Vaughan Williams's Veranda

[sound67]

Forthcoming this year is a three-hour documentary feature on RVW, by Tony Palmer, the director of "Testimony":

NEW TONY PALMER FILM ABOUT VW NEARS COMPLETION
11th June 2007

Tony Palmer the distinguished and highly acclaimed director is currently putting the finishing touches to a film he has made about Vaughan Williams. Three hours long, it looks at Vaughan Williams' life as a disturbed and frustrated one. The film will undoubtedly be controversial but very important in raising awareness of RVW.

The first ever full-length film biography of the great man, produced by the multi-award winning director, TONY PALMER, to be shown over several weeks in November on Channel FIVE and released on DVD in time for Christmas.
With many of those who knew and worked with him, including the GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL CHOIR, conducted by ANDREW NETHSINGHA,
• archive performances by BOULT and BARBIROLLI,
• newly discovered interviews with VAUGHAN WILLIAMS himself,
• specially recorded extracts from The Symphonies, Job, The Lark Ascending and of course The Tallis Fantasia
• And with unexpected contributions from HARRISON BIRTWISTLE, JOHN ADAMS
MARK ANTHONY TURNAGE, MICHAEL TIPPETT & NEIL TENNANT of The Pet Shop Boys.
A glorious 3 hour celebration, but with a helluva sting in the tail.

Reprinted below with Tony Palmer's permision, is the article as published in the OUP magazine.

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
for O.U.P. magazine

'O thou transcendent.....'

Vaughan Williams holds an extraordinary fascination for a surprising number of fellow musicians. Known for his openness with advice to younger colleagues, he was often besieged by requests along the lines of "I'm thinking of becoming a composer. Can you give me a few hints?" Thus the 80 year-old grand old man of British music received the 16 year-old whippersnapper, Harrison Birtwistle. The great American composer John Adams was taken by his parents as a 9 year-old to his first orchestral concert in Boston, U.S.A. The first piece on the menu was Vaughan Williams. Adams, previously (he believed) destined to be an engineer, told his parents he now wanted to be a composer - "like that!" Neil Tennant, famous as part of The Pet Shop Boys, had a similar Damascus moment as a schoolboy in Newcastle. Mark Anthony Turnage, knocked sideways by his encounter with "the darkness, even hopelessness", of Vaughan Williams' vision of mankind....the list of such musicians included in this 3-hour film is considerable.

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of his death. Having made films about Britten and Walton, I knew I had to face up to the man whose shadow falls across the whole of 20th century English music, and also as to why he was not immediately thought of in the same breath as, say, Elgar. It seems to me now, as I put the finishing touches to my film, that his importance exceeds the other three. Two stories illustrate this.

In 1936, Vaughan Williams went to Norwich for the première of his Five Tudor Portraits. When he arrived at the rehearsal, the leader of the orchestra asked him to 'deal with' the composer of the other work on the programme who was being an hysterical pest, and in any case they hated the piece. VW asked who it was, and then apparently told the leader: "Sir, you are in the presence of greatness. If you do not perform his work, then you cannot perform mine". The other work was Our Hunting Fathers; the composer the 22 year-old Benjamin Britten. Michael Tippett tells the film, in an interview recorded some years ago, that although as a student he had despised everything VW stood for with "all that folk waffle", after VW died Tippett realised he had made the most appalling misjudgement because it was VW "rather than any of his contemporaries" who had "made us free".

"Folk waffle"? I agree with Tippett - a profound misjudgement. It doesn't even begin to describe some the bleakest, most desperate and yearning English music written in the last 100 years. This is the musician who leapt back across the centuries to Tallis, Byrd, Dowland and Purcell long before it became fashionable to do so. This is the scholar who read Walt Whitman, long before anyone had ever heard of him on this side of the Atlantic. This is the visionary who single-handedly rescued the English Hymnal, who prodded the Churchill government during the Second World War to establish what became eventually the Arts Council and The Third Programme on the BBC.

