Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Sinfonia antartica (Symphony No.7)
Symphony No.8 in D 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 Parratt, 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 History and Music, he returned to the
Royal College, where he studied composition with Stanford, and, perhaps more
significant, 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 that followed.
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
as a private. 1914 was also the year of the London Symphony and of his rhapsodic
work for violin and orchestra, The Lork 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. There 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 war of 1939
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
his music for the film Scott of the Antarctic, the basis of the seventh of his
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.
In an essay on the subject in 1945 Vaughan Williams praises the discipline
involved in writing film- music, recommending it to teachers of composition. His
essay contains much common sense on the matter, although he cannot help looking
forward to the possibility of a film that takes its origin from the music
itself. His music for Scott of the Antarctic was the seventh of his eleven
film-scores, if the final The Vision of William Blake is to be included,
a film that matches Blake's illustrations of the Book of Job with Vaughan
Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing. The story of Captain Scott's last
expedition to the Antarctic, in a vain effort to be the first to reach the South
Pole, is well known, with the gallantry of Captain Oates in choosing death
rather than hamper the chance of survival of the other members of the
expedition, all of whom died. The film was a tribute to the heroism of Scott and
his companions. It provided Vaughan Williams with a necessary stimulus to
optimism, after the perceived desolation of his Sixth Symphony, which some had
seen as a 'war symphony'. Scott exemplified admirable qualities of loyalty,
courage, firmness of purpose and, indeed, all that seemed best in the human
spirit, and the film was in accordance with the then policy of Ealing Studios.
It was directed by Charles Frend, with a cast led by John Mills.
The Sinfonia antartica, in which Vaughan Williams made further use of
the music he had written for Scott of the Antarctic, was eventually completed in
1953 and dedicated to Ernest Irving, musical director at Ealing Film Studios
from 1935 until his death in 1953. It was given its first performance in
Manchester on 14th January 1953 by the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John
Barbirolli. The work is scored for triple woodwind, four horns, three trumpets,
three trombones, tuba, timpani and a percussion section that includes triangle,
cymbals, side-drum, tenor drum, bass drum, gong, bells, glockenspiel, xylophone,
vibraphone, wind-machine and celesta, in addition to a harp, piano, organ and
strings, with a female chorus and soprano soloist.
Each movement of the symphony is preceded, in the published score, by a
quotation, the opening Andante maestoso with words from Shelley’s Prometheus
Unbound:
To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite,
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night,
To defy power which seems omnipotent,
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent:
This... is to be
Good, great, joyous, beautiful and free,
This is alone life, joy, empire and victory.
The music that follows makes use of the title-music of the film and four
thematic elements, associated in turn with the antarctic wilderness, ice, fog
and the unknown. The opening theme is based on an ascending modal scale and
aptly suggests the frightening grandeur of the Antarctic. This is followed by a
mysterious evocation of the icy wilderness, with harp, piano and xylophone
providing a background to the thematic material, then taken up by the soprano
soloist and women's voices, wordless and curiously disembodied. The wind-machine
is heard, an instrument the inclusion of which in a symphony aroused a measure
of contemporary critical hostility, before a fragment of the principal theme
leads to an episode that makes icy use of glockenspiel, vibraphone and celesta.
Tremolo violins appear, in accompaniment of a motif for flutes, clarinet and cor
anglais, the soprano soloist leading then towards a distant trumpet fanfare and
the mounting climax and challenge of the final section.
The Scherzo is prefaced by words from Psalm CIV
There go the ships
and there is that Leviathon
whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.
Leviathan duly appears in the movement, whales and penguins evoked in a score
that continues to make the fullest use of orchestral colour, used pictorially
and providing a contrast to the sombre menace of the first movement.
At the heart of the symphony lies the slow movement, Landscape. Here the
superscription is taken from Coleridge's Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of
Chamouni:
Ye ice fallst Ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain –
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunget
Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts!
The lines epitomize the scene depicted in the music, one of frozen stillness,
the eerie wilderness evoked not only by the orchestral colouring, but by the
slow-moving melodic material, with its incessant use of the interval of an
augmented fourth. Slowly it reaches a climax in the burst of sound from the
organ, which had hitherto in the movement been used to accompany with the pedals
the bass line.
The Intermezzo is introduced by a quotation from John Donne's The Sun
Rising:
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
The movement is framed by an oboe melody of warmer feeling, in music that,
even so, accompanies tragedy, using some of the material designed for the self-
sacrifice of Captain Oates, choosing death rather than delay his companions in
their quest for the safety of their base camp.
The Epilogue takes its dominant idea from the last journal of Captain Scott:
I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew
we took them, things have come out against us,
therefore we have no cause for complaint.
