This item is to enthuse about the English composer Ralph Vaughan 
Williams.  Some basics:

1. His last name is Vaughan Williams.  Two names, no hyphen.  You will 
find him under the letter "V" in good CD shops.  If you have kids in 
school band programs you might be familiar with some of his band 
music.  (All Brit composers were expected to produce a certain amount 
of band music.  I do not question, I merely report.)  If so, you 
might've seen his name listed as "R.V. Williams" on the school band 
concert programs.  Don't believe it.

2. His first name is pronounced "Ralph."  His friends and family called 
him "Rafe," but he prefered to be called "Ralph" by everyone else.  
Nevertheless, you will hear radio announcers and others refer to him 
as "Rafe" Vaughan Williams.  They don't know any better, but if you 
don't want to sound lowbrow to them you might want to say "Rafe," too, 
or else just say "Vaughan Williams" and avoid his first name altogether.

3. People call him "RVW" for short.  There is a Vaughan Williams 
Society web site at http://www.rvwsociety.com/

4. Another place you might've heard his music is in church, if you're 
Protestant.  He wrote many hymns and anthems that are sung to this day.

5. He and his friend Gustav Holst (the "Planets" guy) spent a few years 
roaming the countryside collecting folksongs.  They were the British 
counterparts of Bartok and Kodaly in that respect.  Same time-frame, 
too.  Much of RVW's music after that was infused with English 
folksong.  You might've heard his famous arrangement of Greensleeves.

6. His dates are 1872 - 1958.  He wrote nine symphonies, the first when 
he was in his thirties, the last when he was in his eighties.

7. His grandmother taught him to read out of the same book with which 
she had taught her younger brother, Charles Darwin.  To RVW, Darwin 
was "Great-uncle Charles."  Other family trivia: RVW was descended from 
Josiah Wedgwood, if you're into that white-on-blue china stuff.  (Note 
correct spelling, btw.)

8. He looked like a big tweedy gentleman-farmer.  Photographers and 
sculptors loved him.  See 
http://www.cs.qub.ac.uk/~J.Collis/gifs/rvw+cat.jpg

31 responses total.

I believe the traditional radio announcer pronunciation of RVW's first 
name goes back to the mournful little speech Sir Adrian Boult recorded 
on the first LP, on the Everest label, of RVW's 9th Symphony.  It 
began, "We had hoped that our beloved friend, Rafe Vaughan Williams, 
would have been with us here in the studio for the recording of his 
last symphony, but his death took place just seven hours before we 
began our work on it."

Beg pardon, but I think you're mistaken about point 2.

"Ralph's name was pronounced Rafe, any other pronunciation used to 
infuriate him." - _R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams_ by 
Ursula Vaughan Williams (OUP, 1964), prefatory note, p. [xv].

If you have any solid evidence trumping the authoritative biography by 
his widow, please share it.

(It may be necessary to point out to American readers that there is 
nothing unusual or affected about the pronunciation "Rafe" - it is, I 
understand, the usual pronunciation of "Ralph" in Britain, though there 
are exceptions.)

But whatever his name, I love his music, and classify him among my half-
dozen favorite composers of the first half of the 20th century.

A few observations of my own:

1) Despite its occasional startling resemblance to French 
Impressionism, his music sounds to me quintessentially English, even 
more so than Elgar's.  Elgar rose to facile patriotism and descended to 
pathos; RVW did neither, and is utterly self-contained without being 
self-absorbed.  This English quality comes through even in works with 
no connection with folk music, and even in works expressly non-English 
in inspiration, such as the incidental music to Aristophanes' The Wasps.

2) Though born in a Cotswolds village, he was raised near London and 
always considered himself a Londoner, even during the many years he 
spent living in an exurban town so that his invalid first wife could 
have a home without stairs.

3) Of his nine symphonies, I have always found the Ninth to be quite 
opaque, but except for the Fourth, which is a bit too prickly to take 
to heart, I am very fond of the others.  The Third, Fifth, and Seventh 
seem to me to be successive attempts to do approximately the same 
thing, each time better than before (which is not meant as a criticism 
of the Third); the Sixth achieves the same utterly strange viciousness 
as the Fourth without the prickliness, and is even more remarkably 
original; and I must say a word in favor of the First, the "Sea 
Symphony".  This one of the few choral works in my pantheon of 
masterpieces.  Based on poems of Whitman (and sounding utterly English, 
nevertheless), it remarkably manages to make the heavy-footed, clunky 
Whitman sound lyrical, especially in the slow movement.