But that's not the main thrust of my film, which is about the man himself. First, his family – related, either directly or by marriage to Darwin, to Wedgewood, to Keynes, to Virginia Woolf, centre stage among the intellectual aristocracy at the beginning of the 20th century. Then married, and devotedly so, for over 50 years to a woman who was for much of that time a cripple – can you imagine what that did to his psyche, his sexuality? And he was a devastatingly good looking young man, not the crumpled, cuddly figure that has become (until now, I hope) his lasting image. A man who volunteered, aged 41, to serve in the infantry in the First World War, but eventually served in the Ambulance Corps (and don't forget his very sheltered background – Charterhouse, Cambridge, and a man who never needed to earn his living), picking up bits of bodies blown to smithereens in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. And this had no effect on him and his music? Of course it did.

In the end, of course, it's the music which speaks to us. Gergiev's Mariinsky Orchestra provides much of it in specially recorded extracts – all the Symphonies, Job, Tallis, The Lark, The National Youth Orchestra, which also celebrates 60 years in 2008, underlining VW's commitment to the young – he did, after all, helped to put the National Youth Orchestra on its feet; The English Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Chorus, Simon Keenleyside, Joan Rodgers, the amazing Catalan Viola da Gamba player Jordi Savall, the great folk singer Martin Carthy and his daughter Liza who will perform the folk songs that VW heard (and as he probably heard them) on his walking tours with Gustav Holst in 1903/4, and not least Gloucester Cathedral Choir with the hymns and The Mass. Dorking & The Leith Hill Music Festival, which VW conducted for over 50 years, is well represented. And all this quite apart from archive performances with Sir Colin Davis, Sir Adrian Boult and Barbirolli. Finally, there are the witnesses who knew and worked with him – Roy Douglas (now over 100), Michael Kennedy, David Willcocks, Lady Barbirolli, Lord Armstrong, Kiffer Finzi, Bill Llewellyn, Alun Hoddinott, Jill Balcon who remembers with tears her father's commissioning of the music for the film Scott of the Antarctic, Jerrold Northrop Moore, Hervey Fisher recalling his great Aunt Adeline, VW's first (and much overlooked first wife), Hugh Cobbe, the archivist of his letters......and of course Ursula Vaughan Williams herself in an extended interview she gave in 1990 recently discovered. Best of all, VW himself talking in hitherto forgotten interviews.

But my intention is not hagiography. It is simply this: to explode for ever I hope the image of a cuddly old Uncle, endlessly recycling English folk songs, and to awaken the audience to a central figure in our musical heritage who did more for us all than Greensleeves and Lark Ascending, even if it is No.1 in the Classic FM 'Hall of Fame'; who not only deserves his place among the greatest of British composers, but who deserves our respect and admiration as a man of phenomenal nobility and courage. Courage musically; we forget that in its time his music was considered progressive and 'modern' (he had after all studied with Ravel), and performed at the Salzburg Festival (the first English composer to be so honoured) and the Prague Contemporary Music Festival. His music was even banned by the Nazis. The 15 year-old Margot Fonteyn even danced in the stage première of Job. And courage as a man. Never forget the man from a privileged background picking up bits of dead bodies, a shattered head, an arm, a finger, an eye, while married for most of his adult life to a cripple in a wheelchair. In my view, anyone who tells you that his music is just notes on a page or 'visions of Corot' has missed the point – by a million miles.

At the end of my interview with Roy Douglas, he jabbed his finger at me and said: "young man. Tell me, what is his music about?" I waffled, inevitably – "oh, I said, belief in humanity, visionary, optimism......" "Oh yes?" said Roy. "End of the 6th Symphony? 4th Symphony? 9th Symphony? even the Norfolk Rhapsody? A very bleak vision. Just think of the times he lived through. Think again, young man" he said. I have, and this film is the result. It does not make comfortable viewing.

©Tony Palmer

The film will be shown over several weeks on Channel FIVE in November 2007.
The première will be at the Barbican Cinema in the same month. The DVD of the full 3 hour film will available in time for Christmas.

