With Christmas only days away, there’s still much to be done. Even so, this week on “The Lost Chord,” we pause to remember the story of the first Christmas, with music by a couple of English composers inspired by the Nativity.
Alongside Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Hubert Parry was one of the key figures of the so-called “English Musical Renaissance.” He influenced a whole generation of much better-known composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. We’ll hear his “Ode on the Nativity,” given its first performance on the same concert, at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival in 1912, as Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”
Vaughan Williams, the great-nephew of Charles Darwin, and an atheist in his youth, later softened into a kind of “cheerful agnosticism.” He dearly loved the King James Bible, and he especially enjoyed Christmas. Of course, he wrote much music on the subject. In fact, his very last composition was “The First Nowell.” He worked diligently at the piece, inspired by medieval pageants, during his final month, but died suddenly before its completion.
However, even at 85 years-old, RVW retained a remarkable concentration. He managed to pound out the whole thing in short score in only a few weeks. Furthermore, he had fully orchestrated the first two-thirds. The finishing touches were applied by his assistant, Roy Douglas – he of “Les Sylphides” fame.
If you like the “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” I think you’ll really enjoy this. It’s pastoral music for a pastoral scene. Join me for “A Play in a Manger,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Tag: Vaughan Williams
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Autumn Classical Music Crossword Puzzle
It’s ginger snaps for breakfast!
One of things I did to fill the time during the pandemic was think up clues for crossword puzzles while tidying up the house. Here’s the revival of one of those, on the subject of autumn. The answers are all related in one way or another to classical music and the season.
Of course, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. When filling out the puzzle this morning, I was delighted to find among the answers my old favorites, “SIBELIUS” and “VAUGHANWILLIAMS.”
Follow the link and select “solve online” at the bottom of the page. You’ll then be able to type directly into the squares. Once you feel you’ve exhausted the puzzle, you’ll find the solutions by clicking on “Answer Key PDF.”
Take it or leaf it! Celebrate autumn by raking through 50 colorful clues here:
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Byron Adams on Vaughan Williams & the Bard Music Festival
It’s summer and a Sunday. As I continue to work on my appreciation of conductor Roger Norrington (who died on Friday), which hopefully I will have in satisfactory shape soon, I thought I’d share this interview with musicologist Byron Adams, conducted by Andrew Green of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.
Adams, whose comments on this page are invariably illuminating (and always welcome), has been a passionate and lifelong advocate of Vaughan Williams, Elgar, and other British composers. If you ever attend concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra, pay attention to who wrote the program notes. There’s a possibility it could be Byron!
Adams is also a composer himself, a retired professor of music at the University of California, Riverside. The conversation at the link rightly emphasizes his contribution to the Bard Music Festival, especially in the editing of a tie-in volume of critical essays for the 2023 festival, devoted to “Vaughan Williams and His World,” published by University of Chicago Press. But you may also learn a thing or two about Vaughan Williams’ experiences in America and certainly more about the Bard Music Festival.
Another one of Byron’s enthusiasms and areas of expertise is French music. He’ll be introducing a concert to be performed at Bard on the afternoon August 9 for a program he helped curate, titled “The French Connection,” designed to illuminate the experiences in Paris of – and French influences on – the subject of this year’s festival, the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. The concert will also include music by Alexandre Tansman, Albert Roussel, Maurice Ravel, and Josef Suk.
Adams is a Bard stalwart, having for many years served on the program committee for the festival.
Here’s a link to the complete schedule for “Martinů and His World,” which will take place at Bard College over two weekends, August 8-10 and 14-17.
Watch the interview to find out which essay in his book drove him to drink!
Fisher Center at Bard
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Remembering Matthew Best & Ronald Corp
Only days after the death of Ronald Corp (who passed on May 7), another conductor from the Hyperion Records stable, Matthew Best, has died. Best, who founded the Corydon Singers in 1973 (if my math is correct, at the age of 16!), made many cherishable recordings. Over the years, I’ve acquired a number of them. His Villa-Lobos disc that includes the composer’s “Missa São Sebastião” was a revelation.
Of course, Best also recorded plenty of Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams had a lifelong fascination with John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” laboring at an opera on the subject for decades, finally completing it only later in life. In the process, he assimilated material from some of his earlier settings and inspirations. One such source was incidental music composed for a radio play in 1942, the broadcast of which featured John Gielgud as Christian. In 1990, Best recorded a distillation of this music as “The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Bunyan Sequence,” with Gielgud returning to reprise the role he created.
Another program conducted by Best that includes Vaughan Wiilliams’ “Serenade to Music” and “Flos Campi” is also very highly prized. All four discs of his Vaughan Williams choral music performances were later collected and reissued as a set.
A recording of his I especially value (not a part of that set) is of Vaughan Williams’ opera “Hugh the Drover.” “Hugh” is chock-full of folk melodies, both genuine and imitation, of a variety that fans of the composer will recognize and adore. It’s also the rare opera to actually feature a prize fight!
This pugilistic interlude aside, there is a spirit of nostalgia and romance that permeates the score, and Best conveys it to perfection. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to opera die-hards who believe Verdi is the begin-all and end-all of the art form, but there’s a kind of twilit magic at play here that at times positively glows. I’ll be taking this with me today to keep me company during my Monday afternoon wildlife center food deliveries, an apt choice for farm and country.
Best was also a formidable bass, who sang such operatic roles as Wotan, Scarpia, and Mozart’s Commendatore. He died on Saturday, aged only 68 years. That’s often only middle-age for someone in his profession.
I didn’t mention Corp earlier, since I intend to honor him later this week on the next installment of “Sweetness and Light” (to be streamed on KWAX Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT). Corp too left many delightful recordings, including four discs of British Light Music that served to spark my interest in the genre. However, since Fate’s hammer has fallen twice, I am taking the opportunity to express, albeit briefly, my appreciation and gratitude for him, as well. Corp was 74 years-old.
R.I.P.
Best conducts Villa-Lobos, “Missa São Sebastião”
Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music”
Corp conducts Armstrong Gibbs’ “At Dusk”
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