A Critical Analysis of “On Wenlock Edge” by Ralph Vaughan Williams
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Housman Society Newsletter No. 49 (March 2019)
Housman Society Newsletter No. 49 March 2019 Housman Society Members at St John’s College, Oxford, 20 October 2018 From the Secretary’s Desk Contents Page From the Secretary’s Desk 1 The bitter cold of a late January afternoon has A Shropshire Lad spotted in Swanage, driven me in from my motor workshop (as many Dorset 2 of you will know one of my other preoccupations Forthcoming events 3 is with vintage motor cars) and to contemplation Society members visit two Oxford of the Society's updated programme of events. college libraries 3 The Dyson Lecture 6 We begin with the annual Bromsgrove The Ludlow Weekend of Song 7 Commemoration on March 26 when I am The Bromsgrove Summer School: The Housmans of Worcestershire and delighted that Rev. Kelvin Price from St. Gloucestershire 8 Laurence's in Ludlow will be our Guest of the Day The Evesham Festival of Words 8 thus forging a link between our two principal A.E. Housman, the Worcestershire Lad centres of activity. He will, of course, be The Housman Society Book Exchange 9 officiating at the Ludlow Commemoration service on Saturday April 27 which will follow on from 1 the AGM, conforming to the pattern adopted two The recent autumn Library Visits have offered years ago. Details of both celebrations will be insights into Housman's academic life and we are found in the events calendar. hoping that the efforts of our Chairman, Peter Waine, to strengthen the relationship with Trinity Since the demise of our Hay Festival participation College in particular might pave the way for a in 2017 the Committee has been exploring options joint event in Cambridge in October. -
01-Sargeant-PM
CERI OWEN Vaughan Williams’s Early Songs On Singing and Listening in Vaughan Williams’s Early Songs CERI OWEN I begin with a question not posed amid the singer narrates with ardent urgency their sound- recent and unusually liberal scholarly atten- ing and, apparently, their hearing. But precisely tion devoted to a song cycle by Ralph Vaughan who is engaged in these acts at this, the musi- Williams, the Robert Louis Stevenson settings, cal and emotional heart of the cycle? Songs of Travel, composed between 1901 and The recollected songs are first heard on the 1904.1 My question relates to “Youth and Love,” lips of the speaker in “The Vagabond,” an os- the fourth song of the cycle, in which an unex- tensibly archetypal Romantic wayfarer who in- pectedly impassioned climax erupts with pecu- troduces himself at the cycle’s opening in the liar force amid music of otherwise unparalleled lyric first-person, grimly issuing a characteris- serenity. Here, as strains of songs heard earlier tic demand for the solitary life on the open intrude into the piano’s accompaniment, the road. This lyric voice, its eye fixed squarely on the future, is retained in two subsequent songs, “Let Beauty Awake” and “The Roadside Fire” I thank Byron Adams, Daniel M. Grimley, and Julian (in which life with a beloved is contemplated).2 Johnson for their comments on this research, and espe- cially Benedict Taylor, for his invaluable editorial sugges- With “Youth and Love,” however, Vaughan tions. Thanks also to Clive Wilmer for his discussion of Williams rearranges the order of Stevenson’s Rossetti with me. -
NABMSA Reviews a Publication of the North American British Music Studies Association
NABMSA Reviews A Publication of the North American British Music Studies Association Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall 2018) Ryan Ross, Editor In this issue: Ita Beausang and Séamas de Barra, Ina Boyle (1889–1967): A Composer’s Life • Michael Allis, ed., Granville Bantock’s Letters to William Wallace and Ernest Newman, 1893–1921: ‘Our New Dawn of Modern Music’ • Stephen Connock, Toward the Rising Sun: Ralph Vaughan Williams Remembered • James Cook, Alexander Kolassa, and Adam Whittaker, eds., Recomposing the Past: Representations of Early Music on Stage and Screen • Martin V. Clarke, British Methodist Hymnody: Theology, Heritage, and Experience • David Charlton, ed., The Music of Simon Holt • Sam Kinchin-Smith, Benjamin Britten and Montagu Slater’s “Peter Grimes” • Luca Lévi Sala and Rohan Stewart-MacDonald, eds., Muzio Clementi and British Musical Culture • Christopher Redwood, William Hurlstone: Croydon’s Forgotten Genius Ita Beausang and Séamas de Barra. Ina Boyle (1889-1967): A Composer’s Life. Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2018. 192 pp. ISBN 9781782052647 (hardback). Ina Boyle inhabits a unique space in twentieth-century music in Ireland as the first resident Irishwoman to write a symphony. If her name conjures any recollection at all to scholars of British music, it is most likely in connection to Vaughan Williams, whom she studied with privately, or in relation to some of her friends and close acquaintances such as Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Anne Macnaghten. While the appearance of a biography may seem somewhat surprising at first glance, for those more aware of the growing interest in Boyle’s music in recent years, it was only a matter of time for her life and music to receive a more detailed and thorough examination. -
Shire Lad in "Inside the Whale,"' an Essay He Wrote in 1940.2 He Was Himself
SHROPSHIRE REVISITED Theodora and Alfred Kroeber, 1959 Our century continues to be much occupied with death, and our creative energies to expend themselves on one aspect or another of death, whether in the waging of war, the invention of implements and devices of war, or in pol- itical and social thinking, or in the plastic arts and literature. Poets are said to speak prophetically. This could mean that, some time before the first World Wiar, their poems had begun to emphasize death over life. Poe, Emily Dickinson, Swinburne, Housman, Kipling, Yeats, and Eliot do indeed use the words death, dead, die, dying, significantly more often than the words life, alive, live, living, and Housman, at the seeming apex of this twentieth- century death-directed interest, is discovered to have employed seventy-one per cent of death words to twenty-nine per cent of life words.1 Since Housman Vrote A Shro shire Lad there has been a world war, and since he published his Last Poems there have been the vertiginous twenties, a depression, and a second World ibr, with their presently complex aftermaths. Reviewing the poetry of the past half-century or so, a style profile, however tentative and incomplete, begins to emerge. We--the English and the Americans--faced what followed on Sarajevo with the bravado and despair of the lads of Housman's balladlike and simple poetry. We volunteered for glory and friendship and death. Never since our immersion in that first world war have values been for us as clear-cut as they were before. It is Housman who gives those lost values their perfect and limited, if astringently negative, voice. -
Hughley, Easthope and Shipton
Hughley, Easthope and Shipton Our visit was inspired by A.E. Housman's poem 'A Shropshire Lad' was spent exploring the churches of Wenlock Team Ministry. Actually, as far as I'm aware, only one church, Hughley, is mentioned by Housman, but it served as a good starting point for discovering the churches in the surrounding area. Within the Team MInistry there are two discrete geographical groupings, one cluster lying north on the road from Wenlock to Shrewsbury, and the other on the road leading south west from Wenlock in the direction of Craven Arms and Church Stretton. St John the Baptist, Hughley The vane on Hughley 'steeple' - in fact it's a half timbered bell tower. Our first church, Hughley, lies north of the Stretton Road (B4371). Its main claim to fame is the mention in A.E. Housman's poem 'A Shropshire Lad' (see below). It's likely that Housman merely picked the name off a map, because it's said that when he wrote the poem he had never actually visited Shropshire, being in fact born in Worcestershire. Indeed, there is no steeple there, and never has been at Hughley, although there is a half- timbered bell tower, albeit with a vane: The Vane on Hughley steeple, Veers bright, a far-known sign, And there lie Hughley people, And there lie friends of mine... Rood screen at Hughley A colourful post-Easter altar cloth at Hughley. Mary and Rabboni stained glass at Hughley Inside, the church is distinguished by an attractive carved rood screen dividing chancel and nave. -
