the festival were Elgar'snew symphony and Parry's Coronation Te Deum, as well.asspecial commissions from Bantock (Overture to a GreekTragedy), Walford Davies (Sayings of Christ, a setting ofwords from Thomas it Kempis's Imitation of Christ), W. H.Reed (Variations for String Orchestra) and VaughanWilliams (Five Mystical Songs). .

So how should we approach the Five Mystical'Songs? Thetitle begs the question, How mystical? Does the music matchthe mood of the poetry? Frank Howes made a distinctionbetween metaphysical and mystical, the former implying anenquiry of logical reasqning, the latter 'a vision employingintuition', and I think I would agree with him in placingboth Herbert and Vaughan Williams in the realms of themystical. 20

The critics differ on how far VW has succeeded in matchingthe spirit of the poetry. Wilfred Mellers thinks that,although Edwardian hints in the music of the Housmansettings of On Wenlock Edge (1909) were apposite to thetext, such Elgarian and Parryan traits in Five Mystical Songs'are at odds with the sober precision, tough wit, and humanefervour of Herbert's poetry',21 Michael Kennedy, on theother hand, asserts that 'it is a remarkable feature of thiscycle that the religious sentiments are expressed in music ofmuch romantic ardour which does not seem at odds with thetext',22 In the end, I think that music and poetry of suchheart-felt inspiration necessarily speaks most directly tothose who also see and feel the spiritual link between themand share the mystic vision.

The first two songs, Easter and I Got Me Flowers take astheir text the two halves of a single poem. In the first,Herbert praises the risen Christ and draws on thoughts ofalchemy that in the ashes of his death 'His life may makethee gold, and much more just.' Vaughan Williams's risingfourth on the exhortation 'Rise heart' is another decisivestroke, following on from the bold choral entry of A SeaSymphony.

In the following verses the composer was clearly inspired byHerbert's vivid musical imagery. The poet addresses hislute, likenin'g its substance to the Cross of Jesus which'taught all wood to resound his name', and comparing thetension in its strings with the 'stretched sinews' of thecrucified Christ. The prominent harp at these words is one

train at Great Malvern, hire a donkey and a small horse (his friend waslarge), and ride the whole length of the Malvern Hills, completing theirjourney to Hereford by train from Malvern Wells. The journey wasaccomplished, but at the expense of 'an awful chill'. [E. Wulstan Atkins, pp.231-2]1M Sir Ivor Algernon Atkins (1869-1953). Organist and Master of theChoristers, Worcester Cathedral, 1897-1950. Conductor, Three ChoirsFestivals at Worcester, 1899-1948. Knighted in 1921 for his part in therevival of the Three Choirs Festivals at Worcester in 1920 after the FirstWorld War.10 E. Wulstan Atkins, pp. 227-31.211 Frank Howes, The Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Oxford UniversityPress 1954, p. 132.21 Wilfred Mellers, Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion, 2nd edn.Albion Music 1997, p. 163.22 Michael Kennedy, Works, p. 132.

of my favourite moments in the cycle. In the third verse thepoet asks that 'heart and lute' combine to 'twist a song' andimagines an ideal harmony of lute, heart and Holy Spirit.

The second part of the poem (Vaughan Williams's secondsong) I Got Me Flowers, is Herbert's realisation of the songhe imagined in the first part. He compares Christ'sresurrection with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, asdescribed in Mark 11: 8-9. He alludes to the spices broughtby th~ women to the tomb to embalm his body but says thatChrist has no need of these. The music begins gently, butbuilds to a climax with soloist, chorus and full orchestra atthe final declaration that there is no day to compare withthis: 'There is but one, and that one ever.' VaughanWilliams begins this phrase with a variation of the SineNonline motif which crops up again and again in his music'at times of elation or release',23 and which was first heardin the final song of his Rossetti cycle The House of Life. Inthe middle he employs a wordless chorus, perhaps foremphasis, but less successfully, I think, than in the nextsong, which I shall discuss below. I am reminded of H. C.Calles's later criticism of the technique in Flos Campi, that:

The ear, which will be content to take a melody simply asa melody from Mr Tertis's viola [or here, from thebaritone soloist], feels that the same melody sung to 'Ah'or with closed lips by voices has not the same eloquence,because the voices could do something more with it.24

Love Bade Me Welcome was the last song to be written. It isalso the longest and most complex, being largely in the formof a dialogue between the poet and Love (i.e. God). Itsymbolises that final communion described by Jesus to hisdisciples when he warns them to be always prepared, likeservants awaiting the arrival of their master in the middle ofthe night:

Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when hecometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that heshall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, andwil'l come forth and serve them.25

The undulating chords in this song remind us of both theearlier Songs of Travel and the later Pastoral Symphony.Together with the questioning tone of the opening repeatedphrase, they seem to me to convey the very hesitancy anddoubt which James Day finds lacking.26 At the end,Vaughan Williams again uses a wordless chorus, to intonethe ancient Corpus Christi antiphon, 0 Sacrum Convivium.This time the voices introduce and comment on the finallines:

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:So I did sit and eat

and the soloist's melody follows the contouts of theplainsong. Here is one of those wonderful passages inVaughan Williams's music that either touches somethingvery deep within your soul or simply passes you by. ForJames Day it consists of the 'rather flaccid choral vocalisingon "Ah" at the end' and he concludes that 'VaughanWilliams's mastery of the wordless chorus in later works

21 Michael Kennedy, Works, pp. 113-14.H Quoted ibid., pp. 190-1. H. C. ('Harry') Calles, (1879-1943), as well asbeing music critic of The Times for many years, also edited the 3rd and 4theditions of Grove's Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians.25 Luke 12: 37.2(, James Day, Vaughan Williams (in 'The Master Musicians' series), 3rdedn., Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 119.

merely emphasises his comparative inexperience here. '27Christopher Palmer, on the other hand, was one of thoselucky ones to whom this music speaks directly without theneed for analysis:

The rapt stillness at [the centre of this song] - the Act, atwhich point in the traditionally Edenic key of E wordlessvoices intone the 0 Sacrum convivium - is one of the greatmoments in Vaughan Williams, like the sighting of the NewJerusalem in Sancta Civitas. '28

The penultimate song, The Call, is a hymn, profoundthoughts in deceptively simple words. In a kind of trinity,the three verses begin, each in its opening line, by invokingthree attributes of God, the ensuing three lines describinghow each attribute guides us through life and brings us tocommunion with God. The internal rhymes propel us everforward until at the end we feel we have travelled the samejourney with the poet. The symmetry of the repeated wordsand internal rhymes creates a satisfying inevitability, whichis perfectly mirrored in Vaughan Williams's beautiful tuneand its timeless modal harmony.

Finally, we come to Antiphon, for chorus alone (except inthe version for baritone and piano). This is the well-knownhymn, Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing, My God andKing, a straightforward song of praise set in a rumbustiousand forthright manner, of a kind which was to be repeated inmany later works. The Times, reporting on the first Londonperformahce,29 thought that 'the spirit of the words isreproduced with extraordinary sympathy; and the wordsthemselves are declaimed in a way which indicates a truemusical descendant of Lawes and Purcell. '30

There are four main recordings of the work in the fullorchestral version, ranging in date from 1968 to 1990. Theseare:

John Shirley-Quirk, baritone [EMI] CDM565588-2Choir of King's College, CambridgeEnglish Chamber OrchestraConducted by Davin Willcocks [ADD]Recorded in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge,August 1968

27 Ibid., p. 119.2M Christopher Palmer, sleeve notes for Chandos CDA66420, p. 7.29 At the Aeolian Hall on 21 November 1911. The work was sung oncemore by Campbell Mcinnes, but in the version for baritone and piano,without chorus. The pianist was Hamilton Harty. [Michael Kennedy, ACatalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Oxford. UniversityPress, 2nd edn. 1996, p. 56.]10 Michael Kennedy, Works, p. 133.

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Brian Rayner Cook, baritone [Chandos] CHAN 8590The London Philharmonic ChoirThe London PhilharmonicConducted by Bryden ThomsonRecorded in St Jude's Church, London NWII on 15/16January, 1988 [DDD[

....~.Henry Herford, baritone IHyperion/Helios] CDH55004Guildford Choral SocietyPhil harmonia OrchestraConducted by Hilary Davan WettonRecorded in Henry Wood Hall, London on27/28 March, 1988 [DOD]

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Thomas Allen, baritone [Hyperion] CDA66420Corydon SingersEnglish Chamber OrchestraConducted by Matthew BestRecorded on 18/19 February, 1990 [DOD]

I must say at once that these are all good performances.Indeed, listening to them many times, as I have during thelast few weels:s, I am still finding it difficult to choose oneabove the others.

Reviewing is a dangerous business. As I said at thebeginning of this article, a lot depends on the attitude of thelistener at the time of listening. On one occasion, I thoughtthat a particular performance, while clearly expressive, didnot penetrate the surface-that it seemed strangely empty.Listening to it again, 1 cannot understand my reaction at all.It was clearly a reflection of my state of mind, not thequality of the performance. In the end, subjectivity cannotbe eliminated, and if, as you listen to these recordings, youviolently disagree with my judgements, then 'fair enough'.Criticism should encourage us to listen and not just hear themusic, and should act as a stimulus to debate.

For many years the only recording was the David Willcockson EMI, with the wonderful voice of John Shirley-Quirk, tobe heard on so many fine Vaughan Williams recordings ofthe late sixties and early seventies. This much-lovedrecording is the one I grew up with, and therefore,subjectively, it is the one I have to use as my benchmark. Inits earliest incarnation it appeared on LP, and mine certainlytook a hammering.

The 1968 recording is, of course, analogue and suffers fromvery slight distortion at the biggest climaxes. That said, thesound is full and rich, and more analytically detailed thanany of its rivals. The close-miking, typical of its period,brings out every delicious detail of the orchestral part,whilst retaining the wonderfully rich ambience of TrinityCollege chapel.

You can really feel the tautness of the 'stretched sinews' inEaster, and it is a delight to savour the beautiful risingchord progression with its silky strings at the end of thesong. In The Call, Shirley-Quirk sustains the closely­wrought lines and tune perfectly, and sings with just theright tension in the dialogue of Love bade me welcome. Thevoices of King's College choir, senza espressione as markedin the Sacrum Convivium, seem to hang in the air, perfectlybalanced with the woodwind doubling the voices. Everyword of the choral Antiphon is heard, and David Willcocks,organist at Worcester in the fifties, and who knew thecomposer from those days, brings just the right amount ofdrive to the piece.

Listening to Brian Rayner Cook an_d the LondonPhilharmonic Choir and Orchestra, conducted by BrydenThomson on Chandos, two observations immediately strikeme. The recording (made nearly twenty years after theWillcocks) is digital, with a smooth, opulent 'Chandossound', and there is a more natural balance in the orchestra.

Brian Rayner Cook is a sympathetic soloist, if his tone justoccasionally reminds me (dare I say it) of the "piousness sodeprecated by Britten. His articulation, however, isexemplary in I got me flowers, and he is at his best in TheCall-beautifully and sensitively sung. Listen to theperfectly judged diminuendo at the end of The Call, fromboth soloist and orchestra.

[DDD/Ambisonic]1989]

The first London performance of Five Mystical Songs wasgiven in the voice and piano arrangement, with no chorus)1There is just one complete recording of this version:

to be employed at the last minute. Even this might beforgiven if it were not for the choir. In the final songespecially, the 'Boys' are horribly out of tune and (to becharitable) the 'Gentlemen' sound somewhat superannuated.

ERAO 127iKEVIN>MCMILLANbaritone

JOHN GREER, pianoGentlemen -& Boys of St. James' Cathedral.Giles Bryant

I am sorry to say this is a complete 'non-starter'. JeremyDavies, who is a member of the choir, appears to be singingfrom the back row of the basses, and cannot engage thelistener from there in music written for concert performance.I-lis backward position does not help the fact that, while heis accurate enough, his voice is just not of the calibrerequired to bring out the complex emotions expressed inthese songs. The organ accompaniment is no substitute forthe orchestra and I was constantly missing the subtleties ofwoodwind and strings. Only Antiphon comes across asanything like a 'proper' performance. Here, the choir arevigorous and the organ sounds less makeshift in the context.

