I just submitted 1900 words to my editor on a 1200 word limit – and all he wanted was photos of Spider-Man!
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Vaughan Williams Birthday: Ken Russell’s Portrait
On the birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams, a party favor:
A link to Ken Russell’s quasi-documentary, “Vaughan Williams: A Symphonic Portrait” (1983) – aptly named, since the hour is structured around the composer’s nine symphonies, with a few welcome digressions to accommodate reflections on the “Tallis Fantasia,” “The Lark Ascending,” and the Oboe Concerto.
The film is surprisingly reverential by Russell standards – this, after all, is the guy who directed “Tommy” and “Lisztomania” – though it is not without its moments of impishness. Russell himself appears prominently, as does his crew, who are made part of the supporting cast, as they are shown shooting on various locations with the composer’s widow, Ursula. The style is part documentary, part deconstruction, with touches straight out of French New Wave, as when Russell calls in a script supervisor to sit down with Ursula to go over her “lines,” when she leaves something out of one her personal reminiscences! There are a number of instances of filmmaker and subjects breaking the fourth wall.
There is also a recurring bit with Russell and his daughter, Molly, clearly engaged and asking questions, as he flips through photographs in a book about Vaughan Williams. By the end, cumulatively, I found this surprisingly moving.
A number Vaughan Williams associates and champions also appear: David Willcocks, Vernon Handley, and Evelyn Barbirolli – widow of the conductor John Barbirolli (Glorious John, as Ralph called him), for whom RVW composed his Oboe Concerto – composer and Vaughan Williams pupil Elizabeth Maconchy, and violinist Iona Brown, arguably the foremost interpreter in her day of “The Lark Ascending.”
I’m afraid you’ll have to ignore the Swedish subtitles. The only other option I could find is dubbed into German!
I figured out that the book the Russells are reading is “Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Pictorial Biography,” a volume I had somehow overlooked. Since viewing the film, I was able to track down a copy, signed by Ursula and her co-author, John E. Lunn. This will now reside in my library alongside Jerrold Northrop Moore’s “Vaughan Williams: A Life in Photographs.”
Enjoy the film, and happy birthday, Ralph Vaughan Williams!
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Vaughan Williams Birthday Music Memories
On the birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams, another party favor:
Musicologist Diana McVeagh, as near as I can calculate, was just weeks shy of her own 97th birthday, when she shared these recollections about her experiences with Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells, Ursula Vaughan Williams, and “Uncle Ralph” himself, with wonderful side-stories about Sir Edward Elgar and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, among others. Enjoy these priceless eyewitness accounts. They’re guaranteed to elicit a few chuckles. McVeagh is the author of several books, two of which I ordered immediately after listening to her anecdotes. “Elgar the Musicmaker” turned up inscribed by the author (to a previous owner). Thank you to Byron Adams, who conducted the interview, via video communication, during this summer’s Bard Music Festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SjZTNK_3aI
Happy Birthday, Ralph Vaughan Williams!
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Princeton Symphony Conjures Mazzoli’s Magic
Play Missy for me.
According to composer Missy Mazzoli, her Violin Concerto (Procession) “casts the soloist as a soothsayer, sorcerer, healer and pied piper-type character, leading the orchestra through five interconnected healing spells.”
Jennifer Koh, the violinist for whom the work was written, will weave her magic with the @[100043116381457:2048:Princeton Symphony Orchestra] this weekend.
Also on the program will be Felix Mendelssohn’s beguiling “Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave),” inspired by a trip to Scotland, and Jean Sibelius’ alchemical Symphony No. 2, embraced at its premiere as a symbol of Finnish nationalism, but described by its composer as “a confession of the soul.“
Kenneth Bean will conduct at Richardson Auditorium in Princeton University’s Alexander Hall, this Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.
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Opera Ballet Scandals Wagner Verdi
In the 19th century, when your opera was accepted in Paris, it meant you definitely needed a ballet. It was tradition. It provided a danced divertissement for French audiences, who were accustomed to a little light entertainment in the middle of an evening heavy on singing.
Richard Wagner bemoaned the fact, when “Tannhäuser” was accepted there, and he ruffled quite a few feathers when he frontloaded his ballet, essentially “getting it out of the way,” by including it in the first act as a bacchanale – which makes perfect dramatic sense in the Venusberg, the sensual realm of Venus.
Nevertheless, Parisian aristocrats were none too happy, as this conflicted with their dining schedules. (There’s a reason they call it “fashionably late.”) French soldiers too were accustomed to arriving with full bellies and light spirits to ogle dancers during their traditional appearance in a later act.
For this, among other reasons, “Tannhäuser” was met with whistles and catcalls. By the third performance, the backlash had become so intense, with interruptions of up to 15 minutes at a time, that Wagner finally withdrew the opera.
Giuseppe Verdi wasn’t crazy about the whole ballet idea either. Nevertheless, when he was invited to submit “Macbeth,” originally composed in 1847, for performance in Paris (first in 1852, and when he didn’t follow through, for a second time in 1864), he acquiesced. Of course, Verdi being Verdi, it became a much more involved undertaking than he had anticipated, and he wound up revising the entire opera.
Privately, he expressed reservations about the inclusion of ballet in opera, but unlike Wagner, he figured out ways for it to suit the drama AND at the accepted place in an evening’s entertainment. In short, when life gave him lemons, he made limoncello.
Verdi was a canny enough showman to know to give the public what it wanted: cavorting witches!
You go, Joe! Happy birthday!
Totally Goth witches’ chorus from “Macbeth”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b4tKhV5mcg
Act III Witches’ Dance from Taiwan:
“The Three Witches from Macbeth” (1827) by Alexandre-Marie Colin
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