4) If you want a work that sounds like the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies 
at once, try "Job".

5) Some composers put their work down and leave it.  RVW was a 
compulsive reviser.  I have a recording of the Sixth Symphony with two 
versions of one movement, the revised version written after the 
original was recorded; and a recording was recently made, the first 
ever, of the original version of the Second Symphony, the "London".  
It's somewhat more expansive than the revised version, and considering 
how quick the revised version is to jump from theme to theme, section 
to section, I can't help but prefer the original in places.

6) The best RVW concert I ever attended was at the Barbican in London 
in 1995 (the same trip at which I attended the Steeleye Span reunion 
concert).  The Bournemouth Symphony was performing all nine symphonies 
in a series; the concert I attended had the two vocal symphonies, 
numbers 1 and 7.  Magnificent and moving.  I've never heard these works 
live on any other occasion.  Come to think of it, the only other 
occasion I'm sure I've heard any of his music live was one performance 
of the Tuba Concerto.  Thank the Lord for records, on which he is very 
well served.

Ah, a fellow RVW aficionado!  My recollection that RVW himself 
preferred strangers to call him "Ralph" instead of "Rafe" is from the 
Michael Kennedy bio, which I haven't seen in at least twenty years so 
who knows?  It made a kind of sense, barely, but of course Ursula's 
book rules.

My take on the symphonies, fwiw:

1. The Sea Symphony has never appealed to me as much as the others.  
It's a mighty choral work in its own right, but it's young RVW before 
he found his voice.  

2. The London Symphony comes closer.  The business about emerging from 
the fog and then receding back into it is nice, and the second movement 
is a wonderfully moody nocturne.  And of course everyone loves the 
orchestral imitation of a harmonica in the third movement.

3. The Pastoral is my favorite.  (It's also RVW's third "vocal" 
symphony if you count the soprano solo in the last movement.)  It is a 
magical piece of work for me and for lots of others, but I think its 
appeal is limited.  The critic who said it reminded him of a cow 
looking over a fence probably expressed the majority opinion: this is 
not exactly a pulse-pounding excitement.  

4. Very prickly, yes, but better than anything that followed it, in my 
opinion.  The second movement might be the greatest single orchestral 
movement he ever wrote.  The finale, with that fugal epilog, is 
actually frightening.  One of the RVW symphonies I've heard performed 
live.  I was terrified that someone might start clapping during the 
long pause before that final angry staccato chord, but no one did.

5. An absolutely beautiful piece of music.  The scherzo is a small 
masterpiece in itself.  The slow movement is one of those enthralled, 
suspended-in-time pieces.  A better use of his Pilgrim's Progess music 
that the opera itself, imho.

6. The flowering of RVW's late style, for which I have the sort of 
exasperated affection we have for our parents when they get old and 
cranky.  But it's a masterpiece nevertheless.  It is the most Mahlerian 
or Shostakovichoid of his symphonies.  A real drama is played out.  The 
first movement is the gem -- better than the famous pianissimo last 
movement, imho.  The coughing and rustling of the audience during the 
finale in the one live performance I attended was excruciating.  Stick 
with the CD, and listen to it on headphones.

7. Really just a suite of music from his soundtrack to Scott of the 
Antarctic.  More late-period music, not a big favorite of mine.  The 
stupendous fortissimo organ passage in the glacier movement is neat-o, 
though.  My old Boult/London LP has John Gielgud reading aloud the 
passages from Shelley, the Bible, Donne, Scott's journals, that RVW 
placed at the head of each movement in the score.  This practice was 
apparently not what RVW intended, and was discontinued thereafter.

8. I absolutely love this little symphony.  I have nothing to base this 
opinion on, but I suspect that in it RVW was answering Beethoven's 
8th.  It's quirky, a little silly, "unbuttoned" as Beethoven said of 
his own 8th.  Like Beethoven's 8th, it's relatively short in duration: 
it fits on one side of an LP.  Anyway, I love it.  You smile all the 
way through it.  It's got to be the most approachable and listenable of 
his symphonies, but not very characteristic and for that reason maybe 
not the best introduction to his music.

