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Overture to The Wasps Ralph Vaughan Williams “The first startling thing about our decision to do a VW weekend was the blank looks when we mentioned it…But not as startling as the reactions to the weekend itself. If I had a quid for every time I heard someone say ‘I never knew he wrote music like that’ I’d be as rich as…” writes Richard Morrison, chief music critic of the Times (London) of a weekend commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams – and this in the composer’s own backyard. Known primarily for his English pastoralism, the soaring violin writing of The Lark Ascending and the Renaissance polyphony of the Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Ralph Vaughan Williams (or as the British write, “VW”) poured out some of the most intense and personal music in Britain’s history. VW came from a distinguished family: his paternal grandfather was the first Judge of Common Pleas. His maternal grandparents were Josiah Wedgwood III and a sister of Charles Darwin. Although the family encouraged his youthful musical talents, they later disapproved of his choice of music as a career; VW prevailed, graduating with a Mus.B from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1894. His progress was slow and uncertain. He went to Berlin in 1897 to study with Max Bruch, and to Paris in 1908 to take lessons from Maurice Ravel. But he was drawn to English folksong and Elizabethan and Jacobean music. His music became rooted in Tudor polyphony, uncovering that rich heritage for contemporaneous audiences. He also had a passion for English folk music; his collection of over 800 folksongs, on which he worked between 1903 and 1910 and his selection of the songs for The English Hymnal in 1906 helped set the stage for the future development of his musical language. In his long, productive life – his last symphony was premiered just four months before his death at age 85 – VW practiced what he preached. He wrote music for numerous instrumental and vocal combinations, as well as for levels of sophistication and performing ability. Considered radical in his young days and a lifelong agnostic (despite his contributions to religious music), he believed that music was the birthright of every individual. Around the turn of the twentieth century, as part of British university life, it became fashionable to commission music to accompany the revivals of Greek plays. In 1909 Cambridge asked Ralph Vaughan Williams, by then a well-respected composer, to provide music for the fall production of Aristophanes’s comedy The Wasps, a satire on ancient Athenian life. In 1925 he made a suite from the incidental music, whose overture quickly became an orchestral favorite. Aristophanes is the earliest comic dramatist whose works still survive. He was a master of the social and political satire, and The Wasps certainly fits the bill. The protagonist, Philocleon, is addicted to court proceedings, particularly jury duty – which in Ancient Athens was a pretty corrupt business involving as many as 500 jurors most of whom were on the take. In the play, they are costumed as wasps. The overture opens with the annoying buzzing of the wasps,  leading to themes taken from the rest of the incidental music. The broad theme introduced by the woodwinds sounds like a folk tune, but is original, as are all the other themes, including the obligatory love interest. It goes without saying that there are no Greek themes in the rollicking overture. | ||||||||||
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| Ralph Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending, Romance for Violin and Orchestra “The first startling thing about our decision to do a VW weekend was the blank looks when we mentioned it…But not as startling as the reactions to the weekend itself. If I had a quid for every time I heard someone say ‘I never knew he wrote music like that’ I’d be as rich as…” writes Richard Morrison, chief music critic of the Times (London) of a weekend commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams – and this in the composer’s own backyard. VW came from a distinguished family: his paternal grandfather was the first Judge of Common Pleas. His maternal grandparents were Josiah Wedgwood III and a sister of Charles Darwin. Although the family encouraged his youthful musical talents, they later disapproved of his choice of music as a career; VW prevailed, graduating with a Mus.B from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1894. His progress was slow and uncertain. He went to Berlin in 1897 to study with Max Bruch, and to Paris in 1908 to take lessons from Maurice Ravel. But he was drawn to English folksong and Elizabethan and Jacobean music. His music became rooted in Tudor polyphony, uncovering that rich heritage for contemporaneous audiences. He also had a passion for English folk music; his collection of over 800 folksongs, on which he worked between 1903 and 1910 and his selection of the songs for The English Hymnal in 1906 helped set the stage for the future development of his musical language. In his long, productive life – his last symphony was premiered just four months before his death at age 85 – VW practiced what he preached. He wrote music for numerous instrumental and vocal combinations, as well as for levels of sophistication and performing ability. Considered radical in his young days and a lifelong agnostic (despite his contributions to religious music), he believed that music was the birthright of every individual. In his youth, Ralph Vaughan Williams studied the violin, an instrument he came to regard with special affection although he never fully mastered it. In 1914, considered a rising musical star just starting work on his Second (“London”) Symphony, he expressed his love for the instrument with The Lark Ascending, composed for the violinist Marie Hall. The outbreak of World War I indefinitely postponed the premiere until 1920, by which time Vaughan Williams had revised and re-orchestrated it. The work takes its title from a poem of the same name by George Meredith, the following extract of which appears in the score: He rises and begins to round, From its opening bars, there is a certain magic in the work. It presents the image of