Vaughan Williams

1 It was a Lover and his Lass † * 1:53 Five Mystical Songs * 17:23 2 The Lawyer * 1:50 @ I. Easter 4:38 DDD (with Louisa Fuller, Violin) # II. I got me flowers 2:26 The English Song Series • 3 8.557114 3 The splendour falls † 4:16 $ III. Love bade me welcome 5:05 4 The Water Mill † 3:55 % IV. The call 2:14 5 Tired * 2:07 ^ V. Antiphon 3:01 6 Silent Noon * 4:32 Ralph 7 Searching for Lambs † 2:22 On Wenlock Edge † ‡ 22:35 (with Louisa Fuller, Violin) & I. On Wenlock Edge 3:45 8 Nocturne * 3:50 * II. From far, from eve and morning 1:57 VAUGHAN 9 Joy, Shipmate, Joy! * 1:06 ( III. Is my team ploughing? 4:06 0 Lord, come away † 3:22 ) IV. Oh, when I was in love with you 0:48 WILLIAMS (with John Metcalfe, Viola) ¡ V. Bredon Hall 7:45 ! Come Love, come Lord † 3:55 ™ VI. Clun 4:14 (with John Metcalfe, Viola) £ Dirge for Fidele † * 3:50 On Wenlock Edge Five Mystical Songs Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor † • Simon Keenlyside, Baritone * Graham Johnson, Piano The Duke Quartet ‡ Louisa Fuller & Rick Koster, Violins John Metcalfe, Viola Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor Ivan McCready, Cello Simon Keenlyside, Baritone Graham Johnson, Piano Duke Quartet 8.557114 20 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) ‘Tis a long way further than Knighton, Fear no more the lightning-flash, Five Mystical Songs • On Wenlock Edge A quieter place than Clun, Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; Where doomsday may thunder and lighten Fear not slander, censure rash; Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in the had by now begun to make a reputation for himself as And little ‘twill matter to one. Thou hast finish’d joy and moan: Gloucestershire village of Down Ampney in 1872, a composer, not least with the first performance in All lovers young, all lovers must the son of a clergyman. His ancestry on both his 1910 of his first symphony, A Sea Symphony, setting £ Dirge for Fidele Consign to thee, and come to dust. father’s and mother’s side was of some intellectual words by Walt Whitman, and his Fantasia on a William Shakespeare distinction. His father was descended from a family Theme of Thomas Tallis in the same year. The even Cymbeline Act IV Scene 2 No exorciser harm thee! eminent in the law, while his maternal grandfather tenor of his life was interrupted by the war, when he Nor no witchcraft charm thee! was a Wedgwood and his grandmother a Darwin. On enlisted at once in the Royal Army Medical Corps as Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Ghost unlaid forbear thee! the death of his father in 1875 the family moved to a private. 1914 was also the year of the London Nor the furious winter’s rages: Nothing ill come near thee! live with his mother’s father at Leith Hill Place in Symphony and of his rhapsodic work for violin and Thou thy wordly task hast done, Quiet consummation have: Surrey. As a child Vaughan Williams learned the orchestra, The Lark Ascending. Three years later, Home art gone and ta’en thy wages; And renowned be thy grave! piano and the violin and received a conventional after service in Salonica that seemed to him Golden lads and girls all must, upper middle class education at Charterhouse, after ineffective, he took a commission in the Royal As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. which he delayed entry to Cambridge, preferring Garrison Artillery and was posted to France. There he instead to study at the Royal College of Music, where was also able to make some use of his abilities as a his teachers included Hubert Parry and Walter musician. Parratt, later Master of the Queen’s Musick, both After the war Vaughan Williams returned to the soon to be knighted. In 1892 he took up his place at Royal College of Music, now as a professor of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History, composition, a position he retained until 1938. In but took composition lessons from Charles Wood. these years he came to occupy a commanding After graduation in both History and Music, he position in the musical life of the country, with a returned to the Royal College, where he studied series of compositions that seemed essentially composition with Stanford, and, perhaps more English, the apparent successor of Elgar, although his significant, became a friend of a fellow-student, musical language was markedly different. The war of Gustav Holst. The friendship with Holst was to prove 1939 brought the challenge of composition for the of great importance in frank exchanges of views on cinema, with notable scores for The 49th Parallel in one another’s compositions in the years that 1940 and a number of other films, culminating in followed. 