Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ralph Vaughan Williams

Bard Music Festival: Vaughan Williams Immersion

Here’s some of the merch from this year’s Bard Music Festival. Of course, I already own most of the CDs. A particularly nice showing for those on Albion Records, the recording branch of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. Attractive design for the festival t-shirt, with a lark ascending, naturally, against a background of sky blue. I’m not a t-shirt guy, but I picked one up for the archive. Reading Eric Saylor’s Vaughan Williams book now. Saylor is one of this year’s resident scholars.

Of this past weekend’s concerts, Saturday night was the clear champion, with The Orchestra Now (TŌN) performing “Job, A Masque for Dancing” (with projections of the Blake illustrations), the Concerto for Two Pianos (with Danny Driver and Piers Lane the soloists), and the Symphony No. 4. Co-artistic director Leon Botstein conducted. “Job,” in particular, was sublime. Orchestras in the United States should hang their heads in shame for not programming this music.

Friday evening too had its rewards. I never much cared for Vaughan Williams’ “Concerto Accademico” on record, but hearing it played in person, with Grace Park the violinist, made me a convert. The “Serenade to Music” was luminously transcendent. The vocal soloists were all excellent, but soprano Brandie Sutton took it to the next level. What a presence, and what a voice!

It was also an inspired idea to open the festival with a communal singing of Vaughan Williams’ hymn “Down Ampney” (“Come Down, O Love Divine”), as one of the composer’s great achievements was his revitalization of the “The English Hymnal.” The man truly left his imprint on every musical facet of his time.

The Saturday morning panel, “Composer and Nation,” was also very special, with Saylor, Botstein, and Princeton University’s Deborah Nord participating. The discussion was moderated by Richard Aldous. The Bard Music Festival rewards on many levels, paying dividends on however much one decides to invest in it. If you’re there to take in some concerts of largely underexposed music, there’s plenty to enjoy. But if you want to dig a little deeper, the panels and pre-concert talks can be both absorbing and rewarding, and Saturday morning’s was among the best I’ve attended.

The daytime chamber concerts brought many pleasures, including exemplary performances of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet (with clarinetist Todd Palmer) and Herbert Howells’ Piano Quartet (with pianist Danny Driver). Nicholas Phan was on hand yesterday afternoon to sing Vaughan Williams’ “On Wenlock Edge” (with pianist Piers Lane). All three works featured members of the Ariel Quartet, surely the hardest-working chamber ensemble at this year’s festival.

Next weekend’s concerts are primed to be a series of “Holy Grails” for fans of the composer. Featured highlights will include a concert of English string classics, RVW’s Symphony No. 8 and “Sinfonia Antartica” [sic], and the Falstaff opera “Sir John in Love.” Of course, there will be plenty of chamber music during the day. This year, there will also be a couple of supplementary concerts held at the Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon (including a performance of the Mass in G minor).

“Vaughan Williams and His World” continues at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, through August 13. You’ll find the complete schedule at the link.

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

More photos tomorrow!

Fisher Center at Bard

August 7, 2023
Ravel’s Unexpected English Pupil

Maurice Ravel was one of the greatest of French composers. Reluctantly, he also became the teacher of one of England’s.

Ralph Vaughan Williams studied in Paris with Ravel for three months in 1907-08. Ravel betrayed some hesitancy at first. He took few pupils, but this untidy bear of an Englishman was not about to take no for an answer. Despite his earthy disposition (his response to Ravel’s assignment to write a minuet in the manner of Mozart was met with an unprintable response), Vaughan Williams quickly earned his teacher’s admiration and soon his friendship. Ravel later remarked of Vaughan Williams, “He is my only pupil who does not write my music.” That is to say, RVW remained his own man.

For his part, Vaughan Williams credited Ravel with having helped him to overcome the heavy Teutonic influence on his earlier training. Ravel had the effect of lightening the textures in Vaughan Williams’ music and sharpening its focus. RVW, already in his mid-30s and three years older than his teacher, learned his lessons well (at least the ones he considered valid), assimilated what he found useful, and applied it to the achievement of his own objectives. It could be said that Ravel’s greatest gift to his English pupil was the courage to be himself.