Simon Keenlyside, baritone [Collins Classicsl 1488-2Graham Johnson, pianoRecorded in Rosslyn Hill Chapel, London, on 9-11 July1996[Volume I in the English Song series] IDDD)

Jeremy Davies, bass [York Ambisonicj YORK CD 107The Choir of Canterbury CathedralMichael Harris, organConducted by David FloodRecorded in Canterbury Cathedral in

The other reduced version uses just organ foraccompaniment and comes on a recording from CanterburyCathedral of anthems and motets of the late sixteenthcentury to the present day. A performance of VaughanWilliams's 1921 setting of Psalm 90, Lord, Thou hast beenour refuge is included:

Kevin McMillan, baritone IMarquisj ERAD 127Gentleman and Boys of the Cathedral Church of St .lames,TorontoUnnamed instrumentalistsNorman McBeth, organConducted by Giles BryantRecorded in St .lames' Cathedral, Toronto in 1989 1000]

So much for the work in its full orchestral form. Thereremain two 'cut down' versions, one of them adapted fromthe authorised string quintet and piano accompaniment, butwith added harp and timpani, and substituting organ forpiano:

On the whole, Matthew Best's tempos seem right, except inthe first song, which I find a trifle languid. Thomas Allen isan expressive soloist, especially in I got me flowers, andcomes across favourably in most of the cycle, but I do findhis quiet, sustained notes less pleasing than the other singerswe have considered, and he tends to slur between notes inThe Call.

But these are only quibbles of detail-the overallperformance comes across strongly, with a particularlyspirited Antiphon. Guildford Choral Society, in their 150th

anniversary year, sound as though they really mean it.

Henry Herford, in the earlier of the two Hyperionrecordings, uses more vibrato than the two singers so farmentioned, giving his performance slightly less mystery, nothelped by the slightly drier acoustic of the Henry WoodHall. The opening 'Rise, Heart' is good, and sounds moreauthoritative than Brian Rayner Cook's, but, on the whole,Herford's timbre is more suited to the quieter songs. He hasgood expression, though he is somewhat lack-lustre wherehe should bepoco animato at 'Awake, my lute'. The SacrumConvivium section in the third song also lacks some of themystery of the earlier recordings, and in I got me flowersHilary Davan Wetton does not quite manage the expectanttension in the hushed 'Can there be any day but this ... 'before the climactic 'There is but one, and that one ever'.

The last of the full orchestral versions also comes fromHyperion. The CD notes do not say where it was recorded,but there is just enough reverberation to give a pleasantbloom to the sound. The English Chamber Orchestra, sometwenty years on from Willcocks, are as fresh as ever.Listen, in Easter, to the beautiful high string descant on'resound his name'. The Corydon Singers, too, are a highlyskilled choir with a fine series of recordings to their name.I particularly like their light touch in Antiphon at 'His praisemay thither fly', where the puckish melisma interweaveswith the mercurial undulating chords of the orchestra.

Bryden Thomson's reading is generally as well-paced asWillcocks', except in the first song, which seems just a littletoo laid back. The harp is not as prominent in this recordingwith the result that the sinews are not quite so well­stretched, but the London Philharmonic Choir are full­bodied, and just a shade more spirited in Antiphon thanKing's College.

This Canadian recording is a disappointment. KevinMcMillan is a fine young baritone, with. good expression,but he can sound a little thin in the quieter moments, such asthe beginning of I got me flowers, and his voice is not reallya match for the maturity and experience of his rivals. Theinstrumentalists play with charm, and the modest forces suitthe reflective songs well, but this paired-down versiondraws attention to itself in the outer songs, where the bigclimaxes sound as though the local theatre pit orchestra had

The lack of chorus calls, of course, for some changes. InEaster. this involves some re-casting of the solo part,32 and

'I See above and note 29." Incidentally, there is an anomaly in the opening song, just after letter C,'thy Lord is risen'. At this point, in the choral version, the sopranos sing Ffollowed by E on ris-en. In the solo version the baritone is given the notesD, C, but Keenlyside sings C followed by Bb, as in the first line of the song.The C is sling against a chord of G, Bb, D and F in the piano part. Is there amisprint in the score?

PAGE 11

Antiphon, originally for chorus alone, is reprinted in analternative form as an appendix in the vocal score.

The voice and piano are well balanced in this recording.Simon Keenlyside is particularly fine in The Call, andanyone who has heard pianists struggling with the scales andarpeggios of Antiphon will be grateful to Graham Johnsonfor his consummate fingerwork.

The most successful song here is The Call, with its simplemelody and accompaniment, but the work as a whole is notwell served in this arrangement. There are many passageswhere mere adaptation cannot mask the removal of thechorus. This is apparent in the missing choral entry in thelast line of the second song, 'There is but one, and that oneever', but especially so in A ntiphon, whose structure andaccompaniment just do not 'come off' in this version.

Nevertheless, this is a lovely disc, all VW, and including, aswell as other songs, a full performance of On Wenlock Edge,sung by Anthony Rolfe Johnson, with the Duke Quartet.

And so, having considered all these recordings, which onewould I take with me to my desert island? Well, I hope theGentlemen and Boys of St. James's can swim, despite theirage, and I definitely do not have room for CanterburyCathedral. As I declared earlier, I have a soft spot for theWillcocks, where every tempo seems just right, and I wouldnot like to be without the wonderful voice of John Shirley­Quirk. But the recording does show its age, if only slightly.I think I will have to go for Brian Rayner Cook under thedirection of Bryden Thomson. Their sensitivity to wordsand music is exemplary, the London Philharmonic playbeautifully, and the choir is by turns mellifluous andebullient as required. I rather hope, though, that SimonKeenlyside and Graham Johnson managed to stowaway andwill be washfd up, still clinging to their piano, so that I cancontinue to enjoy their wonderful musicianship.

But let us end on a serious note. Whichever of the fullversions of Five Mystical Songs described above you mightchoose, you will not be disappointed. Michael Kennedymentions them, far more eloquently than I can, in hissumming up of the appeal of Vaughan Williams's music:

Fzfth Symphony in one of the cathedrals of the WestCountry, in the harvest-time of the year, when music,architecture, history and ::esthetic experience blend intoone.33

Now, put on the CD, sit down comfortably, close your eyes,and listen.

Jonatholl Pearson

(VW in a New Century - continuedfrom page 3)

process by which Vaughan Williams converted folksongs into hymntunes. Julian Onderdonk filled this need by comparing folksongsfrom the composer's own collection with the hymn tunes he derivedfrom them. Such a comparison testifies to Vaughan Williams's skillas an arranger and adapter, but also uncovers the fact that he oftenaltered the original folk melodies in the course of adaptation.Offering suggestions as to the range of forces - ideological, musicaland purely practical - acting upon these changes, this seminarexplored the extent to which Vaughan Williams's nationalist beliefsand agenda were reflected in the details of his editorial choices.

Guido HeldtDialectics of Development - Nature and Structure in In the FenCountry

Musicological literature usually describes Vaughan Williams's Inthe Fen Country as one important step in a natural developmenttowards folksong-based music in his Leuvre. But on closer scrutinythis development is not quite so smooth. Guido Heldt charted thisdevelopment.

Philip Brett'Williams the Headmaster and Britten the Promising New Boyin the National School of Composition'

'Williams being of course the Headmaster' wrote Britten in July1937 about his 'school relationship' with Walton as 'thehead-prefect of English music' (soon to 'leave & return as a memberof the stafr). In October of the same year, Britten finished theAuden cycle, On this Island, Op. 11, notable for its openingrhetorical flourish invoking the historical lineage from Purcellwhich countered the older composer's obsession with 'the TudorSchool'. From that point on, Britten appears perhaps consciously tohave conceived of himself as vying at least for the post of HeadBoy, matching every aspect of Vaughan Williams's work with analternative, and supporting other figures (such as Percy Grainger forwhose music he cannot have felt deep sympathy) wherever possible.During the 1940s, and especially after his return from the U.S.,Britten cultivated folksong arrangement in very different terms fromthose of Vaughan Williams, and his development of a new style ofchoral music was part of the same picture. Philip Brett saw thestrategy of embracing opera, a genre in which Vaughan Williamswas vulnerable, as part of this almost CEdipal struggle.

-Its rich humanity is its surest stake for survival and can beexpected to appeal to generations that did not know theman's strong personal magnetism and influence. Butsomething of these will be understood by a sympathetic

listener to a performance of the Five Mystical Songs or the JJ Michael Kennedy, Works, p. 373.

PAGE 12

FIVE MYSTICAL SONGS

R.VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.

Baritone Solo. ChOrUS(ad lib.) and Orchestra

Stephen Connock

eat.

You must sit down,says Love, and tastemy meat:

So I did sit and

The Call is a simple andlovely song which seemsto distil the essence ofHerbert's religious vision.

Love bade me welcome isthe most far-reaching songof the cycle and the last tobe written (1911). Thedialogue of the poem isexquisitely set and thechoir sings the evocativechant 0 Sacrumconvivium, marked pppp,to accompany thebaritone's romanticsetting of:

Can there be any day but this,Though many suns to shine endeavour?We count three hundred, but we miss:There is but one, and that one ever.

Let all the world in evety corner sing,My God and King.

It is' an exuberant and fitting ending to aheartfelt cycle.

attracted to these moving musical images.

I got me flowers is a tender song, rapt in away unique to Vaughan Williams. Theyearning, plainsong style melody at The Sunarising in the East is followed by a momentof wonderful beauty:

In the original, these words are from thesecond part of the poem Easter, thus the dayin question is the same most high day as inthe first song. Vaughan Williams sensiblysplits the poem in two since the metre iscompletely different after the words I got meflowers to strew thy way. Herbert movesfrom complex rhyming couplets· with an

unusual metrical pattern tosimpler quatrains (Line19: see George Herbert,The Complete EnglishPoems, Penguin Classics,1991, p. 37.)

PRICE 6/~ NETOIORUS PARTS 1/6 ..

thy

Sing his

and twist

BY

FOR

Finally, Antiphon burstsupon us, the baritone

Page 1 ofthe score ofFive Mystical Songs strangely silent, althoughthere is a version of this

song for soloist rather than choir:

11.1.01; IN IH'111I...4:Jn

Words by

SET TO MUSIC

EASTER.I GOT ME FLOWERS.LOVE BADE ME WELCOME.

THE CALL.ANTIPHON.

LONDON.

STAINER & BELL. LTD.58 Berners Street.. W.

GEORGE HERBERT

Consort both heart and lute,a song

Pleasant and long

Awake, my lute, and struggle forpart

With all thy art

NPJ.2.3.4.5.

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen.praise

Without delays

As Ursula Vaughan Williams has pointedoui (see page 17), her future husband was

and:

be further developed in the Four Hymns of1914. The musical imagery in this song isnoteworthy, for example:

is met by equally striking music, markedMaestoso, rising from B flat to E flat andestablishing a style of exultant mysticism to

The opening song, Easter, to the strikingwords:

into the street and dragging completestrangers into the living room and not lettingthem go until they admit that I got meflowers and Love bade me welcome are themost beautiful things they have ever heard.

theSongs

COPYRIGHT.

Such Sweet ~t

Five Mystical Songs is, for this writer, oneof those Vaughan Williams works that,when 1 play it, makes me feel like rushing

Vaughan Williams's friend Hubert Foss,noting the 'mystical humility and faith ofthe poet' found the composer 'managing thewords with a new musical ease'. SimonaPakenham added that 'Vaughan Williamsexactly matches his poet, writingaffectionately, peacefully and making use ofthe rhythms that grow naturally out of thewords'. A.E.F. Dickinson, by contrast,found the work 'too reactionary to bedistinctive' and 'musically unpersuasive'.

Although the beginnings ofthe work can be traced to1906, just after the Rossettiand Tennyson settings, thestyle of which lingers on inthese songs, the work wascompleted in 1910-11. Theintervening four years hadbeen immensely important toVaughan Williams, with hiswork on the English Hymnalbeing completed, his period ofstudy with Ravel and hisdiscovery of the musicalpotential of Walt Whitman. IfWhitman opened for VaughanWilliams a new exultant,visionary and confident styleof writing, George Herbertcombined these qualities witha yearning romanticism,memorable imagery andbeautiful words. No matterthat this Rector-Poet wasintensely religious andVaughan Williams a professedatheist. What mattered toVaughan Williams was thestre~gth of Herbert's vision,his wonderful poetry and hissincerity - the same qualitiesthat attracted VaughanWilliams to John Bunyan.

The Five Mystical Songs were premieredalmost exactly a year after the firstperfohnance of the Fantasia 0/7 a Theme byThomas Tallis. There are similaritiesbetween the two works, not in structure or ininstrumentation, but in styIe and spirit. TheFive Mystical Songs show the composer athis most lyrical and fluent, aligning thespirituality of Tallis with the romanticism ofHugh the Drover. As Michael Kennedy hasput it, the work blurs the boundary betweenmysticism and sensuality.

