Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958)
Symphony No.3 (Pastoral Symphony)
Symphony No.6 in E Minor
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in the Gloucestershire village
of Down Ampney in 1872, the son of a clergyman. His ancestry on both his father's and
mother's side was of some intellectual distinction. His father was descended from a family
eminent in the law, while his maternal grandfather was a Wedgwood and his grandmother a
Darwin. On the death of his father in 1875 the family moved to live with his mother's
father at Leith Hill Place in Surrey. As a child Vaughan Williams learned the piano and
the violin and received a conventional upper middle class education at Charterhouse, after
which he delayed entry to Cambridge, preferring instead to study at the Royal College of
Music, where his teachers included Hubert Parry and Walter Parrat, later Master of the
Queen's Musick, both soon to be knighted. In 1892 he took up his place at Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he read History, but took composition lessons from Charles Wood. After
graduation in both Music and History, he returned to the Royal College, where he studied
composition with Stanford, and, perhaps more important, became a friend of a
fellow-student Gustav Holst. The friendship with Holst was to prove of great importance in
frank exchanges of views on one another's compositions in the years following.
In 1897 Vaughan Williams married and took the opportunity to
visit Berlin, where he had lessons from Max Bruch and widened his musical experience. In
England he turned his attention to the collection of folk-music in various regions of the
country, an interest that materially influenced the shape of his musical language. In 1908
he went to Paris to take lessons, particularly in orchestration, from Ravel, and had by
now begun to make a reputation for himself as a composer, not least with the first
performance in 1910 of his first symphony, A Sea
Symphony, setting words by Walt Whitman, and his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis in the same year. The even
tenor of his life was interrupted by the war, when he enlisted at once in the Royal Army
Medical Corps. 1914 was also the year of A London
Symphony and of his rhapsodic work for violin and orchestra, The Lark Ascending. Three years later, after service
in Salonica that seemed to him ineffective, he took a commission in the Royal Garrison
Artillery and was posted to France, where he was also able to make some use of his
abilities as a musician.
After the war Vaughan Williams returned to the Royal College of
Music, now as a professor of composition, a position he retained until 1938. In these
years he came to occupy a commanding position in the musical life of the country, with a
series of compositions that seemed essentially English, the apparent successor of Elgar,
although his musical language was markedly different. The second war brought the challenge
of composition for the cinema, with notable scores for The
49th Parallel in 1940 and a number of other films, culminating in 1949 in music
for the film Scott of the Antarctic, the
basis of his later Sinfonia Antartica, the seventh of his nine symphonies. Other works of
the last decade of his life included two more symphonies, the opera The Pilgrim's Progress, a violin sonata and concertos
for harmonica and for tuba, remarkable adventures for an octogenarian. He died in August
1958, four months after the first performance of his last symphony.
Vaughan Williams wrote his Third
Symphony, the aptly named Pastoral Symphony,
in 1922, and revised the work in 1955. Conceived first in the countryside of Northern
France towards the end of the war, the symphony has a certain sameness of mood throughout,
an air of tranquillity that may be perceived in part as a celebration of the return of
peace, described in the composer's own programme note on the first performance as
"almost entirely quiet and contemplative". One hostile critic, however,
satirised the work as "a cow looking over a gate", a verdict that does little
justice to the subtlety and bold originality of conception of the music. The score
includes a last movement vocalise for soprano or tenor, although the alternative use of a
clarinet is happily suggested. Other variants are permitted, although the full score calls
for three flutes, one doubling piccolo, two oboes, cor anglais, three clarinets, the third
doubling bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets and trombones, tuba, a
percussion section of timpani, triangle, bass drum, cymbals and celesta, harp and strings.
In addition to these instruments there are parts in the second movement for natural
trumpet in E fiat and for natural horn.
The symphony breaks with tradition at once in its first
movement, which unfolds in a generally meditative mood. A modal accompanimental figure
from flutes, joined by clarinets, serves to introduce a theme heard first from cellos and
double basses, with the harp. Thereafter thematic elements follow one another in material
subtly related, making use of solo instruments and the telling effects of divided string
parts, with violins, violas and cellos divided at times into four. The movement ends with
a solo cor anglais over divided string chords and a final brief and muted reference to the
first theme from cellos and basses. The first theme of the second movement is announced by
a solo French horn over a sustained string chord, the theme then handed, over changed
harmonies, to oboe and clarinet and then to solo viola and flute. The movement contains
two cadenzas, the first for a natural trumpet and the second for natural horn, both with
the characteristic intonation of the true harmonic series. The third movement, marked
Moderato pesante, is a primordial dance, with its own rhythmic peculiarities, with which a
second theme of folk contour, stated by the trumpet, offers a contrast. The movement ends
with a curious coda, a Presto introduced imitatively by reduced numbers of strings with
thematic material that again proclaims its national origin. The last movement is shaped by
the opening solo, for voice or for clarinet, accompanied only by a soft roll of the drum.
The modal thematic material that unfolds leads to the final re-appearance of the rhapsodic
solo, now accompanied only by sustained notes from the muted violins at a height to which
they have ascended in the bars immediately preceding, an inversion of the accompaniment of
the opening of the movement.