9. One last tremendous effort by an old man, and the strain shows.  But 
that's part of the music's appeal, I think.  The image of old RVW 
ascending to heaven on glittering clouds of glory at the very end is 
unmistakeable, but surely not intended by RVW hiself.

A very approximate list of my favorites in descending order might look 
like: 3, 5, 4, 6, 8, 2, 7, 9, 1.  4 and 5 are tied, really.  8 would be 
higher, but it's so jokey and slight.

Along with Holst and Percy Granger (yeah, I know he's Aussie, but... ;-)
Vaughn Williams makes up the basic "British" repertoire for band music.
"Been there, done that!" many times.  :-)

Kevin: Hey, RVW's "English Folk Song Suite" (for band) is incredibly 
catchy!  So are Holst's two Suites for band.

Michael: If you're referring to Kennedy's _The Works of Ralph Vaughan 
Williams_, it's better described as a discussion of his music than a 
biography, though it has biographical material in it.  I browsed 
through the 1980 edition - the section on RVW's personal life, and 
Kennedy's account of his own friendship with RVW - and found at a 
glance nothing about the pronunciation of his name.

A few more comments on the symphonies:

The Sea Symphony (which isn't really any more of a symphony than 
Sibelius's Kullervo is) I agree doesn't sound very characteristic of 
the composer's later developed style - though in some places it does.  
I don't hold that against it.

I really ought to get to know the Pastoral better.  I don't have a CD 
of it, which is one barrier.  I think it was Constant Lambert (or 
possibly Elizabeth Maconchy) who came up with the "cow looking over a 
gate" line, to which I reply, after Churchill, "Some cow! Some gate!"  
Despite its reputation, the Pastoral is not an eventless quiet musing, 
but a work of strength and passion.

The Fifth is the symphony I've most closely studied, partly in 
connection with a marvelous concert performance of it, by the late San 
Jose Symphony of all people, that I once heard.  (I'd forgotten about 
that when I last wrote.)  I'm impressed with the careful detail work 
that puts it together, from the shaping of the harmony in the opening 
theme on.  I'm sure this applies equally well to all his work.

I'd guess that the Sixth requires a riveting performance of this 
(properly) riveting music.  After the implacability of what comes 
before, the finale should be sat through in stunned silence!

I consider the Antartica much superior to the reputation it gets from 
its origin.  Lots of works that aren't film music get described as 
sounding as if they were (it's a favorite comment of Shostakovich-
bashers), and the Antartica would probably be susceptible to such 
remarks even if it didn't have a film-music origin.  But the very fact 
that the comment is made in such a loose way suggests it's over-used.  
If one didn't know the work's origins, would it be a fair criticism?  
Not in some other cases, and not I think here.

You're quite right, to my understanding, that the inscriptions should 
not be recited.  They're printed in the score; they should be printed 
in program notes and liner notes.  That's all.  I have the later Boult 
recording on LP (London), which does this.

If you like the fortissimo organ passage in this work, you should 
definitely get "Job" if you don't have it.

Yes, the Eighth is great fun.  The sound is entirely different, but the 
spirit reminds me of some of Malcolm Arnold's earlier works (before he 
tried to recast himself as Hamlet).

RVW's Toccata Marziale is my favorite band piece of his.  I think a new 
recording of it by a British band was released within the past decade.  
Worth having.  Hammersmith is my favorite band work by Holst.  He 
arranged it for orchestra and it isn't nearly as good in that version.  
My favorite Holst work, to get this free-associating over with, is 
Egdon Heath.  Highest, highest recommendation.

I don't think the Antarctica Symphony sounds like movie music at all, 
even though it is.  It's not *bad* music, I'm just not a huge fan it.  
It's late-late Vaughan Williams, when he basically let the tritone take 
over his imagination.  (More free-associating: when I was an 
impressionable teenager I saw Scott of the Antarctic on TV and went out 
and bought an electric blanket the next day.  Hand on my heart.)

I've been a fan of "Job" for 40 years.  The "ooga-booga!" Satan parts 
require a suspension of disbelief, at least for me, but the rest of it 
is wonderful.  

Nobody's mentioned the Tallis Fantasia yet.  Is there a more 
breathtaking piece of music?

Or "The Lark Ascending".  There's gorgeous music for you, and it's 
basically quiet and contemplative, like the Pastoral Symphony is 
wrongly supposed to be.

The Radio 3 page of "Discovery" programs 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/discover.shtml> has a 
particularly good program on the Tallis Fantasia, partly because it's 
comparative.  They play the original Tallis hymn, which I'd wanted to 
hear for years but never got a chance.  They analyze the richness of 
the opening chord as being caused by its being a widely-spaced chord 
played mostly on open strings, and compare it to the openings of 
Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler" and Ives' "The Unanswered Question," 
which are similar, have much the same effect (especially the 
Hindemith), and whose composers were more explicit about the emotional 
connotation they were after than RVW was.

A while ago I went looking for videos of films he'd scored.  
Found "49th Parallel" and watched that.

That's a great web site.  Thanks for entering the url.  I very much 
enjoyed the Tallis Fantasia segment, even though the narrator/writer 
gets a little carried away.  (Who can blame him?)

The programs on that BBC web site (which I discovered through Ken 
Josenhans recommending their radio link) are of variable quality, but 
mostly pretty helpful.  I haven't listed to the one for the RVW 5th 
Symphony yet, nor (I must confess) have I heard all of the program for 
the Tallis Fantasia - ran out of time while I was listening to it.

But I did listen to two Tchaikovsky programs in full (my brother is a 
big Tchaikovsky fan, as so many tyros in the classical field are, and I 
wanted to preview them before recommending this to him), and found the 
program on "Romeo and Juliet" rather wayward (presenting the piece very 
much out of chronological order, and imposing a distinctly eccentric 
conception of its construction), but the one on the 4th Symphony was 
excellent.

Coming back to RVW, what do you think of his symphonies _as_ 
symphonies?  The strict 19th century conception of a symphony as a work 
in sonata form had pretty much gone by the wayside by his time, but 
there's still a sense in which some works are more symphonic than 
others.  (See Robert Simpson's essay in volume 2 of the Penguin 
Symphony.)  I get the impression that the Sea and London Symphonies, at 
least, are really more multi-movement tone poems than real symphonies, 
and had the composer died after them, he wouldn't be thought of today 
as a symphonist at all.  (Remember that he didn't number the works 
until years later, retroactively, and that many other composers have 
used the word "symphony" to describe works not subsequently thought of 
as symphonies at all - Sibelius's Kullervo, Goldmark's Rustic Wedding, 
Felicien David's extravaganzas, etc.)

Nevertheless I heard them as works of symphonic heft, the way that La 
Mer is a work of symphonic heft.  And there's no question in my mind 
that the central trilogy, numbers 4-6, are not only real symphonies, 
but that they're important symphonies and, as a group, one of the most 
outstanding sequences ever written, better _as a sequence_ than 
Shostakovich's war symphonies, numbers 7-9.

("Better than Shostakovich" is very high praise from me.)

"Symphonic heft" just about says it all.  If that phrase doesn't 
include the symphonic logic and economy, and the thematic and motivic 
development, that characterized symphonies once upon a time, you can 
add those qualities as well.  

RVW's first movements sound like first movements and his finales sound 
like finales, and there's usually the pair of fast-slow (5 & 8) or slow-
fast (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 9) middle movements.  Several of the symphonies 
are cyclic in nature, with one or two themes holding the whole thing 
together; all of them have a kind of symphonic unity -- a single mood 
or attitude or sound-world is maintained throughout the symphony that 
is different from the composer's other symphonies.  But why RVW's 4th 
sounds like a symphony to me, but Debussy's La Mer or Bartok's Concerto 
for Orchestra don't, is a mystery.  I'm sure it's all very arbitrary, 
and in any case a just matter of taste or semantics.

It just occurred to me:  If you hear some really bad Vaughan Williams music,
or some good music very badly played, does it make you want to ralph or want
to rafe?  ;-)

Rafe, apparently.

Is there any bad RVW?  Lots of great composers wrote some really bad 
music - Shostakovich certainly, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, even Schubert - 
but I can't recall any from RVW.

Above, I was speaking of two different levels of approach towards the 
ideal symphony.  By "symphonic heft" I mean weight, seriousness, a 
certain degree of complexity, a lack of just making pleasant sounds for 
the heck of it (not that there's anything wrong with that).  RVW's Sea 
and London have that, so to my ears does La Mer; Bartok's Concerto for 
Orchestra I'm not so sure of.

