Today is the birthday of one of my favorite composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams. What does that say about me? I don’t care. I love his stuff.
Vaughan Williams, of course, cultivated a musical language with its roots in English folk melody and the great Tudor traditions. Like Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, he helped rescue England’s rich rural musical heritage from extinction.
Vaughan Williams was a musical democrat, who believed the works of the world’s greatest composers were a birthright of the common man. He bicycled around the countryside, not only notating songs of agricultural workers, but rehearsing village choirs for his beloved Leith Hill Festival, which he directed from 1905 to 1953.
He adored the “St. Matthew Passion.” Since many of the singers could not read music, he would go through the work with them page by page.
In middle age, my eyebrows seem to aspire to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ stature. I wonder if his compositional strength, Samson-like, was contained in those unruly tufts?
Celebrate Vaughan Williams by listening to “The Running Set”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMPUYo1A_BU
PHOTO: Vaughan Williams and Foxy, engaged in a shedding contest