The Sixth Symphony of
Vaughan Williams was written after the second World War. It was completed in 1946, when
Michael Mullinar, to whom it was finally dedicated, played it through on the piano to the
composer and a small group of friends. After revisions it was played through by the BBC
Symphony Orchestra in December 1947 and first performed in public early in the following
year. Some critics chose to describe the symphony as a War Symphony, its last movement
seen by them as a prophecy of desolation. Vaughan Williams rejected this interpretation
but went so far as to quote Prospero's farewell to his art in Shakespeare's The Tempest, "We are such stuff as dreams are
made on, and our little life is rounded by a sleep", with reference to the last
movement. This was by no means his own farewell to music, whatever mood may have come upon
him as he grew older.
The symphony is scored for a large orchestra that includes a
tenor saxophone, a xylophone and two harps, the second an optional doubling, in addition
to a large woodwind and brass section, full percussion and strings. The first movement is
in broadly traditional tripartite form. The first thematic material is developed in a
transition that leads to the second, introduced by flute, cor anglais, first violin and
viola. The movement ends with a recapitulation, with the second theme entrusted to the
strings, accompanied by harp chords. The second movement, shifting from E major to B flat
minor, is in ternary form, with its principal subject at first entrusted to unison
strings, with clarinets and bassoons, over a sustained trumpet B flat. A drum-roll,
starting softly but increasing in volume, leads to the central section of the movement,
heralded by the brass, before the hushed entry of unison strings with a second theme. The
third movement is a Scherzo with a Trio repeated after the varied repetition of the
Scherzo itself. The first theme starts with a series of rising augmented fourths,
ascending through the orchestra. The opening of the Trio is announced by the saxophone,
over ostinato viola semiquavers. This theme is varied when it re-appears in the final
section of the movement, with the full power of the whole orchestra. The Epilogue, a slow
movement, starts with muted violins, over a note from the bass clarinet, sustained to link
it with what went before. Muted brass introduce the second section of the movement with
chords echoed by divided strings. A solo oboe starts a third section with a variant of the
opening theme, while the final section, with its tremolo strings, serves as a brief
summary. The last bars fade to nothing, as violins and violas sustain a final chord.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra The Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra was founded on the 22nd May 1893 by Dan Godfrey, the son of a Victorian
band-master. At first it was known as the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra and provided
music for one of the most prosperous resorts on the South coast of England. Godfrey served
as principal conductor for the next forty years and established one of the most famous
orchestras in Great Britain. Since then the orchestra has worked under a succession of
distinguished Principal Conductors, the most recent being Sir Charles Groves, Constantin
Silvestri, Paavo Berglund and Rudolf Barshai. In September 1988 the American conductor
Andrew Litton was appointed to this role at the same time as Kees Bakels became the
Principal Guest Conductor. In May 1993 the orchestra launched its centenary celebrations,
during the year undertaking its first tour of the United States of America. The visit
consolidated a touring history which has included Russia, Hong Kong, Spain, France,
Switzerland, Finland, Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has recorded for a number of
labels, and has highly acclaimed interpretations of the complete Tchaikovsky Symphonies in
addition to the complete Symphonies of Vaughan Williams for Naxos.
Kees Bakels
Kees Bakels was born in Amsterdam, beginning his musical career
as a violinist. He studied conducting at the Amsterdam Conservatory and at the Academy
Ghigiana in Siena. During his studies he became Assistant Conductor of the Amsterdam
Philharmonic Orchestra and subsequently held the position of Associate Conductor with that
orchestra. At the same time he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Chamber
Orchestra, which he has directed in festivals in Finland, Belgium and Spain.
Kees Bakels has conducted all the major Dutch orchestras, as
well as orchestras in Europe and Russia. He has also directed many concerts with the
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1985 conducted his first London Promenade concert
with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. From the beginning of his career, Kees
Bakels has concentrated as much on opera as on the symphonic repertoire and has conducted
English National Opera productions of Aida and Fidelio and productions by the Welsh
National Opera of La Bohème and Die Zauberflöte. He has also specialised in the
performance of lesser known operas by Mascagni and Leoncavallo and earlier works by Verdi
in the concert-hall, broadcasting studio and opera-house. He became Principal Guest
Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in September 1988, and in 1991 was made
Principal Guest Conductor in recognition of his close relationship with the orchestra.
BUSINESS PARTNERS IN THE ARTS
Business Partners in the Arts are a group of businesses that
have combined some of their promotional resources to support the arts in the South West of
England. Each partner firm believes that the arts have a critical effect on the social and
economic structure of the local community. They also want to see the region's
international orchestra flourish and expand, providing even more services to a regular
touring area that stretches across most of southern England.
The Business Partnership has helped many arts organizations
since it was first established in 1989. Founder members, BT, through their Exeter office,
and Bearnes, the art auctioneers, were joined almost immediately by Renwicks Garages, the
West country VW and Peugeot dealer. More recently, Bray Leino, the Devon based advertising
group, Clerical Medical and West country Television, have joined the organization.
In supporting the Bournemouth Orchestras, and this recording,
the Partner firms hope to allow a wider public a chance to hear these important works, and
perhaps help persuade other hesitant corporations to support the Arts.