But the "true symphony," the level which RVW's 4-6 attain but (to my 
ears) the earlier works do not, has a concision and an inter-knit logic 
that goes beyond the previous virtues.  The London Symphony is very 
attractive and very well-constructed, but it has an episodic nature and 
not so much of the inter-knit construction.  By that I mean things like 
the repeated interweaving of a motive or interval throughout the work.  
If the London does that, it doesn't so much sound like it does it.

There are some famous are-they-or-aren't-they compositions.  Sibelius's 
7th, for example, is nothing if not hefty, but I don't think it's even 
as much of a symphony as, say, La Mer.  Das Lied von der Erde was in 
fact Mahler's 9th symphony, until he decided to try and cheat fate by 
calling it something else.  I guess we're pretty much left with 
whatever the composer chose to leave us with.  

I sometimes find it hard to classify music of a composer I have as much 
affection for as I do for RVW as "good" or "bad."  I find myself 
listening to some pieces frequently (3rd Symphony, Tallis Fantasia, 
Job, Mass in G minor, An Oxford Elegy, Flos Campi) and others hardly 
ever (7th Symphony, Hodie, On Wenlock Edge, English Folk Song Suite).  
I'll rave about the former and try and say something nice about the 
latter.  That's really the best I can do.

In a letter to the October "Journal of the RVW Society," Charles Long 
offers a possibly revisionist version of the "cow looking over a gate" 
quip:

Doubtless every single member of the RVW Society is wearily familiar 
with the seemingly disparaging comment by Philip Heseltine (aka Peter 
Warlock) about 'a cow looking over a gate' in relation to Vaughan 
Williams's A Pastoral Symphony (June 2002 RVW Journal, page 6). But how 
many are aware of the context in which that alleged remark was made? 
The quotation comes, in fact, from Cecil Gray's 'Peter Warlock: A 
Memoir of Philip Heseltine' published in 1934. In full, the relevant 
passage runs as follows: 'after a performance of V.W.'s Pastoral 
Symphony he [Heseltine] exclaimed, "A truly splendid work!" and then, 
with a smile, "You know I've only one thing to say against this 
composer's music: it is all just a little too much like a cow looking 
over a gate. None the less he is a very great composer and the more I 
hear the more I admire him."'

The letters column also has this sad exchange:

Private Eye
The following appeared in Private Eye.
         
How much truth is in this?!
                       Robert Rush
         
         
Music & Musicians
Last week's Classical Brit Awards were the tacky shambles everyone has 
come to expect as honoured 'guests' paid 250 a head to watch not 
terribly distinguished instrumentalists mime their own records.

A fine new feature this year was to have well known authorities on 
classical music like, er, Mohamed Fayed, introduce the turns. The 
Albert Hall erupted into guffaws when Fayed told the audience that 
Russell Watson was, in his fuggin' opinion, a superior voice to 
Pavarotti.
         
But the evening sank to an all-time low with disgraceful humiliating 
treatment meted out to Ursula Vaughan Williams, widow of the great 
composer Ralph. Mrs Vaughan Williams is now in her 90s and frail, but 
she remains an icon of the music world and the administration of the 
Brit Awards had invited her to come on to the platform to receive the 
prize for the Best Orchestral Disc, which went to a Chandos recording 
of her husband's 2nd Symphony.
         
The disc's conductor, Richard Hickox, was abroad, so Ursula would be 
accepting it on his behalf; and when the moment came she duly shuffled
(with great effort) up onto the stage - only to find herself marooned 
in front of several thousand people, unacknowledged and ignored, while 
the awards anchorwomen (who clearly had no idea who Mrs VW was, and 
probably wasn t too sure about Mr VW either) pressed onto the next item.
         
It was horribly embarrassing and was aggravated when the stage staff 
tried to push poor Ursula out of the public eye and down the backstage 
steps: a manoeuvre her 92-year-old legs could not and would not 
accomplish.
         
For the sake of the TV coverage the incident was patched over. But for 
those who were there and saw it, it was yet another indictment on the 
Brit Awards charge sheet.
         
         
       
Editor's reply to Robert Rush
Thank you for your letter of 7 June enclosing the article from Private 
Eye about the Brit Awards. I was grateful to you for sending this to me 
as I had not seen it. All the details in the article are correct. I 
know this because it was I who accompanied Ursula up all those steps on 
to the stage, only to have to turn round and come all the way back 
again. This was deeply embarrassing for both of us. Ursula was more 
forgiving than I afterwards, as she was presented with a bunch of 
flowers by the organisers. The Brit Awards people were suitably 
apologetic but it was a deeply humiliating experience.
         
                                     Stephen Connock

I've been thinking about the numbering and naming of RVW's symphonies.

His earliest symphonies originally came out with no numbers, just 
names, like this:

A Sea Symphony (1909)
A London Symphony (1913)
A Pastoral Symphony (1921)

I particularly like the unpretentiousness of the indefinite article on 
each of these: so much less declamatory than THE Eroica or THE Great C 
Major, and it fits with the unpretentiousness of the music.

Due partly to the titles, and partly to the relative lack of 
traditional symphonic construction in these works, if VW had left it at 
that, he might have gone down in musical history along with Felicien 
David and Karl Goldmark, composers who wrote works they called 
symphonies but who aren't generally thought of as symphonists.

But then he wrote a series of works with very tight, truly symphonic 
construction, without numbers and also without titles:

Symphony in F Minor (1934)
Symphony in D Major (1943)
Symphony in E Minor (1947)

Then came:

Sinfonia Antartica (1952)

And then he wrote another symphony in D (minor, this time), and I guess 
the possibility of confusion was what caused him to give it a number 
and retroactively number its predecessors:

Symphony No. 8 in D Minor (1955)
Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (1957)

A lot of commposers in this situation might have left the Sea Symphony, 
or even all of the first three, out of the numbering system (cf 
Tchaikovsky's unnumbered Manfred Symphony among many others).  But now 
they're all known by the numbers as much as by anything else.

But it occurred to me, in a whimsical mood, to try to name the others.  
The first three all had programs, in the sense that there was a clear 
concrete image or set of extramusical images each was trying to 
convey.  It seemed, and still seems, to many people that Nos. 4-6 are 
equally clear in their imagery.  The composer denied any such messages, 
but if he hadn't denied it, we might have had these entirely apt 
titles, each based on the forward-looking imagery that many critics 
have claimed for them:

A War Symphony (1934)
A Peace Symphony (1943)
A Nuclear Holocaust Symphony (1947)

Rename the next one in the same format:

An Antarctic Symphony (1952)

And we're stuck with the last two, which don't have the same kind of 
extramusical connotations, but still have distinct characters.  With 
some diffidence, I'd name them:

A Comic Symphony (1955)
A Cryptic Symphony (1957)

I can't imagine doing such a thing for many other composers.  RVW's 
symphonies are more individually distinct from each other than the 
symphonies of any other composer I can think of.  He's the anti-
Bruckner.

Nice!  The 9th is said to have originated in music about the Salisbury 
Plain, Stonehenge, and possibly Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  You 
could call it "A Stonehenge Symphony" or "A Salisbury Symphony."  (The 
jacket illustration for Boult's second recording of the 9th was a 
painting of Stonehenge.)

I see the Spano/Atlanta recording of the Sea Symphony won some 
Grammys.  Has anybody here heard it?

I haven't, but it's nice to know I'm not the only person who checks the 
classical Grammys.  (The fact that I've never heard of most of the 
winners in other categories affects my views as well.)

Yes, I have actually heard that recording: I wrote a review of it for WCBN
when it came out.  It's been a long time since I listened to it, though, so
I can't remember the details.  I remember feeling that it was a very
passionate and competant recording.  If anyone's interested I can dig up the
review.  It's not very in depth, since it was just a brief description for
DJs scanning for music to play.

I'd love to read the review.

sorry for the delayed response: college life recently forced me to become
busy.  I will retrieve the review sometime!

Here is the review.  It's nothing in depth, just a brief description so that
our DJs have an idea of what to expect if they're unfamiliar with the piece:

An excellent recording of a very majestic piece.  This symphony is not as
pastoral as many of Vaughan Williams's most popular works, like The Lark
Ascending or the Tallis Fantasia, though there is a definite folk tune air
to many sections of the symphony.  This is a regal piece full of power and
grandeur.  The text is all by Walt Whitman (whose poetry is also featured in
RVW's Dona Nobis Pacem).  Atlanta does a fine job in its performance, and the
Atlanta Chorus is excellent as always, living up to the legacy of the late
Robert Shaw.  The balance between choir, orchestra and soloists is good.
The greatest fault with the recording, and it's hardly fixable, is that it
only hints at how magnificent a live performance of this work would be.
There are some absolutely gorgeous moments (about 15 min. into the finale
especially stood out).  The last 5 min. of the symphony are trascendent,
sailing slowly off into the infinite, or ascending into heaven if you prefer.
If you're wary of the Telarc label because of their mediocre jazz releases,
don't let that scare you off: their classical releases are generally quite
reputable.

