John Brough of "Podium Speak" has a great post about the choral music of Ralph Vaughan Williams that was inspired by an upcoming documentary on the life of the great composer.A portion of John's blog post:
I have been an RVW fan for about as long as I can remember, and yet I am still amazed at how much of his choral music is not performed outside of his own country, or at least outside of 'Anglican' centres of music. From numerous anthem like 'Lord, Thou hast been our refuge', 'O How Amiable are thy Dwellings' or 'Let us now Praise Famous Men', to large orchestra/choral works like his 'Fantasia on Christmas Carols'(where he made the 'Sussex Carol' famous), and some secular works like his hauntingly beautiful 'Three Shakespeare Songs', and the list goes on.
4 comments:
Greetings From Washington, D. C.!:
I would _FERVENTLY_ add "Prayer To The Father Of Heaven," a setting of Skelton from 1948, to that list! That text, in my opinion, is one of the finest pieces of Theology of which I am aware outside the _Bible_ itself, and RVW provides some _WONDERFUL_ a-capella music for it as far as I am concerned! By the bye, another fine example of Theology outside of Scripture is a poem attributed to Ben Johnson, "I Sing The Birth!" I _VERY_ much like Elgar's somewhat-modal setting of it from late in his life, but an earlier Sullivan setting was brought to my attention a few months ago.
Hoping that this finds the administrators and readers of this blog well,
J. V.
Agreed! (and thank you Philip L. Copeland for the blog recognition today).
I also need not mention the huge wealth of hymnody that RVW has given us. Where would we be today without Sine Nomine?
I also just stumbled accross a piece in a pile of music here of a solo work (with string trio accompaniment) called "Merciless Beauty - Three Rondels" which look stunning! The edition I have was published in 1922. There's nothing quite like holding "old" music in your hands.
Yes, where would we be without "Sine Nomine," or "Downampney" for that matter?!
_Merciless_ _Beauty_ is settings of Chaucer.
Dr. Brough, I wished to also write what I wrote here in your blog, but I am legally blind, the link for listening to what one must type for visual verification does not work for me, and you do not give a send-mail link in your profile so that I could E-Mail you personally. I was tempted to try telephoning you perhaps next week, but now _THANKFULLY_ it would appear that I will not need to attempt that, or even consider doing so, since hopefully you will read this as well.
J. V.
Vaughan Williams is without question the composer whose music speaks to me the most deeply. While I would concur with Ralph himself that J. S. Bach is probably the "greatest" of all composers...RVW's musical utterance, with its folk-song influences and use of tudor polyphonic methods continues to move me like no other.
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