Stephen Connock exploresbackground to the Five Mysticaland discusses each song in turn.

PAGE 13

(colltillued 011 page 16)

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wildAt evelJl word,

Methoughts I heard one calling, Child!And I replied, My Lord.

In 1'628, his friend Bishop Williams of Lincoln offered him thePrebend of Leighton Ecclesia, near Huntingdon. He accepted it, andwas made Deacon at some point. But he wasn't rj:quired to live inthe parish and there is no record of his ever having visited it. Hisresponsibility was to rebuild the Church, which he did, and therestands today the magnificent memorial to him, and it still retains thefurnishings that he gave.

A strong influence in his lifewas his mother. After herdeath in 1527 he wrote aseries of poems, some inLatin, some in Greek, as amemorial to her, showing thedepth of his grief. It wasshortly after this that heresigned his oft1ce of PublicOrator. His subsequentmovements are obscure, butwhile staying at DauntseyHouse, near Chippenham hemet his step-father's cousin,Jane Danvers, and they weremarried in the magnificentCollegiate Church atEddington on 5 March 1529.

::JI:::::Ir::z:I""""'!'=:::tn. It is thought that they lived atBainton House nearby whileGeorge was considering thefuture.Memorial willdow to George

Herbert ill St. Alldrew's Church

In 1630, the parish of Fuggleston-cum-Bemerton became vacant;and the Earl of Pembroke put forward the name of his cousin as acandidate. The proposition brought much mental turmoil to Herbertwho endured "such spiritual conflicts as none can think, but onlythose that have endured them". It would be an unusual post for onewith his abilities and social background: but in this countryside hemight find the peace of mind which he had lacked among theworld's affairs.

What was it that changed this elegant academic gentleman into acountry parson, this aristocratic courtier into a saint? It was partlythat he was never free to choose for himself: there was alwaysanother voice that spoke to him. This voice shows the futility ofmuch of his life and purpose. In the Collar he tells of a mood inwhich he decides to abandon the Christian life, with its sighs andtears, its cold dispute of which is fit, and follow a life of earthlypleasure. But in the last two lines we hear precisely how the moodended - he was checked by the voice of Christ:

Oh that I were an orange tree,That busy plant!

Then should I ever laden be,And never want

Some frUit for him that dressed me.But we are still too young or old:

The man is gone.Before we do our wares unfold:

So we freeze on,Until the grave increase our cold.

We know that he suffered ill health: but that does not seemsufficient to have caused are-orientation of his life. Perhaps he wasasking himself the questions that beset so many of us. I-Iad he areally worth while purpose in life? What was he doing? Had God abetter use for him? There seems a yearning for some other role, tobe someone or something else. From Employment:

Lord, in my silence how do I despiseWhat upon trust

Is styled honour, riches orfair eyes:But is fair dust!

I surnamed them gilded clay,Dear earth, fine grass or hay:

In all, I think my foot doth ever treadUpon their head.

Although life must have been full of interest and the world was athis feet, not all was well. In the midst of the gaiety, drama anddiversions of Court life and the heights of intellectual exchange atCambridge, he began to suffer considerable disturbance. Whatabout his earlier intentions of ordination? How did they fit into hispattern of life among the high lights of Court society with dreams offurther advancement? Self-questioning appears in Frailty:

George Herbert was al, distinguished scholar

who spent the largestpart of his life inCambridge, but whocompleted his days hereas Rector of this smallvillage. He was bornon 3rd April, 1593, theyounger son of a Welshborder family, in

George Herbert Montgomery, He waseducated at Westminster

and at the age of sixteen won a scholarship at Trinity College,Cambridge, which he entered in 1609, with the intention of offeringhimself for the priesthood. He had already started to write poetry,and in a letter to his mother in 1610 declares that "my poor abilitiesin poetly shall be all, and ever consecrated to God's gIOly". Hewas elected a Fellow of the College in 1614: but further, his abilitywas such that he was appointed Public Orator of the University in1620. Which senior post was often the prelude to some high officeof state; and as he had attained this at the age of twenty-seven hisgifts were such that one would confidently predict a brilliant future,It was: but not in the way that anyone would have expected.

George Herbert (1630 - 1633)

As you enter the Church your eye is qaught by a media:val arcq inthe opposite north wall, which proclaims that the Church's orig'insgo back to the XIVth century, The building has been restoredseveral times, but still retains mu~h of its original character. Muchof the north wall may well be largely a rebuild ofless than a centuryback. On the other hand, if you turn ani! look at the south wall,nobody would have built that in recent centuries: and the doorthrough which you entered is almost certainly that which George

Herbert used three anda half centuries ago.For the placid flow ofvillage life here wassuddenly illuminated byhis arrival as Rector in1630.

PAGE 14

~...""

View ofSalisbury cathedral across thewater meadows from Arthur Vaugh all

Williams's residellce ill Bemertoll

Although Arthur diedtoo young to directlyinfluence Ralph, hischaracter must have hadsome bearing on thedevelopment of hisson's personality. It maybe that Arthur's legacywas to give RVW acertain humility andlifelong concern forothers. Ralph'sprivileged background

might not otherwise haveled to these qualities.Furthermore, Ralph'sself-effacing characterand consistent tendency tounder-statement may owemuch to his father. We cannever know. The RVWSociety will, however, beconducting further researchinto Arthur's background andwill publish this in theOctober, 2000 edition of theJournal to commemorate thc125th anniversary of ArthurVaughan Williams's death in1875.

Arthur Vaughall Williams(Photograph courtesy of

Ursula Vaughall Williams)

Stephell COllllock

Arthur's sudden death on 9 February, 1875, aged just 41, was aterrible shock. Arthur had been dogged with ill health. The Rev.Pigott's glowing testimonial to Arthur when he left Bemerton in1863 makes reference to his health, which improved during hisresidence at Salisbury (UVW, page 3). His death was after anillness which, according to the schoolmaster's log, only began onthe morning of the 7th

of February, (quoted inUVW, page 9). Thissuggests tuberculosis,although the evidence ofcause of death isunclear.

Illustratioll 2 - St. Johll's Church at Bemertoll whereArthur Vaugh all Williams became Curate ill 1861

second son, Ralph, was born on October 12th 1872 at the vicaragein Down Ampney.

-.'"~

In 1860, shortly after receiving hisM.A., the Bishop of Oxfordordained him Deacon. For theVaughan Williams sons, it waseither the law or the church for acareer. His first appointment was asCurate at St. Andrew's church inLower Bemerton, near Salisbury (seeIllustration 1). Nearby, a newchurch - St. John's - was completedin 186 I and Arthur VaughanWilliams became this church's firstcurate. (See lllustration 2).

Ursula Vaughan Williams's superbbiography of her husband (OUP,1964) is the major source forinformation on Arthur. She tells usthat he went to Christ Church in1854 where he took his B.A. in 1857and his M.A. in 1860 - the same yearthat 'he won a silveri tankard in afoot steeple chase', (UVW, page 2).

Arthur Vaughall Williamsill the 1860s.

(Photograph courtesy ofUrsula Vaughall Williams)

Meantime, Alihur Vaughan Willi8ms had met Margaret Wedgwood,from neighbouring Leith Hill Place, and they had become engagedin 1867. They married at Coldharbour Church in 1868. Their

An entry in the schoolbook for October 3rd 1871 shows ArthurVaughan Williams visiting the school to take the upper Standards inReligious Education. (p. 75. For information on how to obtain thisHistOlY see back page ofthe Journal.)

The Rev. Arthur Vaughan Williams played a prominent role in thevillage affairs... At Down Ampney, he figures largely in theschool life... conducting the scripture lessons and determining theholiday dates according to the harvest.

Illustratioll 1 - Arthur Vaugh all Williams's firstappoilltmellt was to George Herbert's lovelyChurch ofSt. Alldrew's ill Lower Bemertoll

The evidence from Arthur's periodat Bemerton shows that he wasdeeply interested in education. This

interest continued at Down Ampney where he was appointed vicarin 1868 following a stint at Halsall in Lancashire. As the HistOlY ofDown Ampney, compiled by Pamela Varey, tells us:

Charles Arthur Vaughan Williams was the third son of EdwardVaughan Williams and Jane Bagot. Born in 1834, he was one ofseven children - six sons and one daughter. Arthur was brought upat Tanhurst on the slopes of Leith Hill and was educated atWestminster School.

Arthur Vaughan Williams (1860-1863)

PAGE 15

(colltilluedfrom page 14)On 25th April he was instituted in this Church by Dr. Davenant,Bishop of Salisbury. The Church needed much restoration, so didthe Rectory. Of the latter, the south front looks today much asHerbert left it, but the north front has been rebuilt. He and his wifehad no children, but he adopted three nieces who were to be broughtup in his home. It sounds a happy place. "Men usually think thatservants for their money are as other things they buy, even as apiece ofwood, which they may cut, or hack, or throw into the jire,so that they pay them their wages, all is well".

;~:~:~;~_~~'Zi.Plaque outside the Rectory at Lower Bemertoll

Not rudely, as a beast,To run into an action;But still to make thee prepossessed,And give it his pel/ection.

A man that looks on glass,On it may stay his eye;Of ifhe pleaseth. through it pass,And then the heaven espy.

All may ofthee partake:Nothing can be so mean,Which with this tincture (jar thy sake)Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clauseMakes drudge/)' divine;Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws.Makes that and the actionjine.

This is the famous stoneThat turneth all to gold.For that which God doth touch and ownCannot for less be told.

To the nation:

He was still only a Deacon on his arrival, and was ordained priest inthe Cathedral on 19th September. He was soon committed to hisrole as parish priest, and became the ideal country parson. His careof the people, his ordering of public worship, which he saw as ofthegreatest importance in its influence on the spiritual life of thepeople, is clearly portrayed in his book The Country Parson. Buthis life here was not to be long. As the years passed, the fatal stagesof consumption gradually took their toll, and he died here on 1stMarch 1633. His body was buried under the chancel floor, andsome of the Cathedral choir, whose music had meant so much tohim, came to sing at the funeral.

o England, filll ofsin, but most ofsloth:Spit out thy phlegm, andjill thy breast with glory.

P C Magee, Rector 1975-84.

Reproduced with the kind approval of the Rector of St Andrew'sChurch, Bemerton.

Fifth Sympholly (colltilluedfrompage 6)

strings very quietly sustaining the final sonority. If we can acceptthis as, to put it crudely, the answer to the crisis which has precededit, then we will feel that the work completely resolves that crisis andanswers the conflicts and the tensions that have been verypowerfully put forward. But I don't think we necessarily have tohear the ending in that way. We can even hear it differently ondifferent occasions, depending on how much impact the more crisis­ridden episodes of the work made on us. Sometimes we may feelthat the serenity is complete, that we are getting, as Wilfrid Mellerssaid so eloquently, a vision of the new Jerusalem at the end. This issomething The Pilgrim's Progress couldn't really manage as well asit is managed' in the Fifth Symphony. But are we truly getting thenew Jerusalem, or are we retreating to a state of suspendedanimation, a state of numbness? Is there not still some ambiguity,some residual tension about the ending? Well, I am not going toanswer that question because, as I hope I've made clear, I think itcan be either. It doesn't have to be one or the other; we can feeldifferently in different performances, depending on our mood at thetime. But what to me is the absolute crucial thing is that the musichas the stature to allow for these alternatives, these nuances: and thatis ultimately what confirms the Fifth Symphony as a majorsymphonic achievement. We can talk endlessly about what themusic means, but ultimately what it means is the result of theextraordinary mastery of symphonic process and symphonicstructure which Vaughan Williams demonstrates in this remarkablecomposition.

'-,-

George Herbert's Memorial Stolle illSt. Alldrew 's Church

He lived barely forty years; and here for less than three. Why doeshe still appeal to the world, which today is so different from theworld in which helived? Humannature is still thesame, and hUfllanproblems are stillthe same: and hecan speak to uswith real religiousdevotion as wellas with a profoundknowledge ofhuman feelings:and all conveyedin poetry which istimeless. He canspeak to the humancondition at anytime: and in our brash and materialistic society we can take couragefrom a scholar, aristocrat and saint who spurned the world's honoursand found happiness and fulfillment in his humble role here.

To the individual:

Lastly, what has he to say to us today?

Teach me, my God and King,/n all things thee to see,And what I do in anything,To do it as for thee.

(Edited from all illustrated talk givell at the RCM all 21 February1998 alld reproduced by killd permissioll of Amold Whittall alldthe RCM.)