Very nice review.  I came *that* close to buying the CD the other day.  

I am sitting here, reeling in mild astonishment as I listen, once 
again, to the allegretto movement of the Second Symphony by the 
Portuguese composer Joly Braga Santos (who should be filed under S, but 
the record company [Marco Polo] confuses Portuguese with Spanish and 
tries to put him under B).

I swear, if somebody'd played this for me without identification, I 
would have insisted that it was a misplaced piece by Vaughan Williams.  
The sound-world is uncanny: much of the orchestration is very like him, 
and there is a phrase in the main theme (5th-6th bars) that is the 
absolute essence of his melodic style.  Mix in a crescendo straight out 
of Carl Nielsen (at 5 minutes in), and that's the movement.

I'd read that this composer resembles VW, but the rest of the symphony 
seemed to me to do so only in a general way: Santos favors a loose but 
cogent construction and a colorful conservative modern orchestration, 
both of which he shares with VW, but I'm not otherwise specifically 
reminded of him.

But even just on the basis of this one work, I have to say we have a 
winner of a composer here.  I shall be looking for more by him.  This 
work was written in 1948, about the time pundits were declaring the 
symphony dead (for the second or third time).  A lot they knew.

Also in RVW news: I shall be using the 3rd movement of Gordon Jacob's 
orchestration of the "English Folk Song Suite" in a lecture on music 
and Tolkien, as a demonstration of what the author might have thought 
an orchestrated version of hobbit folk music for a film should have 
sounded like (in contrast to the pseudo-Celtic stuff in 
Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring", which would have made Tolkien's 
ears steam).

Cool!  Are you going to be playing the Flanders & Swan songs?  (I think 
it was them.  I have an old LP around somewhere.  I never liked them 
much.)

I always thought Holst's Planets would make good LotR music.  
Interludes, if not background.  Mars is Mordor; Venus is that nice 
forest where they rest between battles; Mercury is the little stream 
that sings a song; Jupiter is Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday party; 
Saturn is the Grey Havens; Uranus is Treebeard and the Ents trashing 
Isengard; Neptune is the scene in Bombadil's house where he tells the 
hobbits about the origin of te universe.  

If it's RVW you want, much of the music in Job would do, too.

Well, I'm trying to avoid giving a paper on "What I think would make 
good LotR music," though I am indulging far enough to discuss Elgar 
(very much personally like Tolkien in many ways: they were both 
displaced Victorian west-midlands melancholy Catholics with a quiet 
nationalistic patriotism) and to cite various parts of the Enigma 
Variations that remind me of certain parts of Tolkien's stories.  
(Bilbo struggling to stay on top of his barrel in the river is 
obviously the G.R.S. variation, for instance.)

My subjects are: what Tolkien thought Middle-earth music sounded like, 
and what he would have liked music inspired by his works to sound 
like.  I'm leaving for next year the subject of what music inspired by 
his works has actually sounded like, and that starts with Swann.  I 
agree that Job and The Planets would work well, but I don't think 
Tolkien would have liked them much.  Besides Elgar, I'm using some of 
Sibelius's Kalavala works, and the spookier parts of Der Freischutz, as 
Weber is a composer Tolkien is known to have liked.

As for what Tolkien thought the music -should- sound like, I'm 
convinced that the Ainulindale (the creation of the world from the 
Silmarillion) is supposed to sound like late Renaissance and high 
Baroque sacred choral music.

In the current RVW Society Journal, somebody makes the point that 
loving the Pastoral Symphony is the sign of the true RVW fan. Ahem.

I recently picked up the Boult EMI recording of the Pastoral on CD, so
now I have it (and the 5th) to play more easily.  I still think the 5th
is the greater work, but anyone who thinks the Pastoral is tedious,
placid, or eventless certainly hasn't listened to it.

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