Tomny Palmer's web site http://www.tonypalmer.org/

My emphasis. 

[karlhenning]

I just can't believe he said "the man whose shadow falls across the whole of 20th century English music" of anyone other than Elgar 

[vandermolen]

Fascinating news about the film. I can't wait to see it. I've always been curious about VW's first marriage to Adeline (his second wife Ursula is still alive). Apparently it was happy but Adeline always looks so miserable in photos.

I had the good fortune to have tea with Roy Douglas myself as he lives nearby and had an enjoyable afternoon hearing his reminiscences of Vaughan Williams.

[karlhenning]

I'd be game to see the RVW movie.

I haven't been interested in seeing Testimony.

[btpaul674]

This is indeed exciting news.

[Christo]

Indeed so. At least, it's clear now what I will be asking as a Christmas present.

[Thom]

Indeed so. At least, it's clear now what I will be asking as a Christmas present.

Same with me, since I can not receive channel five unfortunately. By the way, I have a DVD documentary also made by Tony Palmer, "Toward the unknown region - Malcolm Arnold - A story of Survival". A very good documentary in my opinion. This man evidently knows his business. I am looking forward very much to this VW movie.

[Szykneij]

My discovery of the day is Vaughan Williams' Introduction and Fugue for Two Pianofortes that he composed in 1946. I'm not sure how many other fugues were previously written specifically for double piano, but the effect is striking.

[karlhenning]

Tony, the final movement of the Stravinsky  Concerto per due pianoforti is a Preludio e Fuga

[sound67]

My discovery of the day is Vaughan Williams' Introduction and Fugue for Two Pianofortes that he composed in 1946. I'm not sure how many other fugues were previously written specifically for double piano, but the effect is striking.

Never heard of this. Where did you find it?

[Szykneij]

Tony, the final movement of the Stravinsky  Concerto per due pianoforti is a Preludio e Fuga

Thanks, Karl. I guess Igor beat Ralph by about 32 years.

Never heard of this. Where did you find it?

An Orion LP recording (ORS 79343) by Evelinde Trenker and Vladimir Pleshakov. Copland's "Danza de Jalisco" and "Dance of the Adolescent" are also on it, as well as the Mendelssohn/Moscheles variations on Weber's "Preciosa". I can't find a date on the record, but the DOLBY indicia's look like 1970's vintage.

[vandermolen]

Have been recently listening to Dona Nobis Pacem (Bryden Thomson and Boult recordings).I think that it is one of VW's finest works. Although it is episodic, some sections being composed 25 years apart, it does add up to a great symphonic whole and I believe that this doomed but heartfelt plea for peace, from the 1930s,is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A similarly moving score is John Ireland's contemporaneous "These Things Shall Be" (Lyrita/Chandos).

[not edward]

Have been recently listening to Dona Nobis Pacem (Bryden Thomson and Boult recordings).I think that it is one of VW's finest works. Although it is episodic, some sections being composed 25 years apart, it does add up to a great symphonic whole and I believe that this doomed but heartfelt plea for peace, from the 1930s,is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Agreed. I'm not a big RVW fan but I've liked this piece for a long time. I never find the 25-year gap between sections a problem, there's still a unity of message in the work's diversity of style.

[vandermolen]

Agreed. I'm not a big RVW fan but I've liked this piece for a long time. I never find the 25-year gap between sections a problem, there's still a unity of message in the work's diversity of style.

Yes, I agree. It was great to attend a live performance in London a year or two back. This and Sancta Civitas are his finest choral works, although the largely unknown Epithalamion, from towards the end of the composer's life is a beautiful score. I love the end of Hodie but find it otherwise a little rambling.

[Dundonnell]

Sorry, but I am coming to this thread rather late in the day and so many of you have already discussed the different versions of the VW symphonies and other compositions. I am however excited to hear about the forthcoming TV documentary!