the soaring lark – “the wine which overflows” – in the non-metrical line of the solo violin against the more down-to-earth (metrically bound) orchestra – the “golden cup” – all in a grand musical arch. After a few gentle introductory measures by the orchestra, the solo violin enters hesitantly with a five-note motive reminiscent of bird song that becomes increasingly complex, a gentle but full cadenza – "And ever winging up and up." The violin then breaks out in a lilting melody reminiscent of English folk song , which it almost seems to “teach” the orchestra while it takes off again in more embellishments. After a return to the opening cadenza, the tempo picks up as the orchestra, led by the flute and clarinet, introduces its own animated folk-like melody, which it “teaches” the violin . During the change of pace, the violin returns to its cadenza, this time accompanied by other bird-song images by the solo winds. The work winds down with a varied reprise of the first folk melody and ends pianissimo as it began, with another cadenza on the violin, fading gradually – “Till lost on his aerial rings” – out of sight and hearing. | ||||||||||
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Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 55 If you look at photographs of Edward Elgar, read about his likes and dislikes or listen to his music, the picture that emerges is the stereotype of an Imperial British aristocrat or, as one critic put it, “... an almost intolerable air of smugness, self-assurance and autocratic benevolence...” Reality was very different. Elgar was born to a lower middle class family, the son of a music storeowner. Because his family was “in trade”– as the British so condescendingly put it – Elgar always had a chip on his shoulder for not being a gentleman and for not having served in the army. He was nervous, insecure, hypochondriacal and prone to depression; and he was a Catholic, which did not help either. Even a knighthood in 1904, several honorary degrees and the invitation to compose music for the coronation of King George V did not assuage his inferiority complex. Class notwithstanding, Elgar was a model Edwardian composer, whose conservative imperial ideology fitted perfectly the British ethos of the pre-World War I era, and he served as its musical spokesman. His music was also in keeping with the traditions of the Royal College of Music: a proponent of late nineteenth-century Romanticism, whose heroes were Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and Dvorák. To the chagrin of Britain’s music establishment, Elgar – an outsider lacking academic musical training – was the first English composer to achieve world fame since Henry Purcell in the seventeenth century. In 1899, at age 42, his Enigma Variations propelled him from parochial obscurity to worldwide recognition. Although Elgar had been thinking about writing a symphony since 1898, it was only in 1907 that he began the project, finishing it the following September. It was dedicated to famed conductor Hans Richter, “true artist and true friend,” who premiered it in December 1908 and who proclaimed it “the greatest symphony of modern times.” Elgar’s countrymen seemed to agree. An important thing to remember in listening to this symphony, especially the first and final movements, is that it is a mosaic of short motives derived from the larger expansive themes presented up front. The movement is also characterized by continual shift of emotions, although composed according to the general scheme of sonata allegro form. The stately Andante introduction opens with a theme that Elgar described as “…intended to be simple &, in intention, noble & elevating.” The theme, which becomes a motto for the Symphony as a whole, gently dies away, but continually reappears throughout as part of the shifting emotional sands. The following massive Allegro begins the complex mosaic with a stormy theme. There follows a more gentle section that introduces the additional motives; an example of how Elgar transforms a little snatch of accompaniment can be heard in the following examples. & The mood swings are accompanied by many uncommon key relationships and Elgar claimed he had “...thrown over all key relationships as formerly practiced,” pointing out that he was not the first to do so – Beethoven did it in his last quartets. A combination of thumping timpani and skittering violins opens the closest thing Elgar gives us to a Scherzo; it hints at a competition between contrasting themes, one militaristic recalling one of Mahler's angry outbursts. The second one is more feminine. The two battle for dominance in their own particular way, finally reaching a quiet reconciliation by the final bars. It fades into the third movement Adagio, which takes up the violin opening scherzo theme in a more gentle, contemplative way, because of the extreme contrast in tempi, almost unrecognizably. It continues as a “melody of limitless consolatory powers.” Other motivic elements that receive prominence in this movement are reminiscent of passages from the Enigma Variations, the first theme recalling "Nimrod" (Variation 10), Elgar's friend who was desperately ill at the time. Another melody recalls Variation 6. In early performances of the Symphony this movement frequently had to be encored. The technique of motivic transformation once again plays a large role in the final movement. A somber and unsettling funereal march, again reminiscent of Mahler, opens with a short motive used again more forcefully later in the movement, gradually evolving into a funeral march. A phrase from the motto from the first movement makes a tentative appearance as the tale of a second motive, but it is temporarily set aside dismissed in favor of a couple of driving dramatic motives. & The movement abounds with the grand orchestral gestures that Elgar was so fond of, all based on variations and combinations of the motivic kernels, but the mood remains ambivalent. He brings back the motto to tie this enormous structure together. Just as at first, it seemed powerless against the angry restlessness of the movement, in the end it returns “triumphant” to give a final, peaceful resolution to the enormous structure. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008 | ||||||||||
