![]() The reason why those early musicians sang, played, invented and composed was simply and solely because they wanted to and I think the lesson we can learn from them is that of sincerity.” “On Wenlock Edge”: A prophetic song cycle? “Why did the singers and inventors of folk songs sing them and invent them? It was not because they wanted to produce a novelty it was not because they wanted to get up an entertainment to pay off the debt on the organ and neither was it because there was going to be a festival and everyone was going to be there. Possessed by the enthusiasm of the true collector, he listened to songs in situ, recorded them and published them systematically, resulting in the preservation of hundreds of songs: “I think we have a lesson to learn from the inventors of those folk songs,” Vaughan Williams was convinced. Like Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, Vaughan Williams also undertook fieldtrips the length and breadth of Norfolk, Essex and Sussex in his search for the vanishing traditions of the English folk song. He also immersed himself in the mysteries of English vocal polyphony from the golden age of the Tudors. He played the violin and the viola, founded a choir in Cambridge, worked as an organist at St Barnabas’s Church in South Lambeth in London. He studied with Hubert Parry in London, with Max Bruch in Berlin and with Maurice Ravel in Paris. He wrote nine symphonies in the course of his lifetime – a magical number around which legends have accrued, instilling superstitious fears in composers mindful of the fate of colleagues like Beethoven and Bruckner, who had lived only long enough to complete or even only to start a similar number of symphonies.Ī self-styled individualist and an Englishman through and through, Vaughan Williams first had to develop his own art, and to achieve this end he needed to pass through many a school both at home and abroad. Of course, he could literally afford to adopt this course because as the son of a family of leading lawyers and academics – his great-uncle was none other than Charles Darwin – he had no need to worry about money problems.īetween 1903, when as a still relatively unknown young composer he jotted down his first ideas for A Sea Symphony, and 1958, when the eighty-five-year-old master musician’s final symphony was premiered only a few months before his death, Vaughan Williams left his indelible mark on the British musical scene, latterly a grand old man who had come to be seen as an authority, even as an institution: an eloquent teacher, speaker, peripatetic lecturer and columnist – but above all a trail-brazing English symphonist worthy of standing alongside Elgar. Throughout all of the vicissitudes of fate that he endured, his salient characteristic remained his independence in terms of both his judgement and the goals that he set himself. True collector and preserver of the Folk Songīut Ralph Vaughan Williams would undoubtedly have written his music under far less favourable conditions. ![]() The United Kingdom was in the grip of an unprecedented and feverish desire to build on Elgar’s achievements: new orchestras and concert halls attracted audiences in droves. The times could not have been more favourable for Elgar’s heirs. It was left to a younger generation of composers to continue a tradition that had begun with such promise. The first performance of his Enigma Variations in 1899 is regarded by many as marking a fresh start in the history of English music or at least as signalling its rebirth. It was Edward Elgar who broke this spell and dragged Great Britain out of the shadows of musical insignificance. ![]() But in the interests of justice this genealogical shortcoming would also have to be taken into account in any discussion of the music of other countries. In a spirit of defiance, mainland Europeans may of course object that the English have not produced great composers in any consistent and continuous way and that between Purcell and Elgar there is a striking gap in the English musical tradition. We need to begin by sweeping aside the prejudicial and defamatory belief that England is a “land without music” for such a view has no justification. ![]() Reason enough to dedicate a portrait to the all-rounder. October 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Nevertheless, his works are rarely on the repertoire of German concert halls. The British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams is considered one of the greatest symphonic composers of the 20th century. Home Stories Ralph Vaughan Williams The man who could do everything Ralph Vaughan Williams
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