Edexcel Aos1: Vaughan Williams's on Wenlock Edge
KSKS55 Edexcel AoS1: Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge Hanh Doan is a by Hanh Doan former AST and head of music, and currently works as a part-time music teacher at Beaumont School in St Albans. OVERVIEW She is the author of various books, On Wenlock Edge is a song cycle by Ralph Vaughan Williams that sets some of AE Housman’s poems from and writes articles his collection A Shropshire Lad. Published in 1896, the 63 poems in A Shropshire Lad reflect a variety of and resources for Music Teacher different themes (including the simple pleasures of rural life and a longing for lost innocence). They are written magazine, exam in different voices, including conversations from beyond the grave. As well as Vaughan Williams’s settings of boards and other six of these poems, other composers to set extracts from A Shropshire Lad include George Butterworth, Arthur music education publishers. Somervell and Ivor Gurney. Vaughan Williams set the following poems from the collection (the Roman numeral indicating the poem’s place in A Shropshire Lad): 1. XXXI ‘On Wenlock Edge’ 2. XXXII ‘From Far, from Eve and Morning’ 3. XXVII ‘Is My Team Ploughing’ 4. XVIII ‘Oh, When I Was in Love with You’ 5. XXI ‘Bredon Hill’ 6. L ‘Clun’ On Wenlock Edge is set for tenor and the unusual accompaniment of string quartet and piano. (Vaughan Williams also provided an alternative solo piano accompaniment.) Edexcel has chosen numbers 1, 3 and 5 for study at A level, but it is of course essential that students get to know the whole work. -
Autumn 2005 No
FRMS BULLETIN Autumn 2005 No. 143 Ed i tor: CONTENTS Ar thur Baker 4 Ramsdale Road, page Bramhall, Stockport, EDITORIAL page Cheshire SK7 2QA THE REGIONS Tel: 0161 440 8746 The Fu ture 2 or E-Mail: Fare well 2 Cen tral Re gion 19 [email protected] Sus sex Re gion 22 Ed i to rial dead lines: York shire Re gion 23 NEWS Spring is sue — 31st De cem- ber Hyperion Copy right Case 3 Society Regeneration Au tumn is sue — 30th June Toccata Clas sics 3 Mar ket ing Man ager: Christ mas Cards 3 Ickenham & Ruislip 26 Tony Pook (see page 37). West Wickham RMS 27 Ad ver tise ments are avail able LETTERS from £35.00, de tails from THE SOCIETIES him. Wil liam Hurlestone 4 Cir cu la tion Man ager: AGM Motion 4 Eastbourne 28 Allan Child (see back page Classicalmania 5 Thurso 29 for ad dress). E-mail: Wellington G S 31 [email protected] FEATURES BOOK REVIEWS Copies are distributed to all Busoni and Faust 6 Federation affiliates with Red Rays… 9 Cockaigne 32 additional copies through Reverse Tran scrip tion 11 Bay reuth 33 society secretaries. Estimated Rob ert Simpson 13 readership is well over 10,000. CD REVIEWS Individual Subscriptions are DAVENTRY available at £6.80 for four Busoni — Doktor Faust 34 issues. Direct orders and Mu si cal Week end 16 Sibelius — Sympho nies 35 subscriptions for the Bulletin should be sent to the FRMS CROSSWORD Treasurer (see back page). The cover picture is ‘Chess at Cross word 36 Daventry’ ©Arthur Baker. -
A Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann
,A DICHTERLIEBE BY ROBERT SCHUMANN THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF MUSIC By Hubert Neil Davidson, B. M. Denton, Texas August, 1957 PREFACE The purpose of this work, an analysis of the song cycle Dichterliebe (Op. 1+8) by Robert Schumann, is to recognize the special features of the songs which will contribute to their understanding and musical interpretation and perform- ance. The Dichterliebe was chosen as the composition to be analyzed because of its prominent position in the vocal lit.- erature of the Romantic period. An acquaintance with the life of the poet, Heinrich Heine, as well as the life of the composer of these songs and their relationship to each other contributes toward an understanding of the cycle. Each of the sixteen songs in the cycle is analyzed according to its most important characteristics, including text setting, general harmonic structure, important role of the accompaniment, expressive techniques, mood, tempo, rhythm, and dynamics. It is not the aim of this work to offer an extensive formal or harmonic analysis of this song cycle. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE . iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.... ..... .v Chapter I. BACKGROUND OF THE DICHTERLIEBE . .1 Biographical Sketch of Robert Schumann The Life and Work of Heinrich Heine Robert Schumann's Relationship with Heinrich Heine History of Song Cycles up to and Past the Dichterliebe II. ANALYSIS OF THE DICHTERLIEBE . 18 I Im wundersch8ne Monat Mai II lus meinen Thranen spriessen III Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube IV Wenn ich in!~deine Augen~seh1' V IhwiT miieine Seele tauchen VI Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome VII Ich rolle nicht VIII Und, ssten's die Blumen, die kleinen IX Das ist ein Fl8ten und Geigen x 'Tich das Liedchen~klingen XI Emn J17ling liebt ein Mdchen XII Am leuchtenden Sommemorgen XIII Ich hablimTTraum geweinet XIV llnHEhtlich im Traume seh' ich dich XV Aus alten Murchen Winkt es XVI Die alten b6sen Leider BIBLIOGRAPHY 0. -
Dichterliebe
Schumann, Heine, and Romantic Irony: Music and Poems in the First Five Songs of Dichterliebe Lauri Suurpaa Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo and Schumann's Dichterliebe^ Schumann composed Dichterliebe op. 48 - probably die best known of his song cycles - in one week at the end of May 1840.2 The year 1840 has been called Schumann's year of songs. Besides Dichterliebe, he composed the song cycles Myrthen op. 25, Liederkreis op. 39, and Frauenliebe und -leben op. 42. The vast and sudden production of songs is notable, as before 1840 Schumann had composed songs only as a very young man during the years 1 827-28. 3 Vocal music occupied an ambiguous position in the early part of the nineteenth century. The bourgeoisie of the time showed great interest in vocal music: people sang lieder and were active in choral societies. However, the writers of the early Romantic period considered instrumental music superior to vocal music. They claimed that instrumental music could approach the infinite - highly important for early romantic aesthetics - more M wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Professors Edward Laufer and Carl Schachter for their valuable comments during the preparation of this article. 2For a discussion on the compositional history of Dichterliebe, see Rufus E. Hallmark, The Genesis of Schumann's Dichterliebe: A Source Book (Ann Arbor:' UMI Research Press, 1976). ^Reasons for this sudden interest in songs have been sought in an idea, growing in Schumann's mind, that instrumental music would no longer be progressing (see Leon P. Plantinga, Schumann as Critic [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967], 179-183), and from Schumann's eagerness to raise his social status that he might marry Clara Wieck (see Barbara Turchin, "Schumann's Conversion to Vocal Music: A Reconsideration," The Musical Quarterly [July 1981]: 392-404). -
An Awareness of the Clara Motive in Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann
An Awareness of the Clara Motive in Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann by Jihye Yoo A Research Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Musical Arts Approved April 2019 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Andrew Campbell, Chair Rodney Rogers Russell Ryan ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2019 ABSTRACT This project details specific placement and usage of the Clara motive in Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe. The analysis categorizes the motive according to its different shapes and relationships to the poetry in Dichterliebe. Four main permutations of the motive are discussed in great detail: the original motive, inverted motive, retrograde motive, and retrograde inverted motive. Schumann (1810–1856) composed more than 160 vocal works in 1840, commonly referred to as his Liederjahr. At the time, Schumann and Clara Wieck (1819– 1896) were planning to marry, despite the objections of her father Friedrich Wieck (1785–1873). Robert was inspired to write Dichterliebe because of the happiness-and anxiety-surrounding his love for Clara, and the difficulties leading to their impending marriage. Schumann used the Clara motive (C-Bb-A-G#-A), which incorporates the letters of her name, throughout the song cycle in special moments as a tool of musical expression that alludes to his future wife. Eric Sams (1926–2004), a specialist of German Lieder, has made significant contributions to the research of the Clara motive in Schumann’s music (through his book The Songs of Robert Schumann). However, research into specific locations and transformations of the Clara motive within the Dichterliebe are still insufficient. A further awareness of the Clara motive’s inner working is intended to help performers interpret this song cycle. -