We are talking about the man who has been my favourite composer now for over forty years. I honestly believe that VW is one of the towering figures of 20th century music. If, as indicated, a number of people interviewed in the new film acknowledge his influence and genious then that is heart-warming! There is no doubting the incredible contribution made by Elgar in putting Britain much more firmly back on the musical map after the domination of German music in the 19th century and I would not for one moment seek to diminish the greatness of Elgar's two symphonies, the violin and cello concertos, the Dream of Gerontius or the Enigma Variations(for example) but it is high time indeed that the genius of Vaughan Williams was equally proclaimed. There is a consistent profoundity of utterance and expression across his oeuvre from the Tallis Fantasia through half a century to the 9th symphony which is quite breathtaking. His cycle of nine symphonies is one of the most consistently inspired in all 20th century music. The London Symphony, the Pastoral, the 5th-again only for example-move me to tears every time I hear them. The sheer power of works like the 4th and 6th symphonies are shattering in their impact. So too is that incredibly underperformed masterpiece Job. In these compositions VW's mastery of the orchestra is demonstrated to the highest degree.

But, as others have said, there are equally profound and incredibly moving smaller works like The Lark Ascending or Flos Campi and splendid cantatas like Sancta Civitas and Dona Nobis Pacem which exemplify the visionary qualities of VW's art. I am not really much of an opera lover but, as has been noted, VW composed the seldom heard short opera "Riders to the Sea" based on the play by the Irish dramatist J.M.Synge. In only 36 minutes or so of understated writing VW conjured all of the heart-rending tragedy of that play in the most beautiful and affecting music imagineable.

The image of the benign and cuddly old teddy bear, favourite uncle-the very personification of the 'cowpat' school of English composers
that has-to a considerable extent-bedevilled VW's reputation needs to be dispelled once and for all. If the forthcoming documentary can help achieve that-and I am amazed that a film of such length is being made at all-then all power to its elbow. There is absolutely no reason why music of this quality cannot 'travel' any more than the distinctively nordic music of Sibelius should appeal only to Finns!
Maybe the apparent rule that a composer's music goes into some kind of critical and popular recession after his death for about 20 years or so has been extended slightly longer for Vaughan Williams but there are a huge number of recordings now of his music and enormously distinguished cycles of his symphonies by a wide range of fine conductors. Perhaps the final breakthrough to proper critical acclaim is just round the corner? Recently we have had recordings of a number of the less well known choral works like "Willow-Wood", "The Sons of Light", "On Christmas Night" and "The First Nowell"(Oh, and what about the "Folk Songs of the Four Seasons" -a choral work which has not yet been recorded?)

Apologies if I have gone on too long but my enthusiasm for this great composer knows no bounds!!

[vandermolen]

I just listened to Sancta Civitas in the David Willcocks/John Shirley-Quirk version on EMI. It has to be one of Vaughan Williams's greatest works; breathtakingly beautiful in places. I am only aware of one other recording conducted by Rozhdestvensky on the now defunct BBC Radio Classics; an interesting CD coupled with a fine performance of Symphony 5.

One either responds to the music of Vaughan Williams or one does not. Those who do not, as Dundonnell points out, tend to identify it as "cow pat" music. Thomas Beecham did not seem to have too much time for Vaughan Williams, apparently proclaiming "It's the city life for me", after giving a rare performance of A Pastoral Symphony, although I do rather enjoy the description of this symphony, given by another critic, as symbolising "Vaughan Williams rolling over and over in a ploughed field on a wet day".

But, there is much more to Vaughan Williams than this and whilst works like the Sixth and Ninth symphonies do (to me at least) bring to mind images of the bleaker landscapes of England, they are, as Dundonnell suggests, profound philosophical works which raise fundamental questions, I believe, about the nature of human existence.

I was fortunate to hear a very fine performance of Sancta Civitas, a few years ago, at the church in Hove, Sussex where Vaughan Williams married his first wife Adeline in 1897.

[Dundonnell]

I have the Willcocks version of Sancta Civitas but I also have a version conducted by Richard Hickox, coupled with Dona Nobis Pacem, issued in 1993 in the EMI British Composers series.

