Concerto for Oboe
i. Rondo Pastorale
ii. Minuet and Musette
iii. Finale (Scherzo)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958) was the key figure in the 20th century revival of English music. His research into the music of England's past and his tasteful adaptations of this music have helped to lift English folk music out of its undeserved neglect. His association with the carols, madrigals, folksongs, and dances of the Tudor period (1485 - 1603) brought his recognition as a composer. Identification with his country and its music gave Vaughan Williams the direction he needed. There were three main influences in his music: English folksongs, English hymns, and English literature. Although he generally did not use folksongs in his orchestral and instrumental works, he had so absorbed the folksong idiom that his melodies often seem familiar to the ear.
The Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra was composed for oboe virtuoso Leon Goosens, who was the soloist in the première of the work on September 20, 1944. Critics described the concerto as capricious, lyrical, and nostalgic, and it is considered his most successful work in this form.
The first movement is pastoral in feeling, beginning and ending in A minor. There is a brief cadenza near the beginning, followed by a theme in G major with lush harmonies underneath. The oboe breaks into a rhythmic passage, recalls the G major theme (this time in A major), and follows with a new theme - soft and plaintive. The movement ends with an impressive cadenza and the oboe softly repeating the strings' first four opening notes.
The second movement begins with a C minor minuet, light and staccato in nature. The middle section contains a musette's characteristic long-held drone played by the oboe with the melody in the strings. The movement ends with a repeat of the minuet theme.
The third movement is actually a scherzo and two trios. The strings open in the key of E minor with a running quaver pattern. The oboe introduces the prominent themes. The first trio (a waltz) has a legato melody with the quaver theme from the scherzo interjected. The second trio is slower with a sustained, almost organ-like, accompaniment. The two-part coda recalls themes from the earlier sections with the oboe repeating in a different key the four opening notes of the first movement and ending on a pianissimo high D.
© Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press
The Lark Ascending
In his youth, Ralph Vaughan Williams studied the violin, an instrument he came to regard as his “musical salvation”. It is not surprising, then, that his unique attachment to the violin would be made tangible in a special work. The beautiful and serene romance for violin and orchestra, The Lark Ascending, is certainly that work.
From its very opening bars, this composition has a certain magic to it. The orchestra plays a very soft and peaceful introduction, then quietly sustains a chord. The solo violin, which represents the lark, enters tentatively, with four-note singing motives reminiscent of bird song. Gradually, the notes rise and the violin soars above a gently and delicate orchestral accompaniment.
The middle section is more folk-like and at times a bit restless, but the change is short lived, and the lark soon takes to the sky again, gradually spinning and floating out of sight and hearing.
The work was written in 1914 for Marie Hall, but laid aside at the outbreak of World War I until 1920, when it was revised and performed for the first time. It takes its title from a poem by George Meredith, the following extract of which appears in the score:
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain or sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake...
For singing till his heaven fills,
`Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes....
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
Robert I Hurwitz
© Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press
An Oxford Elegy
This work was written between 1947 and 1949 when Vaughan Williams was aged 77, yet he had been preoccupied with Matthew Arnold's poem "The Scholar Gipsy" as early as 1901 when he made some sketches for an opera on the subject. The text of the elegy comes from this poem, which is principally nostalgic in mood, and "Thrysis" which is more optimistic. Both attracted Vaughan Williams with their evocations of the British countryside. He chose to have the words spoken by a narrator, a technique he had explored in the original version of A Song of Thanksgiving (1944). A wordless mixed chorus amplifies the meaning and atmosphere of the underlying music; this effect too he had put to graphic use in the film score of Scott of the Antarctic (1948) which was subsequently reworked as the Symphony No.7 (Sinfonia Antartica). In a typically blunt statement, Vaughan Williams said that he was "tired of choral works in which one couldn't hear the words". The result is a piece of deep pastoral beauty shadowed by painful thoughts of mortality that finally settles into tranquil acceptance of the eternal cycle of life.
© Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press
Symphony No.6
Symphony No. 6 came at the end of Second World War, in a flurry of anger and passion. It is therefore of no surprise that the work was compared to the Fourth Symphony which marked the dawning of the War. All the signs in the work indicate a heightened awareness of war and its consequences, even down to the opening military style brass in the second movement, hammering out the battling dissonances. The last movement also harks back to the war years, with a terrible air of desolation in the winding contrapuntal themes, a marked contrast to the fiery confusion of the main material of the movement. The work as a whole is one of contrast between savage martial sections and a submissive devastation. It is conspicuous in its deviation from the calm and serene Symphony No. 5.
© Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press
A Vision of Aeroplanes
A Vision of Aeroplanes was written for the fortieth anniversary of Harold Darke as organist of St Michael's Cornhill. Vaughan Williams' piece was performed along with new works by George Dyson and Herbert Howells by St Michael's Singers, with the `fiendishly difficult' organ part played by John Birch. Harold Darke conducted the work, which was premièred on 4 June 1956 in London.
The text is taken from Ezekiel, Chapter I, and gives a disturbing account of a vision of what can only be described as an aeroplane. The work begins with a sweeping organ solo, punctuated by rich chord blocks. The choral entry, with its powerful mono-rhythms attains maximum impact with all voices singing in their top registers above a never ceasing organ. The atmosphere is skillfully conveyed by the composer, from the tension building at the appearance of the `four living creatures' to the explosive alla marcia section, in which the horror of the witness at the `dreadful' sight is rendered.
© Reproduced with the permission of Oxford University Press
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