PAGE 16

Ursula Vaughan Williams contributed the following notes to a programme which included the Five Mystical Songs on 28th

February, 1969 at the Royal Festival Hall:

Ralph Vaughan Williams's father was for a time curate at Bemerton, George Herbert's parish, just outside Salisbwy, and then, or aftertheir marriage, he gave Ralph's mother a copy of Herbert's poems. So it is quite possible that R VW knew some of theseji-om earlychildhood, for his mother used to read aloud to her children and her choice was wide: poet/y, adventure, faily tales and classics had apart in the time they spent with her each day.

In the course ofhis life, RVW set a number ofpoems by Herbert andji-om the earliest to the latest there is a special quality, a belonging, amatching ofmood to that.of the poet's, that reminds the listener that Herbert was also a musician. It is as if the tune was implicit in thepoem and RVW heard it.

The Five Mystical Songs were written for the Three Choirs Festival of1911 at Worcester. The first pe/formance was on 14th Septemberwhen the soloist was Campbell Jvfcinnes and the composer conducted.

(Reproduced with the kind permission of Ursula Vaughan Williams)

Ursula Vaughan Williams met Stephen Connock to discuss George Herbert in more detail in November 1998. She began by referring tothe 'delightful coincidence of both George Herbert and Arthur Vaughan Williams being connected to the same church near Salisbury'.Ursula then recalled that the Five Mystical Songs arose from a commission for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester in 1911, followingthe success of the Tallis Fantasia the previous year. He loved Worcester, and chose the Herbert songs for the occasion in a setting forbaritone, chorus and orchestra. He had the voice of Campbell McInnes in mind. Ursula said that Campbell McInnes was 'terrified of thenew work' during rehearsals, finding it technically demanding. There was not enough rehearsal time. 'Ralph who was conducting was notable to eat for a long time before the concert. When it ended successfully, he was starving and the first thing he did was to have a hugesupper!'

The musical imagery in many of the poems was important to Vaughan Williams, confirmed Ursula. She added that Ralph was excited bythe poetry of George Herbert and not at all put off by its religious content. She explained that while he did not want to have anything to dowith the church directly, he was attracted to the underlying vision, to the spirituality which Herbert so warmly embraced.

Considerable progress is being made in both the UK and the USA to enable the charity to meet its objectives to cancer research, Britishmusic (including RVW) and to encourage the healing power of music. In the UK, further performances of A Garland/or Linda have beenheld in London and Oxford and have consolidated the high standard of the music. Both concerts were by the Joyful Company of Singersunder Peter Broadbent. Further performances are scheduled for Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 28 th May and The Anvil at Basingstokeon 9th June. BBC Radio 3 are proposing a broadcast on 13th February and it is still hoped that Classic FM will broadcast the work at theend ofJanuary.

The EMI CD is in finished form and is exeellent. It is due to be in the shops in the UK on 7th February and a launch event is being heldfor invited guests only on the 27th January, 2000. A press conference will accompany the concert and Sir Paul McCartney will attend thisevent along with the other composers. 300 guests have already accepted invitations to the concert. The- charity gets £2.24 for each CDsold.

A schools' competition, to eompose A Songfor Linda, is being launched in the Spring. More details will be included in the June Journal.

The charity is now formally incorporated in the USA. A USA board has been convened whieh includes two of the leading USA cancerspecialists. The premiere of A Garlandfor Linda in the USA is at Riverside Church, New York City, on 3rd June, 2000 - and The GarlandAppeal now has an office in New York, on 54th Street, and one full time employee is based there. Considerable corporate interest is beingshown in the Appeal in America.

As always, more help is needed and any member wishing to participate directly in the Appeal's work should contact Stephen Connock.

Stephen Connock

PAGE 17

that reduced orchestras could do them; andif we glance through the surviving picturesof him, a man constantly conducting,making music. These disparate elements ofhis art are focussed in the St MatthewPassion.

* * * * *RVW died when I was 16, and I never sawhim conduct, so my enthusiasm for him as aconductor is probably somewhat differentfrom those who played and sang under hisdirection. As well as his now classicperformance of the Fourth Symphony,recorded by HMV, my appreciation ofVaughan Williams as a conductor comesfrom a rather remarkable recording on a nowvery rare set of LPs issued in Canada on theCaviar label, but unavailable for over 30years. This recording is from the Leith HillFestival at Dorking, on 5 March 1958, somefour-and-a-half months before VaughanWilliams died at the age of 86. Heconducted Bach's St Matthew Passion, orrather, the St Matthew Passion refractedthrough a lifetime's study, enthusiasm andexperience; what was effectively his ownperforming edition of Bach's masterpiece.With its piano continuo, it asks so manyquestions about Vaughan Williams'sattitude to Bach, as well as VaughanWilliams as conductor. This is from hisradio talk 'Bach the Great Bourgeois', fromJuly 1950.

When I was a small boy I was brought upalmost entirely on Handel, and especiallythe Handel Festival. I once heard a BachGavotte at a village concert and askedwhether it was right to put such a name onthe same programme as the great masters,and my aunt told me that Bach was quitea good composer: but of course not sogood as Handel (this being the acceptedview in those days); and with the strangeincuriosity of a child I left it at that andmade no further inquiries until 1 went toschool at ten years old.There I was taken in hand by the musicmaster, Mr. C. T. West, whose name Ishall always hold in reverence. He soonrealised that I did not much care for the'Maiden's Prayer' or 'True Love' and oneday - a momentous day for me - hebrought me a Bach Album edited byBerthold Tours. Here indeed was arevelation; here was somethingundeniably ,belonging to no period orstyle, something for all time. This iswhere Bach differs from other composers.They, with the exception of a fewoutstanding Beethoven works, belong totheir time, but Bach, though superficiallyhe may speak the eighteenth-centurylanguage, belongs to no school or period.

There is a tendency nowadays to 'put Bachin his place'. He is labelled as 'Baroque'(whatever that may mean) and according tothe latest orders from Germany he is to beperformed as 'period music in the preciseperiwig style'. This is all part of a

PAGE 18

movement to 'play Bach as he wrote it'. Todo this would be impossible even if wewanted to. Our violins are played on quite·adifferent principle; our horns are soft andour trombones are loud. I should like to seeMr. Goossens confronted with one of thosegross bagpipe instruments which in Bach'stime stood for an oboe. The harpsichord,however it may sound in a small room - andto my mind it never has a pleasant sound - ina large concert room sounds just like theticking of a sewing machine. We have nolonger, thank Heaven, the Baroque style oforgan, which we are told, with veryinsufficient evidence, was the kind ofinstrument Bach played upon. (By the way,I see there is a movement afoot to substitutethis bubble-and-squeak type of instrumentfor the noble diapason and soft mixtures ofour cathedral organs.)

During Vaughan Williams's lifetime, 37 ofhis works were given at the Three ChoirsFestival, of which, 29 were conducted bythe composer at one time or another. In fact,he conducted 47 actual performances of hisown music at the Three Choirs in the periodfrom 1910 to I956, several of them on anumber of occasions. These included theTallis Fantasia and Job, each heard fourtimes, and Dona Nobis Pacem, SanctaCivitas, the Pastoral Symphony and TheLark Ascending three times each. 26performances of RVW's music were givenat the Worcester Three Choirs in hislifetime, and Worcester saw RVW conductfour premieres of his own music - FiveMystical Songs in 1911; Four Hymns fortenor and strings in 1920; the Magnificat inI932; and Hodie in 1954.

We cannot perform Bach exactly as he wasplayed in his time even if we wanted to, andthe question is, do we want to? I sayemphatically, No! Some music dies with itsperiod, but what is really immortal enduresfrom generation to generation. Theinterpretation and with it the means ofinterpretation differ with each generation. Ifthe music is ephemeral it will disappear withany change of fashion. If the music is reallyalive it will live on through all thealterations of musical thought.

A young exquisite once said to me, 'I don'tlike Bach, he is so bourgeois', to which Iprobably answered that being bourgeoismyself, I considered Bach the greatest of allcomposers.

It is Bach's intense humanity which endearshim to me. 1

Many of RVW's pronouncements here raiseguffaws when the recording of the composerhimself giving the talk is played. There aremany points to be made and we couldanalyse RVW's attitude to the periodperformance movement of his day, but thatis for another paper. But, we have a paradox.Vaughan Williams was a man whointroduced to his orchestra the saxophone,the fiGgel horn, the wind machine and thevocalising soprano - in short a man with avivid aural imagination, an acute ear and aninventive and questing mind; a visionary inany sense, yet a man who was ever involvedand preoccupied with the practicalities ofperformance; a man who cued his scores so

RVW conducting A Sea Symphonyat the Norwich Festival

I have not been able to undertake a completecensus ofRVW conducting RVW, but a fewinquiries indicate that while he was not anevery-day conductor, he was acomparatively familiar figure on therostrum. At the Proms, for example, a scanthrough a run of programmes shows that in1929, for example, he conducted theConcerto Accademico and songs from Hughthe Drover. It was A London Symphony in1931, the Pastoral in 1933, the Fourth in1937. During the War, it was the firstperformance of the Fifth Symphony on 24June 1943. On 31 July 1945, the suite - avery extended suite - from his film Story ofa Flemish Farm. In 1946 and 1948 he

1 "Bach, the Great Bourgeois" IN Some Thoughtson Beethoven's Choral Symphony with writingson other musical subjects by Ralph VaughanWilliams. OUP, 1953 pp 122-3

I can imagine there must have been thosewho constantly found themselvesperforming for him, at the Three Choirs, atthe Leith Hill Festival, in the Bach Choir, inthe leading orchestras of the day. Yet wehave a view of him as rather homespun,tended to be thought of by a certainconstituency as a rather bumbling, amateurand ineffective conductor. This was perhapssuggested by Columbia's recordings withhim of those folk dances, which I feel arerather routine, seemingly presented in a no­nonsense brisk manner in 1929. While it isnice to have them, for me this was a terriblewasted opportunity. All the survivingrecordings of his performances of his ownmusic share this briskness of approach, butthey project a burning passion and sincerityimpossible to divine from such folkarrangements. My view of RVW as aconductor, even if there were no FourthSymphony, is that wonderfully dynamicsketch by Guy Worsdell on the cover ofUrsula Vaughan Williams's biography ofher husband, and that terrifying glare at arehearsal at Buffalo in 1954. Yet in hisbook Music on Record, the legendary FredGaisberg, that vastly experienced pioneer ofrecording, who captured most of Elgar'sown performances on wax, wrote aboutRVW:

and this may be why we do not know it.But, taken together these are suchilluminating performances to give us' realcause to regret that more of VaughanWilliams's art has not been preserved for us.However, they also constitute a valuablebody of evidence of the composer'sapproach to his own music, providingguidance to later performers of how thecomposer viewed some of his mostcharacteristic works.

* * * * *

years before, and the recording reveals that timehad not dealt sympathetically with them.• Gaisberg, F W: lvlusic on Record. Robert I-Iale,1946 p 232 (previously published in the USA asThe Music Goes Round, New York, Macmillan,1942.)

Even if that was an accurate description ofwhat went on, one wonders whetherGaisberg had any interest in, or sympathywith, Vaughan Williams's music, for if hehad, surely he must have realised theunprecedented power of the composer's ownperformance of his Symphony which he hadjust completed. However, the impressionGaisberg had formed meant that far from thegreat record producer being the architect ofthe preservation of the composer's

When recently he recorded for us hisFourth Symphony I noticed how gentlyand unobtrusively he indicated his wishesto the men. I-lis movements were ratherawkward and he employed a minimum ofgesticulation. Self-effacing and silent to adegree, he had not the equipment for agood conductor. ... 4

Oh, you chaps are all right. You know itbut I've never conducted it before.There's one place where you're playingone thing and I seem to be conductingsomething else. I think the best way isnot to listen - don't you?2

, The ReM }'4agazine LV no I Easter term 1959p441 The soloists included some of the originalperformers from the first performance sixteen

But there is more: the tally that I havementioned thus far: we have two survivingperformances of the Fifth S)i/llphony, one ofA London Symphony and thc 1954 Promperformance of the Serenade to Music. Thelast, vocally, is not a good performance3

So, in fact, living memory at one time oranother he conducted the tirst sixsymphonies, the Fifth and A LondonSymphony many times. Vaughan Williams'sown performances were broadcast well intothe era of domestic tape recorders - in factwhat we have here is a great project for theRalph Vaughan Williams Society - anational census of surviving RVWconducting RVW So check yourcollections, your attics, the collections ofelderly friends and relatives. Surely theremust be more of this precious heritage outthere, and even one item rediscovered wouldmaterially add to our knowledge of RVW.

also appeared on CD, from privatelyrecorded acetates. For me this merelyunderlies what might be possible, for it is anexciting and uplifting reading as I wi,lldiscuss below, and in remarkably goodsound considering the circumstances of itspreservation. This 1936 performance wasthe second, six weeks after the first inHudderstield. It has the soloists of the first,to which it must approximate closely.