Ravel organized the first French performance of Vaughan Williams’ “On Wenlock Edge” in Paris in 1912. RVW later recollected that it was one of the worst things he’d ever heard. But he was thankful for Ravel’s advocacy in a country that rarely showed much interest in English music. Ravel also visited Vaughan Williams in London and quite enjoyed steak and kidney pudding with stout at Waterloo Station.

The two friends continued to correspond through World War I, during which both served as, among other things, ambulance drivers. Vaughan Williams had some experience with the “big guns,” which contributed to his gradual deafness, and Ravel was rejected from the air force for being too short. Ravel wrote RVW after the war and urged him to return to Paris. “I would be happy to see you after so many terrible years,” he confessed.

Pictured are some of Ravel’s letters to his friend. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, Vaughan Williams’ letters to Ravel have not survived.

Remembering Ravel’s influence on one of my favorite composers –happy birthday, Maurice Ravel!

March 7, 2023
Holst Vaughan Williams Music BFFs

BFFs of British music: Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams in September 1921

October 15, 2022
Vaughan Williams: Passion, Love & Music

Interestingly, this is a topic that has been on my mind for the past week or so. Perhaps because, after a conversation with Paul Moon, I was thinking of Vaughan Williams’ “Epithalamion,” the first work VW wrote in collaboration with the poet Ursula Wood. Perhaps because, in flipping through photos of the composer in advance of his birthday, I came across this snapshot from years later, in which he and Ursula, by then his second wife, look affectionate and happy.

Whichever the case, yesterday, on the 150th anniversary of VW’s birth, I discovered a documentary, which I am now very curious to view. You’ll find a link to “The Passions of Vaughan Williams” at the bottom of this post.

In the modern sense, “passion” is frequently used to suggest ardor or enthusiasm. But as you may know, the word itself has its roots in the Latin “passio” and the Greek “pathos,” both of them tied to suffering.

So just how “pastoral” was the world of Ralph Vaughan Williams?

Wood was a young drama student at the Old Vic, when she caught a performance of Vaughan Williams’ masque, “Job.” She was greatly impressed by the piece. So much so, she contacted him to share her own idea for a ballet. But Ralph was not keen on it. Undeterred, she then suggested doing something based on the poetry of Edmund Spenser. This intrigued him and led to their fateful meeting. They got together for lunch in 1938 and fell immediately in love. There was only one problem – well, two actually – they both were already married.

At 24, Vaughan Williams, himself the great-nephew of Charles Darwin, had married Adeline Fisher, a cousin of Virginia Woolf. The marriage was not a passionate one. The couple had no children, Adeline was very much wrapped up in the concerns of her birth family, and after her brother was killed in action during World War I, she determined to wear black for the remainder of her life. In the meantime, she was gradually invalided by crippling arthritis. For her health, the Vaughan Williamses left the vibrant cultural center of London, on which Ralph thrived, to settle in the countryside of Dorking, Surrey.

Ursula’s impediment was the first to be resolved. Michael Wood would die of a heart attack while serving in the army in 1942. She was promptly invited by the Vaughan Williamses to come stay with them at their rural address, and there their lives became further entwined. When Ursula took paid employment in London, Adeline was relieved to know that when Ralph was in town, Ursula would be there to care of him. Ursula’s relationship with Vaughan Williams became an open, though perhaps unspoken secret. After all, Adeline was no fool. For Ralph’s part, he would never abandon his wife.

During a tense night in 1944, the height of Hitler’s “doodlebug” raids, the Vaughan Williamses lay in twin beds, with Ursula on a mattress on the floor between them, all of them listening for V-1 planes as Ursula held their hands. This peculiar ménage continued for 13 years. In a professional capacity, Ursula acted as Vaughan Williams’ assistant and literary advisor. But personally, the two had already developed a very deep bond.