Dv2 Albert Coates Versameling/Albert Coates Collection
ALBERT COATES COLLECTION DOCUMENTATION CENTRE FOR MUSIC (DOMUS) MUSIC LIBRARY STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY FINDING AID CONTENTS Introduction i A PERSONAL PAPERS 1 B CORRESPONDENCE 2 C CONCERT PROGRAMMES, LEAFLETS AND POSTERS 10 D NEWSPAPER CUTTINGS 49 E MAGAZINES 58 F NOTES 59 G SCRIPTS, LIBRETTI AND SYNOPSES 76 H COSTUMES AND STAGE DESIGN 85 J PHOTOGRAPHS 87 K MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS 97 L MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS 216 M PHOTOGRAPHIC SPOOLS 217 N SOUND RECORDINGS 219 P MONOGRAPHS 225 Q ARTEFACTS 228 R OBJETS D’ART 228 S DUPLICATES 229 T ADDITIONS 231 Index 232 Collection Summary Title: Albert Coates Collection Dates of creation: 1907–1971 Level of description: Multilevel Extent: ca. 1700 items Repository: Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), Music Library, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Creator: Albert Coates Call No. : PDV2 Biographical History1 Albert Coates was born in St. Petersburg in 1882 into a family of English merchants—part of a larger expatriate community that the sea trade routes between northern England and the Baltic had brought to Russia earlier in the 19th century.2 Coates was sent to primary school in London, then to high school and university in Liverpool, where he studied sciences. He was supposed to join his father’s business, but instead turned to music, enrolling at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1902. There, he studied conducting with Nikisch, and thereafter rose rapidly through the ranks. He was a répétiteur for Nikisch, an assistant to Ernst von Schuch in Dresden, and then from 1910 to 1917 he conducted at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. He left Russia in 1919, after which he regularly worked with the London Symphony Orchestra; the world premières he conducted with them included the complete Planets Suite by Holst and the revised version of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony. -
The Song-Cycle Frauenliebe Und-Leben by Robert Schumann
Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All Graduate Plan B and other Reports Graduate Studies 5-1970 The Song-Cycle Frauenliebe Und-leben By Robert Schumann Jocelyn Kaye Jensen Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports Part of the Music Commons Recommended Citation Jensen, Jocelyn Kaye, "The Song-Cycle Frauenliebe Und-leben By Robert Schumann" (1970). All Graduate Plan B and other Reports. 613. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports/613 This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Plan B and other Reports by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SONG-cYCLE 11 FR~UENLIEBE UND-LEBEN 11 BY ROBERT SCHUM~NN by Jocelyn Kaye Jensen Report of a recital performed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of M~STER OF MUSIC UT~H STATE UNIVERSITY Logan, Utah 1970 ii TABLE OF C01~NTS Page LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS iii PROGRAM , , , iv PROGRAl-1 NOTES , v I, INTRODUCTION , , , , , , , • • • , • , , • , • • • • , , 1 II. GENERAL STYLISTIO CHARACTERISTICS Cl" THE ROMANTIC PERIOD OF MUSIC , , , , , , , , • , , • , 2 III, ROBERT SCHUMANN 'III THIN THE ROMANTIC PERIOD 5 IV, THE SONG CYClE °FRAUENLIEBE UNO-LEBEN", , , 8 V, DISCUSSION OF THE POET AND TEXT OF THE ~FRAUENLIEBE UNO- LEBEN", , , , • , , , • , , , , , , •• , • , , • 11 VI, TECHNICAL DESCRIP'l'ION OF ~FRAUENLIEBE UND-LEBS:N" 15 VII, CONCLUSION 27 BIBLIOGRAPHY 29 APPENDIX :50 VITA • , , , ~5 iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration Page 1. Example of Heaeure 1, Piano Prelude , Se it ich ihn geeehen •• 16 2 .