, But that is not the end; of the matter. There

are some othersurviving RVWperformances, and 1am convinced that yetmore recordings ofthe composerconducting his ownmusic are yet to turnup. It does seemstrange, though, thatmore were not more

RVW conducting the Band ofthe 2nd Bt;'., Duke ofCoTllwall's officially preserved byLight Infantry in England's Pleasant Land the BBe. However,

the opportunity wasthere for amateur recordists (tape recordistsafter 1951) for there were broadcasts of allof the then written symphonies under thecomposer's baton in the 1950s except forthe Fourth. Even the Sixth Symphony washeard in 1950. Indeed, Ralph Nicholsonrecalled an amusing incident when he wasconducting the Sixth Symphony, VaughanWilliams retorting to the orchestra:

In addition to this official tally, asmentioned above RVW's broadcast of thesecond - studio - performance of DonaNobis Pacem, on November 13th 1936 has

So much for later broadcasts and publicperformances. We will return to thembelow. But first what was officiallyrecorded? As most readers will know it is adisappointingly small tally. VaughanWilliams conducted just three of his ownworks for 78s. Acoustic recordings of theoverture The Wasps and the ballet Old KingCole, the latter when the music was stillquite new, plus just one electrical recording,the celebrated HMV 78s of the FourthSymphony. There was also a group of folkdances, which have recently been reissuedon a very recommendable CD set fromPearl.

Also, one is not necessarily only researchingso early a period, for from 1950 to 1956RVW conducted as many as ten ThreeChoirs performances including the premiereof Hodie, and the Pastoral and Sixthsymphonies. Raising further opportunitiesfor some enthusiast of the time to havecaptured them.

Off-air recording, became a practical reality,at least for the few, from around 1934.Some of these composer performances werecertainly broadcast, and so from the mid­1930s onwards, there is always thepossibility that someone might haverecorded them off-air. From the earlyperiod we know that Dona Nobis Pacemwas thus preserved in 1936 (and issued forus by Pearl, a wonderful survival) and wenow know that most of the first performanceof the Fifth Symphony also from 1943 alsosurvives on a home recording, though not,as yet, given wider circulation.

conducted A London Symphony at theProms, while in 1947, on 15 and 16October, he conducted Albert Hallperformances for his 75th birthday. In 1948he conducted the first performance of hisPm'fila; on 10 August 1954 he conductedhis Serenade to Music. On 6 February 1955A Sea Symphony was relayed fromBirmingham Town Hall.

PAGE 19

I heard this wonderful work - I wasthrilled - I didn't understand it ~ But I wasmoved, deeply. I think if I had to isolatefrom all the rest, anyone impression of apurely musical sort that mattered most tome in the whole of my life as a musician,it would be the hearing of that work notknowing at all what I w.as going to hearbut knowing that what I had heard Ishould never forget. 6

(, BBC interval talk, now in BBC Archives7 Gramophone February 1988

RVW also conducted Tallis within livingmemory, but I have not been able to find arecording or a critical account, to suggesthow he took it, or a timing to give us a clue.

However, on 29 January 1936, theBoyd Neel String Orchestra undertheir conductor Boyd Neel, and withthe composer in attendance, recordedthe Tallis Fantasia at the ChenilGalleries in Chelsea for Decca. Theissued records made much of the factthat the recording was "supervised bythe composer". I am willing tobelieve that Boyd NeeI was taking hiscue from the composer in matters oftempi, but we are in no way takenback to the glorious acoustic ofGloucester Cathedral in 1910, whenRVW conducted the firstperformance, and for me this is ratherdisappointing though undoubtedlyreflecting the composers view onhow it should go.

legendary first hearing of the Tallis Fantasiain Gloucester Cathedral so memorablyrecalled by Herbert Howells. Howells toldthe story on several occasions, this datesfrom the 1950s:

5 BBC interval talk, now in BBC Archives.

We have already touched on RVW'sonly commercial electrical recordingof his own music, that gramophoneclassic the Fourth Symphony. SirAdrian Boult had given the firstperformance on 10 April 1935 atQueen's Hall, and he repeated it

RVW conducting A London Symphony there in the 1935-36 season and onat an Albert Hall prom, 31 July 1946 23 April 1936 in the Konzerthaus in

to find a composer communicating his' own Vienna. But RVW did conduct it in the hall,vision. in the 1937 season of Promenade concerts,

on 14 September, and I think it must havebeen his account then which resulted in himbeing chosen to conduct the recording inpreference to Sir Adrian. What he producedin HMV's Abbey Road Studio No 1 on 11October, in the searching atmosphere of arecording session, had an almost visionaryintensity and with what Alan Saundersreferred to in a review as 'that unique,unerring and unvarnished directness whichonly a composer performance can bring'7.The BBC Symphony playas if their livesdepend on it. In fact it recalls the intensitythat they brought to other visitingconductors in the 1930s, notably Toscanini.No one has equalled it.

The other, and longer, Vocal ion recordingfrom 1925, was when the composerconducted his Old King Cole ball,et within acouple of years of the first performance.This was a remarkable and pioneeringundertaking at the time. How many canthey have sold? We need to remember thatVaughan Williams was a regular performer,particularly of his own music. But he wasalso the conductor of the Bach Choir fromDecember 1921, and significantly there soonfollowed his first performance of the StMatthew Passion in March 1923. Heconducted many first performances of hisown music, including A Sea Symphony, ALondon Symphony - and, of course, that

He listened patiently all through and thensaid he thought everything was too fast. Iventured meekly to remind him what hadhappened at the first rehearsals, and hisreply was characteristic - "Oh yes, Iknow, but you see I've conducted itmyself several times since then, and I findthat that slow stuff isn't as boring as Ithought it might be."5

But to return to The Wasps. We only haveto follow the performance once we reach themiddle section and hear how VaughanWilliams moulds his lovely slow tune torealise how this is very much a composer'sperformance: irrespective of the technicallimitations of the medium. One of thenewly discovered off-air recordings is ofVaughan Williams conducting another ofhis works, the Serenade to NIusic, and oneonly has to listen to the orchestral opening

I suspect that Vaughan Williams had firstbeen exposed both to the limitations and theopportunities of recording in the acousticera, when a young Malcolm Sargentconducted extended extracts from Hugh theDrover in September 1924 on ten sides.This was only three months after the BritishNational Opera Company's stage premiere,when Malcolm Sargent had, so the storygoes, pulled the chestnuts of an under­rehearsed company out of the fire, literallyat the last minute. The young Sargent'sconducting was splendidly red-blooded, butI cannot help feeling that this has all thedirectness and impact of a composer'sinterpretation, which tends to beabsent in later Sargent recordings. IfRVW was not on the podium, hewas certainly in the studio - and ifwe listen, say, to the love duet, onesurely has the feeling we areexperiencing a creator's, andcomposer's, view. (Reissued onPearl GEMMCD 9468.)

It was actually first heard at a rehearsal ofthe Royal College of Music studentsorchestra a week or two before the firstperformances in Queen's Hall. He usedto say rather gloomily beforehand that thePastoral Symphony was in fourmovements, all of them slow. And whenthe work went into rehearsal I wascontinually being told to go faster, I thinkin every movement. After those firstperformances I was away from Londonand it wasn't until four or five years laterthat he heard me do a rehearsal in Prague.

performances on record, as he had beenElgar's, he became the barrier to it evertaking place. So all other survivingrecordings are from broadcasts and publicperformances.

Vaughan Williams first foundhimself on the podium for arecording at the age of 52 when hecut waxes of The Wasps Overturefor the Vocalion company, andalthough it was issued in 1925, theyear in which electrical recordingfirst appeared, it was one of the lastacoustics. Now you might thinkthat this rather primitive sound and'very fast opening more reflects thedemands of acoustic recording and4-minute sides than Vaughan.Williams's interpretation. Idisagree; here is a powerful musicalpersonality at work. Thatperformance times at 7' 53"; ";,, ,Sargent, not a conductor to hangaround, was almost a minuteslower. Was Vaughan Williams what myfather used to call "a speed merchant"? Orcould it be that brisk tempi were his naturalinclination, were what he wanted. That'sprobably also too simplistic. Sir AdrianBoult recalled how he once took his cuefrom RVW's tempi, only to regret it later:

PAGE 20

RVW's Fourth is fast. All VaughanWilliams's tempi, the St Matthew Passionexcepted, tend to the brisk, and that iscertainly dramatic. But not the brusque.There is a wonderful intensity behind thismusic making, and as RVW showed in otherperformances of his works it is notnecessary to go slow to convey a rapt andvisionary mood. This makes it so gallingthat we don't have him conducting thePastoral or Sea Symphonies, or· LarkAscending and other works he appeared within his last twenty years.

In the I930s two works of RVW seemed toanticipate the war: the Fourth Symphony andthe cantata Dona Nobis Pacem. It isparticularly fortunate that we have RVWconducting both of these, and his dramaticand urgent tempi in the cantata give it asplendid edge. Here we have the soloists ofthe first performance, the soprano ReneeFlynn - a voice we've forgotten, but onewith that elusive purity that VaughanWilliams so often requires combined withan engaging warmth; and even more, RoyHenderson's plea for reconciliation in thesecond movement balances the dramatic andreflective, with perfect articulation of thewords. Michael Kennedy has reported aconversation he had with the composer 'howparticular he was about the tempos in thiswork and how dissatisfied he was withSargent's in a performance we had justheard.' Here we have a composer defininghow he felt it, indeed how it should go. Inhis Dirge for Two Veterans, one is broughtface to face with this one-time private in the2/4th Field Ambulance on the WesternFront, whose memories must have still beenenormously vivid only twenty years after.Surely here Vaughan Williams is saying'Not again, 0 Lord, Not again?'

All this underlines the fact that this is notVaughan Williams merely getting throughthe notes; it is a conductor expressinghimself eloquently in his interpretation ofhis own music. In a letter to Sir AdrianBoult after Boult had conducted A SeaSymphony on Trafalgar Day 1936:

There seem to me to be two essentials ofgreat conducting: (1) Faithfulness to thecomposer. (2) The power of the conductorto express himself to the full at themoment. I always know I shall get (1)from you but sometimes without (2).Thank heaven I have never heard fromyou (2) without (I) - & I know I nevershall. Yesterday we had (1) and (2) ­result . a great performance & greatconducting for which I thank you fromthe bottom of my heart - and your singers& players too ... You made me like theold work again & the awkward placesseemed to have disappeared by magic .. .8

" Kennedy, M: Adrian Boult. Hamish Hamilton,1987 pp 178-9

I have long assumed that contemporarycommentators would have shared my viewof Vaughan Williams's own performancesas being something special. But perhaps Iam wrong. One of the most curious aspectsofthis is the fact that when he conducted hisown symphonies I have the impression hedid not necessarily get critical coverage ­perhaps it was such a frequent event it wasnot thought in any way out of the ordinary.Do those with longer memories than mineremember how he was seen? On 31 July1946 he conducted a performance of ALondon Symphony, and in The Times,presumably Frank Howes, reported:

Dr Vaughan Williams may not be, byordinary standards, a great conductor, but,like Elgar he handles his own .music in apersonal manner that makes performancesgiven under his direction peculiarlyauthentic. It mattered little that somedetails of the orchestral score were notcompletely realised, or even went astray,in comparison with the fine spirit of aperformance which revealed the essentialpoetry of the music.9

A year later on 15 October 1947 VaughanWilliams conducted A London Symphonyagain, for the celebrations for his 75th

birthday. The Times once more reported:

Dr Vaughan Williams is not a virtuosoconductor, but he knows well how toobtain the expression he requires from theorchestra. There were a few minorblemishes in the actual playing, but ifthese were the fault of the conductor therewas compensation in the authenticity ofthe performance. 10

The viola player Bernard Shore, for manyyears the first viola of the BBC SymphonyOrchestra also wrote of Vaughan Williamsas a conductor, with the authority of a playerwho has played under him. Here's hisassessment:

As a conductor he is not a greattechnician, but few composers get suchsatisfactory performances of their ownmusic. Young conductors please note:Vaughan Williams is a fine example ofhow a conductor should approach anorchestra. Calm and collected, he wastesno time but gets on good terms with theorchestra in about three words. Granted,this is easy for him because of theprofound admiration the orchestra has forhim both as man and musician. But thatis the whole point. He has been yearsbuilding up his great fame. Being wherehe is he can conv~y to the orchestra thesincere conviction' he has that he hasnothing in the least to be proud of, butthat on the other hand, he is exceedinglyproud of conducting us. I-Ie has the two

" The Times I August 1946 P 7III The Times 16 October 1947 p 6

most precious possessions of anyconductor - great and sincere humility anda complete understanding of the minds ofthe players. His stick is clear enough forhis needs, and though he may not give theimpression of effortless ease in hismovements and gestures he stands fairlyon his two adequate boots, and there is agrand solidity and structure about anyperformance he is directing. He can getanything he likes from an orchestra.Delicacy and swiftness are given him forthe asking; the orchestra needs no subtlegestures from him. We understandeverything he wants, and give it to him,full measure. What an orchestra asks foris a man it can admire, and VaughanWilliams stands for everything Englishwe love. 11

Many emotive words there for those wholike unpacking such commentary anddeconstructing its meaning. But equally nomissing the passion of the memory itevokes. RVW's performances had impact.Of course, inevitably we compare him as aconductor with his champion Sir AdrianBoult. What did Sir Adrian have to sayabout it?:

Vaughan Williams always gave a mostmemorable performance of the LondonSymphony - it is sad that this was neverrecorded. Many passages where most ofus are tempted to linger a bit, and makethe most of the expressiveness, weresimply played through by him: he didn't

.. want any nonsense about it, and it cquldcarry its own message without embel­lishment. He rushed through it andsomehow it sounded absolutely splendid.I'm afraid I should never dare to copy hisreading. 12

This underlines the importance of thediscovery of a surviving recording of RVWconducting A London Symphony, and itcertainly bears out what Sir Adrian wasreferring to. Boult went on about A LondonSymphony:

There was a good story about aparticularly fine performance which heconducted in Buffalo, U.S.A. He alwaysmarked his own scores a good deal tohelp him to conduct, in very large bluepencil; and particularly where there werebars moving fast - one in a bar or two in abar - he numbered the bars so that hecould feel his way along as he went. Thescore which he had marked for thisBuffalo performance suddenlydisappeared just before the performancetook place, and he had to use anothervirgin copy, which made him very angry,with the result that the performance

II Shore, B: The Orchestra Speaks. Longmans,Green & Co., 1938 p 13812 Boult, Sir A: Boult on Music. Toccata Press1983 p 118

PAGE 21

gained magnificently in intensity. He wasrather amused to tell the story afterwards,because the full score was discoveredvery close to him. It had been shut upinside the grand piano! 13

This is the point where I think we need tonote the composer Kenneth Leech, not forhis works, but for his disc recordingmachine. From the early 1930s it waspossible for well-off music lovers to recordprogrammes from the air. This could bedone in two ways, either by paying a studiolike the Louis Levy studios in Oxford Street,or by acquiring a disc cutting machine anddoing it yourself. A composer such asBantock used the studio option, but RVWwas not the man to be bothered withrecording his own performances.

When we investigate the surviving acetatesfrom the 1930s - and a remarkable numberdo survive - we find a problem: they were78rpm recordings and so each twelve inchside could hold no more that about 4)1.,minutes of music before one had to turnover or put on a fresh disc. Unless one hadtwo machines, oIie could only record shortitems or else there were gaps every 4 or 5minutes while turning over. Leech acquiredhis disc recorder in 1934 and immediatelystarted recording from the radio. He wenton doing so for over 20 years, making some1200 sides in all. Such things as the 1935Three Choirs Dream of Gerontius, OskarFried conducting Das Lied von der Erde,Henry Wood in Mahler 8, and much, much,British music including first performance ofHarty, Moeran and others. Maddeningly,none of it is complete because of the shortsides, and mouth watering things such as theMahler are only represented by shortextracts. He did record, however, the firstperformance of Vaughan Williams's FifthSymphony in 1943, and A London Symphonyin 1946. A London Symphony, in particular,gives us a wonderful window on VaughanWilliams's approach to the practicalrealisation of his vision.

When we come to the Fifth SymphonyVaughan Williams conducted it at least fourtimes, probably more, and two of thesesurvive, one of them pretty-well complete.The Fifth in 1943 was the only timeVaughan Williams conducted the firstperformance of an orchestral symphony (hehad, of course, directed the Sea Symphony atLeeds in 1910) and after the war heappeared with the Fifth at the GloucesterThree Choirs in 1947, and in London on IISeptember 1950 and 3 September 1952. It'sthe last of these performances that we havepretty well complete.

Again Vaughan Williams's speeds tend tothe brisk. Although we do not have all ofthe 1946 London Symphony - it was aPromenade Concert - and so we can get the

IJ op. Cit. pp 118-9

PAGE 22

timing of the complete work to the nearesthalf minute from the 'Programmes asBroadcast' file at the BBC Archives, whereit is given as 43)1., minutes, though that mayinclude some of the breaks betweenmovements, so possibly it was even quicker.Compared to Haitink's commercialrecording at 49' 01" or even Bry4enThomson at 47' 36" it strikes one as brisk.

The Fifth Symphony is also a robust view,though the first performance with its ratherdistant microphone placing sounds a littletentative, making me wonder if VaughanWilliams was finding that on the podiumafter little rehearsal he did not know theintricacies of the score as well as he laterdid. After the undoubted success ofVaughan Williams's own recording of theFourth Symphony, the choice of Barbirollito conduct the first recording of the Fifth,which took place on 17 February 1944, mayhave come as a surprise. As we have seen,we have Gaisberg to thank for that. Yet, inthat first recording, Barbirolli seems toreflect RVW's view of the work at that time.Later, as we all know, his approachbroadened. By the time Vaughan Williamscame to do it in 1952 it was securely in hisrepertoire. Here his performance times at35' 24" as compared to Menuhin at 38' 50"and Marriner at 38' 54", or Previn's laterrecording which is over 40 minutes. YetVaughan Williams catches the shiftingcolours, the half lights, and fully alive as heis to the importance of the changingdynamics, the visionary climaxes.

His audience in 1943 knew nothing of whatto expect of the Fifth Symphony; VaughanWilliams's previous symphony had been thetumultuous Fourth, the outcome of the warwas still far from clear, much of theaudience were in uniform; later that nightthere was an air raid. What they heard musthave had a visionary quality for many, forits serenity and poise. As they heard theglorious change to E major when VaughanWilliams gives us what would later becomethe "House Beautiful" music in Pilgrim'sProgress, how many could have failed to beinspired with hope. This is particularly wellcaught in Leech's surviving acetates of theperformance and deserves to be available toall.

I think we need to say a few words about the1952 performance, as there are two or threedifferent recordings floating aroundpurporting to be this performance, given at aPromenade Concert at the Royal Albert Hallon 3 September 1952. None haveannouncements, but mine is from a veryreliable source and I believe it to beauthentic.

We have heard RVW in three of his ninesymphonies, and also in his mostimpassioned choral work: his approach wasdirect and it seems to me his mask of no­nonsense vigour which Sir Adrian Boult

remarked on was a cover for a most un­British passion. What was so British washis not wanting to admit what we can allhear - he was content to let the music speakof the ecstasy of his vision.

RVWrelzearsing A London Symphonyat BuffaLo, 1954

In the Scherzo of the Fifth Vernon Handleyshowed us what can be done to inject analmost Mendelssohnian lightness into thetexture. RVW cannot do this - his is a rathercoarser performance, and yet his goblinsaren't merely galumphing yokels - thosewoodwind accents near the beginning sooften missed by conductors lear downvividly.

Vaughan Williams is particularly good atarticulating the wonderful climaxes of thefirst and third movements of the FifthSymphony, particularly apparent if wecompare the 1943 and 1952 performances ofthe Romanza, the third movement. If onelistens to the first performance; it is notablehow the cor anglais player shapes theopening solo, always played much straightertoday:

The overall feeling of the Fifth Symphony isone of spirituality, yet it is not necessary tolay it on with a trowel to achieve the radiantvisionary quality the composer so clearlyintended and was able io achieve from amore vigorous perspective. One does notmake progress down the Kings Highwayunless one strides out. In his finale, theregular tread of the Passacaglia set out withdetermination and vfgour.

Having dealt with Vaugh.an Williams'sperformances of his own music, we need toreturn to Bach. This could well be adiscussion of that other paradox of Britishmusic; of the agnostic composer, haunted byscripture and religious books and liturgicalpractice. Amazing that no one has written abook, or a PhD thesis, on the subject, and

Old King Cole Vocalion A-0247/8 Pearl GEMMCD 9468The Wasps Overture Vocalion A-0249 Pearl GEMMCD 9468Folk Dances Columbia DB 181/3'Dona Nobis Pacem GEMMCD9342 (also in BBC Sound Archives)Tallis ("supervised RVW') Decca K815/6'Symphony No 4 HMV DB 3367/70'Symphony No 5 Leech Colin British LibrarySymphony No 2 Leech Colin British LibrarySymphony No 5 private collection (also in BBC Sound Archives)Serenade to Music (Proms) private collection (also in BBC Sound Archives)Parry: Blessed Pair of Sirens (Haddo House) see Kennedy p 746St Matthew Passion Caviar, Reissued on Pearl GEMS 0062;

Tallis and Symphony 4 also on Dutton COAX 8007 and COAX 8011

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS CONDUCTED RVW

/905-/955.

Lewis Foreman

others. 16

"When the seven hundred voiceswhispered 'be near me Lord' they made amagical sound which I shall neverforget."

1(, Lei/h Hill Musical Fes/ivalEpsom, Pullingers Ltd., 55 pp 60-1

Both acetate discs and tape recordingsare fragile and impermanent media. If themusic recorded on them is to be preservedthey have to be copied onto somethingmore permanent. These days the newmedium for archiving is the digital disc,and CD-Rs can be made very cheaply,blanks costing under £2. Now is the firstand the last opportunity for a great RalphVaughan Williams Society initiative: acensus and archiving of all survivingperformances of his music conducted bythe composer. These might be off-airrecordings made by individuals, they mightbe discs made for some of the performersthemselves, or ex-BBC discs of one sort ofanother, or they might be recordings madeoverseas. For example was RVW's Buffaloperformance of the Fourth Symphonyrecorded? I bet it was - but where is itnow?

Johan Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passionwas conducted by Ralph Vaughan Williamsat the Leith Hill Festival on 5th of March1958. Another World. And yet one, I think,worth remembering; particularly as we canstill experience the sounds made then, if notthe atmosphere in the hall, reminding us of agreat composer seen also to be a greatinterpretative artist, whose art can still berecalled for us today. It is surely aworthwhile exercise to extend the search tosee what else of Vaughan Williams's art as aconductor might have survived, andensuring its preservation.

And Vaughan Williams himself wrote ofthat occasion in 1931 when they sang the StMatthew Passion for the first time, withseven hundred singers:

192519251929193619361937194319461952195419571958

His presence on the rostrum commandsimmediate respect, such is his personalityand influence. Before a rehearsal he willbe there, sitting aloof and apart from thegeneral flurry of singers and playersfinding their position on the platform. Heseems to be in another world, but then

with a glance at the clock, afew polite words ofintroduction, the rehearsalwill begin at the appointedhour. He has a wonderful giftfor extracting the very bestout of his singers and players....Bach and the words of theBible make an ideal union forhim and his interpretation ofthe Passion music issomething to be felt ratherthan heard. He shows thedrama of the story. To helpthis he has written out acomplete continuo part andthroughout he makes muchuse of tempo rubato. It isobvious that the story moves

him profoundly and, though him,

The object of an art is to obtain the partialrevelation of that which is beyond humansenses and beyond human faculties [ofthat which, in fact, is spiritual]. . Themeans we employ to induce thisrevelation are those very senses andfaculties themselves: the human, visible,audible and intelligible media whichartists [of all kinds] use are symbols notof other visible and audible things but ofwhat lies beyond sense and [beyond]knowledge. I 5

For many years Vaughan Williams'slieutenant at the Leith Hill Festival was DrWilliam Cole, Bill Cole to many. His viewof Vaughan Williams approached reverence,and yet he saw from close quarters thepractical music making he brought toreaching the infinite. He wrote:

, My quotation is transcribed from RVW's talklater published as "The Letter and the Spirit".The tirst passage in square brackets is in thepublished text not the talk, the latter suchpassages are in the talk not the published text.(Bee/hoven's Choral Symphony. op. Cit. pp

, 54-5.)