Adeline died in 1951. Ursula and Ralph married in February 1953. It was to be a happy union, as Ursula kept RVW active, expansive, and productive. I should mention, there was a 38-year difference between them. At the time of their wedding, Vaughan Williams was 80 and Ursula was 41. But before you jump to conclusions, there wasn’t anything “ick” about it.

Ursula was an inspiration for Ralph from the day they met. Ralph would set a number of her texts to music, beginning with the Spenser collaboration, the masque “Epithalamion,” composed in 1938-9 (as “The Bridal Day”). With the outbreak of World War II, the work was put away in a trunk, its premiere postponed indefinitely. It was eventually revived and televised on June 5, 1953.

Further, the romantic glow that characterizes so much of Vaughan Williams’ output (as in the “Serenade to Music”) may be attributed to the composer’s ardor. Certainly, Ursula steered his path in a positive direction. It’s hard to imagine that he would have enjoyed the vitality he did in his golden years without her.

Vaughan Williams died in 1958 at the age of 85. He was active to the very end, leaving several ambitious projects (including a cello concerto, an opera, and a Christmas pageant) incomplete at the time of his death. Ursula would outlive him by nearly 50 years.

In 1964, she published “RVW: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams.” She followed that with a candid volume of autobiography, “Paradise Remember,” in 1972, but deferred its publication until 2002. She died in 2007 at the age of 96. Clearly, she loved Ralph and did much in the half century since his passing to ensure and illuminate his legacy.

Ironically, because of the enduring popularity of works like the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and “The Lark Ascending,” a stereotype has taken root of Vaughan Williams as a kind of Bilbo Baggins, contentedly smoking his pipe and growing portly in the Shire. But the composer’s achievement transcends what some blithely perceive as a pastoral wallow. There was a great deal of turbulence and passion underlying both his life and music.

Ralph and Ursula’s “Epithalamion”

“The Passions of Vaughan Williams”

PHOTO: Ralph Vaughan Williams, babe magnet

October 13, 2022
Vaughan Williams at 150 A Master’s Vision

One of England’s greatest composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams looked back to his country’s agrarian roots as a roundabout way of securing the future of its cultural identity. On the 150th anniversary of his birth, I salute him in all his rumpled glory.

As did so many composers who were caught in the wildfire of nationalism that swept across Europe, beginning in the middle of the 19th century, Vaughan Williams rebelled against the prevailing academicism that reached its tendrils from the capitals of German music to choke the “provincial” hinterlands. He emerged from an environment that had produced far too many knock-offs of Mendelssohn and Brahms. Vaughan Williams would revolutionize his compatriots’ perception of art music by embracing the sounds of the English countryside.

However, like Béla Bartók, he was no simplistic, twee purveyor of folk music. On the contrary, the rhythms and inflections of his native land were already part of his DNA. The songs he documented while roaming the fields and fens with his colleague, Gustav Holst, merely brought to the surface what was already innate. What he expressed in his original music was thoroughly digested and deeply personal.

Some of Vaughan Williams’ best loved works are imbued with nostalgia for a faded world, but the composer pushed forward also, through two world wars and into the Great Beyond. He was not a conventionally religious man, but mysticism seems to color a fair amount of his music. He was also unafraid, in works like his Sixth Symphony, to stare desolation unflinchingly in the face. Technically, his lessons with Maurice Ravel made him a thoughtful orchestrator, so that throughout his life he deployed his instrumental forces with considerable craft and creativity. Given the proper attention, there is much to engage on all levels of his music.

While you might not want to take his advice on the best way to tie a tie, musically, with Vaughan Williams, you are always in the hands of a master. Put your faith in Ralph (pronounced “Rafe”) for the Vaughan Williams sesquicentenary.

Thank you, RVW, for a lifetime of enrichment, and happy birthday!

October 12, 2022

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS