Beware the man who hath no music in his soul…

Listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music first performed in the 1930s as a tribute to the conductor Sir Henry Wood, I am again struck by RVW’s complete openness as a human being, and by his generosity and humanity of spirit - to listen to his music is to listen to the Earth turning.

It is also to listen to the man himself bestriding the landscape in giant musical steps as if some great static construction has freed itself and is on the move; just listen to his 3rd Symphony, the ‘Pastoral’ (1921) to hear what I mean. This symphony - which is as much an ironic statement about the First World War as it is a musical description of the English countryside - was a watershed in RVW’s career, marking him out as a composer who was going to plough a very distinctive and idiosyncratic furrow, and by so doing create a body of work that is always fresh to the ear and to the heart (a vital element), which renews itself and the listener each and every time.

Ralph (pronounced ‘Rafe’) Vaughan Williams, the second son and youngest child of Arthur Charles Vaughan Williams and Margaret Susan Wedgwood, was born on the 12th of October 1872 in Down Ambney, in Gloucestershire, where his father was vicar.

But with Arthur’s sudden death in 1875 Ralph’s mother moved the family back to her sister’s home at Leith Hill Place in Surrey, which her father, Josiah Wedgwood III, had bought in 1845, and where the old man continued to live until his death in 1880.

And as the name Wedgwood suggests Ralph Vaughan Williams came from good patrician stock. On his father’s side the family was of Welsh extraction, with John Williams, Ralph’s great-grandfather, born in Job’s Well in Carmarthenshire in 1757. And as James Day writes, in his 1961 biography of Vaughan Williams, John Williams, after leaving Carmarthen Grammar School went “…to Jesus College, Oxford, before becoming a scholar of Wadham in 1774 and a fellow in 1780. He enjoyed a distinguished career at the bar – notably as a special pleader – becoming a Serjeant-at-law in 1794 and a King’s Serjeant ten years later. As a legal scholar he was famous mainly for his edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries and the Reports and Pleadings in the Court of King’s Bench in the Reign of Charles II, [with] his highly valued, shrewd and lucid notes and references adding greatly to the appeal and value of the latter book in particular.”

John Williams had three sons and three daughters (one of whom, Mary, married the sixth Earl of Buckingham), with Edward Vaughan Williams, RVW’s grandfather (the addition of the name ‘Vaughan’ came from Edward’s mother), born in Bayswater in 1797. He was educated at Winchester and Westminster before winning a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1816, where, like his father before him, he studied law. After establishing himself as a lawyer he brought out a new edition of his father’s book, Note’s on Saunders’ Reports, which he followed with a treatise called On the Law of Executors and Administration which was published in 1832 and reprinted many times during Edward’s lifetime. In the year he became a judge,1847, he was also knighted and went on to become one of the most respected judges on the circuit.

Sir Edward Vaughan Williams married in 1828, and like his father had three sons and three daughters, with the earlier mentioned, Arthur Charles Vaughan Williams (RVW’s father), born in London in 1834. He was educated at Westminster and later at Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained his BA in 1857. With a house already full of lawyers Arthur decided on a career in the church, and in 1860 was ordained deacon and sent to Bemerton, near Salisbury, where he served as a curate before becoming a fully-fledged vicar in 1865. He married the aforementioned Margaret Susan Wedgwood (who was also a niece of Charles Darwin) in February 1868, which takes us right back to the birth of RVW in 1872 and perhaps a larger understanding of the origins of his music - music that can, I feel, clearly be traced back to the Age of Enlightenment, and the newer, more caring, more liberal, and more tolerant - humanistic if you like - attitudes that his lawyer grandfather and great-grandfather brought to an almost moribund profession. Mix all of this together with the revolutionary theories of Charles Darwin (theories that must surely have permeated every corner of Leith Hill Place), plus the hugely influential creations of the Wedgwood family – and their own liberal attitudes to their workers - and you have an anvil of creativity, and not least care for your fellow human beings - that comes shining through every piece of music RVW wrote.

To Be Continued…

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A short introduction by Steve Newman for a much longer piece on the composer…

Buy the Choral Works

As a composer Ralph Vaughan Williams is still one of those constants of English music, and although he has been dead now for the best part of fifty years his presence and his magnificent music haunt us still.

I remember, in the late 1970s buying two huge box-sets of his work - one contained the nine symphonies, plus a collection of smaller orchestral pieces, with the other a collection of all his choral compositions, something like twenty LPs in all. The majority of both collections were recorded in the 1950s and conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, with VW close at hand throughout the sessions. They are without question definitive recordings with very few later ones coming anywhere near. These recordings have real depth as if somehow Vaughan Williams is putting his musical thoughts and passions (and his music tells us what a passionate man he was) straight from his heart to the disc, that the orchestras involved - the London Philharmonic, and the New Philharmonia - were part of his heart and brain - in other words there is an immediacy. Obviously it is Sir Adrian Boult’s conducting ( and that of David Willcocks on some of the choral pieces) and his own intuitive scholarship and love of the music, and great friendship with and love of VW, that helps bring out this feeling ( he did the same with Elgar’s work), creating a sense that the music is simply part of the air we breath, and of the pulsing of our own hearts. It is very very personal music fashioned out of love, memory, hurt, danger, and the violence of the 20th century which, with the genius of the man, is writ large for those of us who want to share not only his music but something that is now as much a part of our heritage and culture as Shakespeare and Barbara Hepworth. And I use those two examples because Vaughan Williams was both traditional and extremely modern, he is a continuation of the emotionality and melodic and ochestrating genius that was Sir Edward Elgar, and one of the greatest inspirations for the atonal red-bloodedness of Sir Harrison Birtwistle.

Original box-set recordings: HMV SLS 822 ( The Symphonies)
” ” HMV SLS 5082 ( The Choral Works)

To Be Continued…

On May 21st, the London Symphony Chorus celebrated its 40th anniversary in some style with a concert which will be followed by recordings, commissions and a party.

The London Symphony Chorus made its debut on Saturday 21 May 1966 when it recorded Mahler’s Symphony No 2 for Decca at the Kingsway Hall with Sir Georg Solti and the LSO.

On its 40th birthday the Chorus took part in a concert performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio to be recorded for LSO Live, conducted by its President Sir Colin Davis. The 40th anniversary was also marked by a concert of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with the LSO on 4th June, conducted by the Chorus’ Conductor Emeritus and former Music Director Richard Hickox. The LSC Endowment Fund contributed to the cost of recording this concert; live for Chandos.

2006 is a landmark year for the London Symphony Chorus as it tours to the USA, Italy, France and Germany, as well as performing in London and other UK cities with Sir Colin Davis, Sir Bernard Haitink, Mark Elder, Valery Gergiev, Richard Hickox, James Judd, Neema Jarvi, Tadaaki Otaka, Daniel Gatti, Vasily Petrenko and Jean-Claude Casadesus.

Like many classical music buffs, I often wonder what the appeal of the enduring 1812 Overture is. Some people avoid it like the plague because of the noise, the jingoism, and the sheer exuberant crazyness of it all.

Imagine firing cannons in a concert hall. What could the old Russian madman have been thinking of. Not the insurance bill, clearly.

BBC’s Radio 4 asked the question in a thoughtful programme last week. The show was presented by Alasdair Malloy, principal percussionist with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

We heard how one over-enthusiastic musician almost did away with the conductor by setting off fireworks in his trombone. On another occasion pellets from a cannon left much of the orchestra covered in blood and with permanent scars and dents in their faces. The 1812 is not for the fainthearted.

As it’s safer to listen to the piece at home, I’ve chosen a nice version on Deutsche Grammophon with Neeme Jarvi conducting the Gothenburg Artillery Division and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Note how the guns are put first.

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