The opening of the movement suggests the bravery of Scott and his companions,
but it is in the end the icy wilderness that claims victory, heard in the return
of the principal theme of the first movement, with the eerily disembodied voices
of the women and the sound of the wind blowing over the icy wastes.
Vaughan Williams' s first wife, Adeline, had died in 1951, at the age of
eighty. In 1953, shortly after the successful launching of the Sinfonia
antartica in Manchester and in London, he married his second wife, Ursula Wood,
the widow of a Royal Artillery officer, who had already provided texts for him
and was later to be his biographer. The following year brought the first
performance of his Tuba Concerto and a series of lectures in Canada and
the United States at leading universities. By early 1955 he had completed his Eighth
Symphony, a work he dedicated to Barbirolli, who conducted the first
performance with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester on 2nd May 1956. Once again
Vaughan Williams makes use of a wide range of orchestral colour, with
instrumentation that includes double woodwind, pairs of horns and trumpets,
three trombones, timpani and a percussion section that finds room for side drum,
triangle, cymbals, bass drum, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, tubular bells
and, borrowed from Puccini's Turandot, tuned gongs or, in their absence,
tam-tam. This is in addition to harps, celesta and strings.
The Symphony No.8 in D minor starts with a movement described in its
title as Fantasia (Variazioni senza Tema), or, as the composer put it, seven
variations in search of a theme. It is possible to hear in the over-all
structure that of traditional sonata-form, with the third variation, marked
Andante sostenuto, providing the second subject and perhaps the fourth and fifth
an equivalent of the development, to be followed by the counterpart of a
recapitulation in the final variations. The theme, which never appears, is heard
in fragmentary form and at the outset with the colourful resources of vibraphone
and celesta, as plucked strings accompany interjections from the trumpet and
French horn, before the entry of the flute with a more extended melody. The
second variation bursts in, to be followed by the contrasting solemnity of the
hymn-like third. The oboe introduces the fourth variation, followed by the
clarinet, and the fifth is an E minor Andante non troppo, The brass announce the
sixth variation, marked Allregro vivace, to be followed by a variation that
recalls the third derivative of the missing theme. There is a concluding coda
and a brief postscript, as the woodwind recall fragments of the opening,
The second movement, Scherzo alla Marcia is scored only for wind instruments,
It provides a lively contrast, a fair share of activity for the bassoons and a
618 trio section marked Andante, after which contrapuntal use is made of the
returning scherzo, The Cavatina, for strings, offers a slow movement in E
minor, with an intense cello melody at the start. There is secondary material,
chordal and hymn-like in character, followed by a violin solo with figuration in
characteristically pentatonic outline, a lark ascending and descending to
introduce again the principal theme.
The symphony ends with a noisy Toccata that makes lively use of tuned
percussion, at times seeming to owe more to Turandot than just the gongs.
The form is that of a rondo, somewhat modified, but contrasting episodes,
coloured by their instrumentation, are introduced in a cheerful and triumphant
conclusion.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra was founded on 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. Dan 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 Principal
Conductor, with Kees Bakels as Principal Guest Conductor. In 1993 the orchestra
celebrated its centenary, and during the ensuing year undertook its first tour
of the USA. The visit consolidated a touring history which has included Russia,
Hong Kong, Spain, France, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, and
Poland. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has recorded for a number of labels,
with highly acclaimed interpretations of the complete Tchaikovsky Symphonies and
the complete cycle of Vaughan Williams Symphonies for Naxos.
Lynda Russell
The English soprano Lynda Russell was born in Birmingham and studied at the
Royal College of Music in London, in Paris and in Vienna, Her many prizes and
awards include the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship. She has sung in many
of the leading opera-houses of the world. At home she has appeared at
Glyndebourne, with Opera North, Opera Northern Ireland and the English National
Opera, with the last of these at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She has
appeared widely in oratorio and in concert performances, including a BBC
television recording of Handel's Messiah with Harry Christophers and The
Sixteen and a televised performance of the German Requiem of Brahms for
BBC Wales. Other engagements have taken her to the major cities of Europe as a
concert and recital singer.
Waynflete Singers
The Waynflete Singers are one of England's foremost choirs. Directed by David
Hill, they give three concerts annually in Winchester Cathedral, usually
together with the Cathedral Choir and professional orchestras and soloists. They
have performed at the Cheltenham Festival, the London Promenade Concerts and in
St Paul’s Cathedral, and have broadcast for the BBC, with three 1993 and 1984
Christmas concert televised. The choir has made a number of acclaimed
recordings, with one selected as the Gramophone Chora1 CD of the year in 1994,
followed in 1996 by the Grammy Award for Best Choral Recording, in a
collaboration with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra.
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 Chigiana 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. In 1998 he was appointed Music Director Designate
of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, with an inaugural concert under his
direction in August 1998 in the new Petronas Hall in Kuala Lumpur.