CONDIJCT1J"o1G HI3

When Vaughan Williams took over theLondon Bach Choir, he asked theCommittee to allow him to have noconcert at all for the whole of the firstwinter, but to devote it to the study ofBach's St. Matthew Passion. At the end,when Easter time came, he gave abouthalf a dozen performances of it, in variousplaces, with different sections of thechoir. It was a most moving andinteresting performahce. I heard the firstof them. He took some arbitrary libertieswith Bach which are not perhaps toeveryone's taste, and these he developedmore and more as he developed to theannual performances which made such adeep impression in connection with the'Dorking Festivals, and were repeated withthe Halle Orchestra in Manchester, a yearor two before his death.

" op. Cit. P 119

The performance we have is the last hegave, and at almost 86 who could blame aconductor for slowing down. How good aperformance is it; more to the point howgood a Vaughan Williams performance? Ithink it gives a splendid flavour of whatRVW did, and what he believed in. With itspiano continuo it is decidedly not. aperformance of the nineties, and yet it is anentity bringing great rewards on its ownaccount: as Holst wrote about one ofRVW'sown works, 'a blessed abiding fact'. One isreminded of Vaughan Williams's remarkson the object of art. He wrote:

The paramount impressionon me, when I first heardthe London St. MathewPassion, before VaughanWilliams had done it verymany times, was that it wasnot a fine piece ofconducting in that sense atall. It was that a very greatmusician indeed had workedfor six months with a largenumber of intelligentpeople, and at the end of it

'DR,VAUG""'AJ-l WllllAM~he had impressed the wholechoir with his own view ofthe Bach St. Matthew "srI> SYMPH"HY"

Passion so that theproduction of it was not at all a piece ofconducting. The performance could notproceed except as it had been rehearsed andrehearsed: Bach through the spectacles ofRalph Vaughan Williams. The performanceof the St. Matthew Passion was a spiritualmatter with Vaughan Williams. 14

the parallel between RVW and Britten isfascinating. The twin poles of VaughanWilliams's spirituality were John Bunyan'sPilgrim's Progress and Bach's St MatthewPassion. It was typical of the man that hisinvolvement with both matured over a verylong time. Let Sir Adrian Boult take up thestory. He wrote:

PAGE 23

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The next change there involves moving thepainting of Britten and Pears anyway to makeroom for an acquisition which has not yet beenshown at all. This will entail putting a bust ofBritten on view, thus displacing another bust.That bust will have to be replaced by apainting of the same sitter & etc. In workingout this new sequence (which will probablyhappen in January) I have already taken intoaccount the Kelly painting of VaughanWilliams. I hope you can appreciate that thisis rather a complicated process and bear withus.

Yours sincereLy, Honor CLerk, Curator,20th Century CoLLection,

NationaL Portrait Gallery

Your suggestion of putting it next to theEpstein bust would be fine, but for the othercontenders for that slot. Planning that, orindeed any, part of the galleries is always a'question of juggling available works andtrying to produce a balanced display.Questions of the importance of the sitter, thevariety of vocations represented, gender,medium and <esthetic merit all have to betaken into account and as soon as one portraithas to be added, replaced or lent out it tends tohave implications for the display as a whole.

(D)

I can, of course, appreciate your concern at theKelly portrait not being on display at themoment. You may be aware that we are in themidst of a major building programme here,which will open in May next year with a newfive storey building between our Gallery andthe National Gallery next door. During anextensive and highly disruptive project wehave endeavoured to keep the Gallery open asnormal, as far as possible, but there hasinevitably been an impact on the displays, andthe Kelly portrait came down because ofre-wiring in the area where it was hanging.

Gerald Kelly portrait of Ralph VaughanWilliams

Thank you for your letter of 12 September.

John WesLey BarkerDunedin, New ZeaLand

Chairman to National Portra'it Gallery(C)I am writing concerning the display of theKelly portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams. 1found your recent comment that this portraitwould be 'off display' most unsatisfactory.The ideal location for this work is in Room 27alongside the Epstein bust. I would begrateful for your confirmation that the portraitis now available for viewing and the locationyou have chosen. I look forward to yourreply.

Yours sincereLy, Honor Clerk,Curator, 20th Century Collection

Yours sincereLy,Stephen COllllOck

I hope that in other respects you enjoyed yourvisit to the Gallery and that you will comeagain when you are in London.

We are just about to move the portrait of SirYehudi Menuhin. As you may have gathered,we are in the grip of a very large developmentprogramme, which is affecting quite a numberof our displays, and that portrait will shortlymove into one of the ground floor galleries.The portrait of Vaughan Williams willtemporarily have to be off display, but he isalso represented by a bronze bust in Room 27.

(B)Dear Professor Pack,Thank you for taking the trouble to fill in oneof our Visitor Comment forms when you cameto the Gallery on 12 April.

Perhaps a strong letter from the Society to theCurator is needed.

opposite each otheron a very narrowstaircase down whichmost people werewalking without somuch as noticingthem and finding itimpossible to standand view them. Istrongly objected tothis and my wife,Professor AngelaPack later wrote aletter expressing ourobjections. While thereply (attached) con-cerning Menuhinmaybe satisfactory, the intention to take theportrait of Vaughan Williams "off display" is I.think certainly not satisfactory. It ought to bedisplayed in room 27 along with the Epsteinbust. As you may know the RVW portrait bySir Gerald Kelly (once displayed in the RoyalCollege of Music) is large and needs space toview.

Fred BLanksNew South WaLes, Australia

"Well I'm back on the ship. We have just leftMacquarie Island, which was magic. It'scovered in penguins and seals, just amazing.We are on our way to the pack ice, and shouldbe there in a day or 2. Then we start work onthe seal survey, which should keep us busy fora month or so till we reach the continent.

Your recording of Vaughan Williams'sSinfonia Antartica has been played in theAntarctic and very much appreciated."

Bob RushLondon

Paul Holmes biography in USAIt might be of interest to US members to knowthat Paul Holmes's book Vaughan Williams:His Life and Times is being offered for sale at$5.95 by the Edward R Hamilton bookCatalogue company over here. The catalogueitem number is 791245. Hamilton's is aremaindered book company, and one neverknows how many copies of any book theyhave in stock, but if others are interested, as Iwas (in fact I had never come across the bookbefore), I thought it might be worthmentioning.

Antartica in SydneyImmediately preceding the 2000 OlympicGames, Sydney is hosting a huge OlympicArts Festival covering opera, concerts, theatre,dance and other events, with performers fromall over the world. The RVW Society maylike to know that the festival includes aperformance of the Sinfonia Antartica in aconcert (September 25) from the New ZealandSymphony Orchestra directed by James Judd.On the same programme in Sydney OperaHouse, percussionist Evelyn Glennie willpremiere a new work by New Zealandcomposer Gareth Farr. The RVWperformance is to be accompanied by adramatic film about Scott's ill-fated expeditionwhich includes "original footage from the lastexpedition shot by photographer FrankH1}rley".

Antartica in AntarcticTim Page on the icebreaker Aurora Australiswas given a cassette of Sinfonia Antartica tointroduce him to the music of RVW. Theversion I taped was the Barbirolli performancewith Sir Ralph Richardson's superscriptionsadded. I received the following e-mail on 4December:

Edward Hamilton can be contacted on theWeb at www.hamiltonbook.com. they have asearch function within the site.

Stephen NashNew York

VW in National Portrait Gallery(A)When my wife and I visited the NationalPortrait Gallery in April we found twoportraits of outstanding musicians, Dr RalphVaughan Williams and Lord Menuhin hanging

PAGE 24

TICK[TS £7 (Students £3) from Dover Town Hall. The Music Buxand members orOover Choral Society

The choral parts were sung sensitivelythroughout, which made the performancevery enjoyable. Areas which stood out werethe Lullaby for soprano and the femalemembers of the chorus which wasbeautifully balanced throughout, and thebaritone solo, The Oxen in which Mr. Pearcesang wonderfully and was sensitivelyaccompanied by the orchestral wind playersof flute, cor anglais, and clarinets. The onlyslight hesitation in the whole piece was aless than convincing entry by the tenors andbasses of the chorus in the March of theThree Kings, but encouragement from theconductor, Mr. Michael Foad, gave them thecourage to be firmer in their singing. Thefinale was sung with enthusiasm and gusto.and made a fitting end to a livelyperformance ofRVW's Christmas Cantata.

[tenor] Michael Pearce [baritone] and MarySeers [soprano]. Mary is a local girl whosefather is the President of the Choral Society;she was soloist on Hyperion's recording ofVW's Mass in G Minor and Howells'sRequiem sung by the Corydon Singers[CDA66076].

After the interval, the orchestra played aperformance of the No/folk Rhapsody. Itwas beautifully played throughout. Theopening was delicately played, engenderinga feeling of space and landscape of theNorfolk fenland. Typical use of woodwindand viola solos by RVW in the first part ofthe piece were played wonderfully. Themore robust and animated middle sectionwas played with enjoyment by the wholeorchestra before calming down and finishingwith echoes ofthe sensitive beginning.

The concert was concluded with aperformance of Patrick Hadley's CantataFen and Flood. This was unknown to mostof the audience, who learned from theprogramme notes that Hadley had written it,after the disastrous floods in East Anglia in1953. It was originally written for the malevoice C\lius College Chorus in 1955. It isthe story of the Fens from early times to the1953 floods. Ralph Vaughan Williamsatte~ded the first performand: and liked it somuch that he asked Patrick Hadley'spermission to arrange the chorus part forSATB, as he wanted to perform it atDorking. Hadley gave permissipn andRVW duly arranged the chorus part. Dover

, The opening prologue of Hodie started withsuitable verve, the brass in the orchestraringing out loud and clear as an introductionto the acclamation of 'Nowell! Nowell!'The trebles were supplied by Dover Collegeand were unusually six female choristers.However, they provided clear voices toconvey the narration when needed. All thesoloists were first class. Miss Seers's puresoprano voice was a delight to hear, andboth Mr. Pullin and Mr. Pearce sang theirparts with suitable expertise, the diction wasalways clear throughout the work.

In the Epilogue, Vaughan Williams,true to his own edict steers the chorusback to the beginning of the narrationas Emmanuel rings out followed by atriumphant hymn. This transportedthis particular choir member back tothe glorious tunes from schoolassemblies not even realising thenwho the composer was!

The combination of VaughanWilliams's haunting harmony and hiswife Ursula's beautiful words areindeed a magical moment in thesecond Choral. Their combined arttriumphs in the March of the ThreeKings. We almost felt we were part ofa film score echoing the majesty,mystery and pathos as the storyunfolds.

Mary Druce

The soloists in Hodie were all formerCambridge Choral Scholars - Gordon Pullin

An appreciative audience heard aperformance of Vaughan Williams'sChristmas Cantata Hodie given by theDover Choral Society at Dover Town Hallon 27th November 19~9. Other worksincluded RVW's No/folk Rhapsody No I andPatrick Hadley's rarely heard Cantata Fenand Flood.

More on Hodie in Dover

I believe that as our choir, after initialdoubts, got beyond the notes, we emergedricher for a musical experience we shallcherish for a long time.

As Vaughan Williams oncecommented, that even an atheist couldcompose a good mass - I venture that

as a 'cheerful agnostic' he gave a wonderfulaccount of the Nativity. Perhaps hissympathy with Hardy's poem The Oxen is atthe heart of this piece as the baritone singsof hope "that it might be so"?

After the prophetic dizzily highEmmanuel - God With Us, the femalevoices basked in the wordlessaccompaniment to Milton's beautifulwords from his Hymn on the

Morning of Christ's Nativity. Memories ofFlos Campi were stirred, indeed the wholeof Hodie represents an apotheosis of thecomposer's earlier works. It is a wonderful'summing up' with due reverence to hismusical hero, J S Bach in the two exquisitechorales, but Vaughan Williams is kinder tohis singers thanJ S Bach in that hefacilitates pitching' notes by subtle hintsfrom the instrumentalists. Singing a capellais every choir's challenge to which, I think,we rose. Again, Vaughan Williams'ssensitivity to the problem wisely promptedhim to a subtle key change for the next

number.