Hickox seems to have had rather a mixed press from contributors to this thread as far as his recordings of the symphonies are concerned.
I would agree that not all of his recent recordings have fully convinced me. Haitink, Handley in the 5th, Andrew Davis in the 6th, Boult, Thomson have sometimes appeared to go deeper into different individual pieces. We ought however, I think, give all due praise to Hickox for the fantastic work he has done and is continuing to do for British music-including VW. Although he is spending a lot of time now at the Australian Opera I hope that he will continue to record as much British music as possible. It is a fairly sad reflection that only two professional symphony orchestras in Britain(the Halle and Ulster orchestras) currently employ British musical directors!

[vandermolen]

I have the Willcocks version of Sancta Civitas but I also have a version conducted by Richard Hickox, coupled with Dona Nobis Pacem, issued in 1993 in the EMI British Composers series.

Hickox seems to have had rather a mixed press from contributors to this thread as far as his recordings of the symphonies are concerned.
I would agree that not all of his recent recordings have fully convinced me. Haitink, Handley in the 5th, Andrew Davis in the 6th, Boult, Thomson have sometimes appeared to go deeper into different individual pieces. We ought however, I think, give all due praise to Hickox for the fantastic work he has done and is continuing to do for British music-including VW. Although he is spending a lot of time now at the Australian Opera I hope that he will continue to record as much British music as possible. It is a fairly sad reflection that only two professional symphony orchestras in Britain(the Halle and Ulster orchestras) currently employ British musical directors!

Yes, I forgot about the Hickox recording (which I have in my collection!). VW fans owe Hickox a great deal for the first recording of the original version of the London Symphony. Whatever the symphony gained, in terms of structure, through the revisions VW made to it up until 1936, I feel it lost in poetic atmosphere. Opinions differ, but I feel that the section which VW excised just before the epilogue was one of his finest inspirations and it is wonderful to have it restored in the Hickox recording. Hickox is strong in Dona Nobis Pacem, Sancta Civital but also, I think, in his recording of A Pastoral Symphony, Symphony 4 and Symphony 5. No 6 and 8 was a disappointment. No 6 is difficult to get right..only a few have achieved it (Boult on Decca and Dutton, Stokowsky on Cala, Abravanel on Vanguard, Thomson on Chandos, Barbirolli on Orfeo, Berglund on EMI (sadly unavailable) and Haitink on EMI.) Andrew Davis's recording is also good.

[Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich]

Hi people,

I'm a bloody RVW newbie.

1. What orchestral works (I generally like works for big orchestras) would you recommend to start with?

My listening preferences are nordish composers (Sibelius, Pettersson), Bruckner and Mahler. No need to mention Beethoven.

2. I've listened to sym. #7 and the London Symphony once a bit. Both reminded me of Rautavaaras Cantus Arcticus. Is Rautavaara a Williams clone? Or vice versa?

3. How do I spell "vaughan" and is this a second surname?

[Lethevich]

1. What orchestral works (I generally like works for big orchestras) would you recommend to start with?

Symphonies no.5 and 6 (for the contrasting moods) and the Tallis fantasia. Many good recordings, so it's difficult to recommend specific ones, and some of my favourites are parts of cycles (although all the best currently available RVW cycles are budget priced) - others may be able to help.

2. I've listened to sym. #7 and the London Symphony once a bit. Both reminded me of Rautavaaras Cantus Arcticus. Is Rautavaara a Williams clone? Or vice versa?

I doubt that they knew very much about each others work, if any. There was a lot of cross-pollination between Sibelius and several British composers including RVW (Bantock commissioned Sibelius's 3rd, IIRC, RVW dedicated his 5th to Sibelius, etc), but other than inspiration, there aren't any composers I have heard who resemble even Sibelius particularly closely, much less other Nordic ones.

3. How do I spell "vaughan" and is this a second surname?

I don't want to be presumptuous, but do you mean pronounce rather than spell (as spellings are easy to find online)? If so, then it is pronounced much like faun (vawn). Vaughan and Williams are both his surname, usually it would be hyphenated but with his name it isn't.