1949 in his music for the film Scott of the Antarctic, In 1897 Vaughan Williams married and took the the basis of the seventh of his symphonies. Other opportunity to visit Berlin, where he had lessons from works of the last decade of his life included two more The Pilgrim’s Progress Max Bruch and widened his musical experience. In symphonies, the opera , a The text for track 4 (The Water Mill) is reproduced by kind permission of Blackwell Publishing England he turned his attention to the collection of violin sonata and concertos for harmonica and for folk-music in various regions of the country, an tuba, remarkable adventures for an octogenarian. The text for track 5 (Tired) is reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press interest that materially influenced the shape of his His first wife, Adeline, had died in 1951, at the musical language. In 1908 he went to Paris to take age of eighty. In 1953 he married his second wife, The texts for tracks 17-22 (A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman) are reproduced by kind permission of lessons, particularly in orchestration, from Ravel, and Ursula Wood, the widow of a Royal Artillery officer, The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of A. E. Housman. 8.557114 2 19 8.557114 And now the fancy passes by, They tolled the one bell only, who had already provided texts for him and was later the basis of the Sea Symphony. In 1925 he published And nothing will remain, Groom there was none to see, to be his biographer. Vaughan Williams died in 1958. settings of three poems by Whitman, the gentle And miles around they’ll say that I The mourners followed after, The death of one who had long seemed a permanent Nocturne in strong contrast with the following Joy, Am quite myself again. And so to church went she, feature of English music was widely mourned and his Shipmate, Joy!, with poet and composer at their most And would not wait for me. ashes were later laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. ebullient. ¡ V. Bredon Hill The maturer songs of Vaughan Williams span a The Four Hymns for tenor, viola and piano date The bells they sound on Bredon, period from the 1890s until the end of his life. His from 1914, commissioned for Worcester, and first In summertime on Bredon And still the steeples hum. setting of It was a Lover and his Lass from performed after the war, in 1920. The first of the set, The bells they sound so clear; ‘Come all to church, good people,’ Shakespeare’s As You Like It, with its running Lord! Come away!, a setting of words by the Round both the shires they ring them Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; accompaniment, was written in 1922 and is for two seventeenth-century divine Bishop Jeremy Taylor, is In steeples far and near, I hear you, I will come. voices, as in the play itself, where it is sung by two of coupled here with the third, a setting of a devotional A happy noise to hear. the banished duke’s pages. The arrangement of The poem from the same period by the Catholic poet ™ VI. Clun Lawyer for singer and solo violin is one of two English Richard Crashaw. Both songs seem to be forerunners Here of a Sunday morning folk-songs from 1935. It is coupled with Searching for of Britten’s remarkable settings of the Holy Sonnets of My love and I would lie, In valleys of springs of rivers, Lambs, also included here. John Donne. And see the coloured counties, By Ony and Teme and Clun, Tennyson’s The splendour falls on castle walls Although Vaughan Williams, in spite of his early And hear the larks so high The country for easy livers, may now be more familiar from Benjamin Britten’s family background, was an agnostic, this did not About us in the sky. The quietest under the sun, evocative setting in his Serenade for tenor, horn and prevent his effective settings of verse of overt We still had sorrows to lighten, strings. The version by Vaughan Williams dates from religious inspiration. His Five Mystical Songs, settings The bells would ring to call her One could not be always glad, about 1896 and was published in 1905. Although the of poems by George Herbert, offer varied possibilities In valleys miles away: And lads knew trouble at Knighton horn-call harmonies suggest the bugles of the text, this of performance, for baritone, optional chorus and ‘Come all to church, good people; When I was a Knighton lad. setting is in general more gently evocative. The orchestra, as here for baritone and piano, or for Good people, come and pray.’ Watermill, with its mill-wheel turning in the piano baritone piano and string quintet.

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