CANTATA"FEN AND FLOOD"By Patrick Hadley

SATURDAY 27th NOVEMBER 1999 at 7.30 pm

DOVER TOWN HALL

Soloists:Mary Seers - sopranoGordon Pullin - tenor

Michael Pearce - bass-baritone

. The Connaught Orchestra (leader George Simpson)Dover Choral Society Chorus

Choristers from Dover College (under the direction of Roderick Spencer)Conducted by Michael Foad

CHRISTMAS CANTATA"HODIE" by Vaughan Williams

FIRST NORFOLKRHAPSODY by Vaughan Williams

~ Dover Choral SocietyPresents

We worked hard to do this wonderful piecethe justice it deserves, battling withVaughan Williams's idiosyncratic crossrhythms and hemiolas to say nothing of thesudden unexpected and ethereal keychanges. "You need to know your tonesfrom your semitones" extolled our valiantconductor Mic~ael Foad. (He could wellrecall the composer during his time atCambridge where his own Professor ofMusic was Dr Patrick Hadley, VaughanWilliams's lifelong friend.)

The opening chorus was the mostchallenging for our choir but we finallyachieved spontaneity of the opening Nowellsagainst the exuberant Hodies. Was the senseof relief palpable as the four parts homed inunison for Alleluia at Moderato Maestoso? ­a short-lived respite before going ourdiverse ways. In our copies the word"watch" featured frequently and obviouslyeffectively as we all reached the finalexaltant Nowell on cue without a singledomino!

Assisledby

Forty-five years after its first performance atthe Three Choirs Festival in WorcesterCathedral, Dover Choral Society embarkedon a repeat in their Town Hall - part ofwhich is the thirteenth Century Maison Dieuwhich sheltered countless pilgrims en routeto Canterbury. It was a hard act to followby an amateur choir only one third thenumber of the original 350 (trained) body,but with the full orchestra as was thecomposer's wont with the resultantfullcbodied sound.

HODIE in Dover

PAGE 25

SOLUTION - RVW CROSSWORD No. :1

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Choral Society sung this version at theconcert, and so a connection with VaughanWilliams was upheld all through theprogramme. The music used sometraditional folk music and original materialand was very interesting. RVW said thatmusic should be an experience and thiscertainly was a musical experience whichwas a very enjoyable one.

Linda HaywardDover

National Symphony performsRYW's Fourth

On 7, 8, 9 October, 1999 at the John F.Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts inWashington D.C., the National SymphonyOrchestra under the baton of its MusicDirector, Leonard Slatkin, performedShostakovich's Tahiti Trot, Op. 16;Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No.2 in CMinor, Op. 18, Ivo Pogorelich, pianist; andVaughan Williams's Fantasia onGreensleeves followed by his Symphony No.4 in F Minor. These concerts marked thefirst performances of VW's Fourth by thisorchestra since its only other ones on 5, 6, 7January, 1960 conducted by HowardMitchell. A notable precedent toprogramming Rachmaninoffs secondconcerto with a Vaughan Williamssymphony occurred in 1910 at the LeedsMusical Festival when A Sea Symphony,conducted by RVW received its firstperformance and Rachmaninoff played hisconcerto!

For these October, 1999 concerts, (Iattended the Friday Matinee) Mr. Slatkin'sprinted program placed the VaughanWilliams works on the second half of theprogram most likely underlining theimportance this conductor placed on them.After the opening and delightful Tahiti Trot,a brilliant and lighthearted orchestration ofTea for Two, we saw more musicians enterthe stage, but no piano was rolled out!When Mr. Slatkin arrived at the podium, heturned to the audience and made severalcongenial, good humored and informativecomments. He first assured us that, thoughthere was no piano on stage at that time, thepianist was present and ready to perform!He went on to say that since Mr.Pogorelich's conception of the concerto wasso spacious as to increase the ca. 40 minutesduration to ca. 50 minutes, he felt itnecessary to let the concerto occupy theentire second half of the concert. He thenmaintained the importance of the VaughanWilliams works by commenting howunfortunate it is that his symphonies havebeen lost along the way, because each one issuch an individual work of art. Mr. Slatkinthen commented on the pastoralism of theGreensleeves Fantasia and the startlingcontrast of the 4th 's pervasive dissonance.He announced that the Fourth Symphonywould follow without pause. Indeed, the

PAGE 26

effect of this juxtaposition was mosteffective to illustrate his point and provideda unique listening experience that I willalways treasure.

The performance of Fantasia onGreens!eeves was heart-felt and touching,especially in the fourth phrase which was asofter, more tender echo of the precedIngone. The only flaw was a ragged attack onthe tremolo transition to the tune LovelyJoan. The performance of the FourthSymphony was both energetic and eloquent.Mr. Slatkin's tempos matched very closelythose of RVW's on his recording of 1937.The second movement was played with avery purposeful pace sedately marked by thepizzicato cellos and basses.

Throughout the Fourth Symphony theorchestra played with clarity, sharp rhythmicgestures, and expressive lyricism. Only attimes did the sound ofthe brass section fromwhere I sat seem to protrude too muchwhere they would "dovetail" with the othersections.

Mr. Slatkin in his comments also expressedthe hope that in the new century VaughanWilliams's music might receive increasedhearings. Therefore perhaps we have reasonto hope that Mr. Slatkin who has recorded asuperb cycle of these nine symphonies willperform more of them with the NSO!

John BarrBridgewater, VA, U.S.A.

ERNEST FARRAR Orchestral Works.The Open Road.Variations for Piano & Orchestra.The Forsaken Merman.Heroic Elegy.English Pastoral Impressions

Howard Shelly (piano)Philharmonia OrchestraAlasdair Mitchell.CHANDOS CHAN 9586The music of the composer GeorgeButterworth, who was killed in action on theSomme in 1916, has been fairly wellrepresented in performance and inrecordings over the years since the GreatWar. His contemporary, Ernest Farrar, born1885, and slaughtered just a few weeksbefore the end of hostilities in September1918, has, until now, been little more than a

footnote in the history of English music.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, a friend to bothcomposers, thankfully returned to the verydifferent world that was left after thearmistice and we have the legacy of his laterworks to enrich our lives. It was the RVWTrust, which enabled the performancematerial used in this recording to beproduced.

Farrar's footnote status is largely the resultof having been the teacher of Gerald Finzi(another thread in the RVW tapestry), but asa composer in his own right, Farrar nowdeserves to be taken seriously.

This splendid new recording with committedperformances - the Philharmonia is here ontop form - goes a long way towardsredressing the 70 years of our neglect of thiscomposer.

The longest piece on this CD is thesymphonic poem The Forsaken MermanOp. 20, dating from 1913, which shows acomposer in young maturity with an assuredgrasp of his material, musical form and theorchestra, producing a satisfying andconvincing broad musical canvas with adeveloping personality and style.

English Pastoral Impressions Op. 26 is theonly published piece on the CD and isdedicated to RVW, It is one of the twoslighter works in the collection and is 'acharming work within its lighter idiom, as isthe first piece, the rhapsody The Open RoadOp. 9, The inventive Variations for Pianoand Orchestra Op, 25 date from 1915.

For me, the most poignant and propheticpiece in this collection is the Heroic ElegyOp. 36, Farrar's last orchestral composition,premiered by the composer in his hometown of Harrogate on the 3rd July 1918, twomonths before he was killed. This solemnmarch-based elegy with its suitably mutedgrandeur, incorporates the Agincourt Song(later employed by RVW and Walton intheir Henry V pieces). Even without itstragic connotations, this elegy is enormouslymoving and well-crafted, deserving a fargreater performance currency than it has hadup to now. The author of the splendidlycomprehensive accompanying notes,Bernard Benoliel, suggests that the elegywould be an ideal programme companion toRVW's Pastoral Symphony - he has a goodpoint. Highly recommended.

Graham Muncy - Dorking

RVW200023rd - 29th July 2000 at Charterhouse

Vaughan Williams SymposiumCoordinator: Professor Byron Adams

This symposium will appeal to all lovers of the composer's music. It is offered in conjunction with TheCharterhouse Summer School of Music (originated by RVW in 1945), The Carthusian Trust and the VaughanWilliams Society.

It will be held at Charterhouse and will commence on Sunday 23rd July until Saturday 29th July. It offers a widerange of activities connected with Vaughan Williams and his music.

Vaughan Williams was a boy in the school from 1887-1890. He maintained his links with the school throughouthis life, returning to open the Old Music School in 1940, and to listen to concerts. Towards the end of his life heagreed to write the final scene for the 1951 performance of The Masque 0/ Charterhouse and this year at theSummer School we hope that there will be a rare opportunity to hear this music. In 1972 the school celebrated thecentenary of his birth with a fully staged performance of his opera The Pilgrim's Progress. In 1940 VaughanWilliams opened the newly converted Music School and in 1984 his widow Ursula Vaughan Williams opened theRVW Music Centre named after him and partly funded by the Vaughan Williams Trust.

The Carthusian Trust inaugurated in 1985 an annual Research Fellowship for an American scholar to spend partof the summer at Charterhouse while researching the music of Vaughan Williams. This scheme has continued tothe present time.

The programme for the week will include:

Illustrated lecturesMany of these scholars are returning to Charterhouse this week to present papers on their researches. In addition,other Vaughan Williams scholars are being invited to give illustrated talks and to take part in seminars anddiscussions.

ExcursionsThere will be visits to locations associated with Vaughan Williams.

ConcertsThe resources of the Summer School and its courses provide an opportunity for many performances and rehearsalsessions of his music during the week. We hope to include:

Symphony No.6; The Lark Ascending; Oboe Concerto; Concerto Grosso; Folk Song Suite; Flourish/or Wind; TheString Quartets and Fantasy Quintet; On Wenlock Edge; Three Shakespeare Songs; Flos Campi; Serenade faMusic; Towards the Unknown Region; 6 Studies in English Folksong; Romance and Pastorale; and more besides!

All those attending the Summer School are invited to sing in the final concert. Further details are contained withinthe Summer School brochure available from:

The Music Office, Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey GU7 2DX. Tel: 01483 291696

The residential course fee will be £295 and offers full board and accommodation in single en-suite rooms,attendance at all summer school concerts, selected rehearsals, lectures, seminars and excursions without furthercharge. Non-resident charge (no accommodation or meals) will be £145.

Discounts are offered to members of the RVW Society.

PAGE 27

in

CallPape r s

Allswers Oil

page 26

Across:4. Type of catalogue number not given to7. (with 9 down and 14 across) this one is

10. Obscure-sounding organist at first performan(~eSymphony (5)

11. Pavement found in St John the Divine,12. Domesticated cousin of The Wasps, found loumging

the hive{5)14. See 7 across16. What the comely young lady was taking

Dark-Eyed Sailor (3)17. RVW would have travelled by this former line to the

premiere ofthe eight (1, 1, 1)23. The Pastoral Symphony (5)24. Had Hugh taken lessons from this Tom, the26. Eric rotting about the piano at the first performanI~e

Viola Romance (7)27. 0 Joy! Sir Arthur conducted the first performance

King Cole (5)28. One for cello was left incomplete (8)31. The second one in E minor (4)

Down:1. Not one of The Wasps, but a wood louse (6)2. Direction of The Lark (2)3. Hugh beat John the Butcher by one (1, I)5. This started out as a double trio (7)6. One from the Delectable Mountains? (8)8. John wrote the words set in Nothing is here/or9. See 7 across

10. Could be for Two Veterans, or Fidele (5)13. 0 Taste and See was written for her CClrolnation15. Did Bill race about for the song18. There are six of these of English folk song (7)19. Shrubsole's Lane, praised by RVW (5)20. Speed of the Sanctus (Mass in Gm) (6)21. The words inspiring Flos Campi were written about22. RVW wrote tunes for these springs in 195025. Lionel, the dedicatee of Ring out your Bells, aW,lJ'.t:OJ'

29. Note well! (1, 1)30. This clue, for example (1, I)

The Hutton and Shenfield Choral Society and Southend BachstA '1Choir are performing A Sea Symphony on Saturday 1 pn at

7.30 pm at the Brentwood Centre, Brentwood, Essex.. TheAurelian Ensemble will be conducted by Gerald Bates. (TIcketsfrom 01277 219916).The Band of the Grenadier Guards have recorded all of VW'smilitary music with some other items arranged for band. It is nowavailable on Bandleader Emblem EMBL 8001.Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony was voted joint second inthe BBC Music Magazine survey of favourite pieces of music,whilst VW himself was voted the second favourite composer.A History 0/Down Ampney has been compiled by Pamela Vareyand is available for £12.50 from Jon Edgson, The Byre, ChurchLane, Down Ampney, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 5QW.Cheques to be made payable to the Down Ampney HistoryProject.Richard Hickox is conducting The Philharmonia in a semi-stagedperformance of The Pilgrim's Progress at the Three ChoirsFestival in 2001.

RVW Crossword No.3 by Michael Gainsford