Copyright 2014 Renée Chérie Clark ASPECTS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ART SONGS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS BEFORE THE GREAT WAR BY RENÉE CHÉRIE CLARK DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Christina Bashford, Chair Associate Professor Gayle Sherwood Magee Professor Emeritus Herbert Kellman Professor Emeritus Chester L. Alwes ABSTRACT This dissertation explores how the art songs of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) composed before the Great War expressed the composer’s vision of “Englishness” or “English national identity”. These terms can be defined as the popular national consciousness of the English people. It is something that demands continual reassessment because it is constantly changing. Thus, this study takes into account two key areas of investigation. The first comprises the poets and texts set by the composer during the time in question. The second consists of an exploration of the cultural history of British and specifically English ideas surrounding pastoralism, ruralism, the trope of wandering in the countryside, and the rural landscape as an escape from the city. This dissertation unfolds as follows. The Introduction surveys the literature on Vaughan Williams and his songs in particular on the one hand, and on the other it surveys a necessarily selective portion of the vast literature of English national identity. The introduction also explains the methodology applied in the following chapters in analyzing the music as readings of texts. The remaining chapters progress in the chronological order of Vaughan Williams’s career as a composer. Chapter Two considers the three Barnes songs composed between 1901 and 1903 and published in The Vocalist. The chapter argues that these songs, in pitting the rural against the urban as seen in salient aspects of their music, epitomize Vaughan Williams’s engagement with the contemporary “Back- to-the-Land” movement. Chapter Three examines the Songs of Travel (text by ii Robert Louis Stevenson). This chapter argues is that Vaughan Williams’s 1904 song cycle displays the composer’s fascination with the figure of the gypsy, and the life of the wanderer-- preoccupations that were characteristic of the gypsophilia of the day—represented in his music by such figures as a tramping motive and a rhythmic fingerprint. Chapter Four is dedicated to the 1909 cycle On Wenlock Edge (text by A. E. Housman). Once again, this cycle pits country against city. It also confronts modern with Roman Britain and introduces other icons of Englishness, in particular the church. All this marks a new development in Vaughan Williams’s progress as a song composer, namely the introduction of ideas associated with pastoralism and the difficulties of the rural life. Chapter Five discusses the critical change in the composer’s work caused by the Great War. Despite continuities in Vaughan Williams’s composition that would persist throughout his career, these years saw a shift in focus towards themes of mortality and spirituality, and new musical techniques. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of countless people. First, I must thank my advisor, Dr. Christina Bashford, who has read countless drafts of this document and given me many cups of tea while trying to make sense of my prose. I could not have finished were it not for her. Dr. Bashford’s influence has touched every aspect of this paper. Any remaining deficiencies are my own. I am grateful for the support and expert advice of the members of my committee, Professors Herbert Kellman, Gayle Sherwood Magee and Chester L. Alwes. Herbert Kellman and his wonderful wife, musicologist Susan Parisi, have invited me into their home, fed me, and offered friendship and advice over the years for which I will always be truly grateful. Gayle Magee and Chester Alwes kindly agreed to be on my committee and have been cheering me on to the finish. Their advice is worth more than gold. I am also grateful to have had the resources of the libraries of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Hillsdale College, Cambridge University, Trinity College Dublin, the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Charterhouse, and the British Library at my disposal. I must take the opportunity to thank the many librarians who have helped me over the years, in particular Marlys Scarborough and the late Leslie Troutman in the Music Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Judy Leising, Maurine McCourry, iv Linda Moore, and Martin Nord in Mossey Library at Hillsdale College; and Laura Smyth at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Writing a dissertation while teaching full-time can be hectic. My (now former) student, Rebecca Schoon, allowed me to hire her to do photocopying and other such tasks when I did not have the time, and for this I shall be forever grateful. I am also thankful for my (now retired) colleague in the Classics Department, Dr. Lorna Holmes, who shared her office with me one summer when I did not have one. Additionally, I must also thank the eminent classicist Grace Starry West for our most insightful conversations about Lucretius and his nature poetry. Over the years, whenever I have gone to England to do research Brian and Joyce O’Regan opened their home to me, fed me and gave me a place to stay. Not everyone is so blessed. Mere words cannot express the gratitude I feel for their kindness over the years. Sadly, Brian passed away two weeks before I gave this document to my committee. Ann and Tony Williams drove me around all the locations mentioned in On Wenlock Edge. I had a marvelous time, and I will be forever grateful for their kindness and hospitality. I would also like to thank my in-laws, Denis and Colette Weaire for all their support over the years, and in particular for Denis’s help in obtaining access to the Trinity College, Dublin library. You will see the name Byron Adams across the pages of this dissertation. He first introduced me to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams as an undergraduate, and he has continued to publish on and perform the music of this v most extraordinary composer in the years since. My own work and the work of so many other scholars would not exist without the work of this man. My gratitude knows no bounds. Lastly, I must thank my husband, Gavin Weaire. He has taken over most of the household duties that we usually share (and all of the cooking) so I could finish this document while also teaching full-time. I hope he thinks it was worth it! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING THE ART SONGS……...1 CHAPTER 2: EARLY SONGS OF DORSET………………………………….54 CHAPTER 3: ROGUES, VAGABONDS, TRAMPS AND TINKERS: THE LIFE OF THE WANDERER IN SONGS OF TRAVEL………………….….…105 CHAPTER 4: ON WENLOCK EDGE…………………………………………197 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND EPILOGUE…………………………….294 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………319 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING THE ART SONGS …if he consciously tries to express himself in a way which is contrary to his surroundings, and therefore to his own nature, he is evidently being, though perhaps he does not know it, insincere. It is surely as bad to be self-consciously cosmopolitan as self- consciously national.1 I. Vaughan Williams and Song Surveyed Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is now generally regarded as one of the leading British composers of his generation. He received recognition during his lifetime for his work on the English hymnal, his compositions with sacred texts, his music for the stage, and, in particular, his music for orchestra. Throughout his life he worked as a conductor, an adjudicator, a church organist, an educator, folksong collector, and a mentor while continuing to compose daily. His writing and lectures on music or music-related topics, collected together in the volume National Music and Other Essays, remain a standard source for all students of British music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, regardless of their focus. Few nowadays question the stature of Ralph Vaughan Williams as a composer, but the study of his ninety-three art song compositions and the poetry, people, and incidents that inspired them, has not been abundant. I am here defining “art song” as a musical composition written for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment that was not originally part of another 1 Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Should Music be National?” in National Music and Other Essays, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 3. 1 musical work.2 Assessing the number of art songs composed by Vaughan Williams is trickier than one might expect. James Day, in the 1998 edition of his biography of the composer, includes a total of eighty-six songs. In this list he includes “Dirge for Fidele” (for two mezzo-sopranos and piano accompaniment) and “It was a Lover and His Lass,” which is described as a “part song for two voices with piano accompaniment.”3 Day also includes “Ye Little Birds,” a song written and performed in 1905, then destroyed. He does not include On Wenlock Edge, the cycle of six songs Vaughan Williams wrote and published in 1908-09.4 Michael Kennedy, long-time friend, biographer, and cataloguer of the composer’s works, included one hundred and one songs in his index of works.5 Within this category Kennedy includes the Five Mystical Songs (for baritone soloist, mixed chorus and orchestra) as well as songs from the opera Hugh the Drover, neither of which are included in Day’s list. Unlike Day, Kennedy does not include “Dirge for Fidele” nor “It was a Lover and his Lass.” Somewhere between both Day and Kennedy lies Alain Frogley.