The Birthdays Of Two Great English Composers

Greetings!:

This post is a bit late for various reasons, notably the computer problem I was having and mentioned in my last post and, yes, more procrastination.  Yet
today, the anniversary of when I first met Mr. John Noble, who sang Pilgrim in Sir Adrian Boult's recording of Vaughan Williams's _The_ _Pilgrim's_ _Progress_,
about which work you may read in my 11-June post devoted to it, seemed a good day on which to write this, and thus here it is for what it is worth.

October saw the birth of two great English composers, Vaughan Williams on the 12th in 1872 and Herbert Howells on the 17th in 1882.  Both of them came from
Gloucestershire, and they became friends when they met in Gloucester Cathedral in September, 1910, just after VW had conducted the world-premiere performance
of his now-famous _Fantasia_ _On_ _A_ _Theme_ _Of_ _Thomas_ _Tallis_ at the Three Choirs Festival.  Howells was most impressed with it, and I just learned
today that, after VW left the rostrum, he sat down next to Howells, and the two of them looked at the same score during the subsequent performance of Elgar's
_The_ _Dream_ _Of_ _Gerontius_.  Howells had actually come to hear this latter, but his lasting impression was of the _Fantasia_.  The two of them would
subsequently teach at the Royal College of Music at the same time, and, to our lasting benefit, VW would later suggest that Howells release his _Hymnus_
_Paradisi_, which he had written as a memorial to his son who had died in infancy, for public performance after it had been held in private for 12 years.
 Howells first conducted it, also at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, in 1950, and it is now numbered among the greatest of English choral works,
at least those written in the 20th Century.  I think I have at least somewhat liked it ever since I first came to know it in the 1980's, but have become
increasingly moved by it in recent years.

Vaughan Williams produced a large body of work during his long life, and much of this was rooted in the style of English folksong and/or the works of the
English Tudor composers.  VW and others went throughout the English Countryside during the first years of the 20th Century to collect folksongs, asking
the older people to sing these so that they might be written down, etc.  A man called Cecil Sharp was largely responsible for this movement to restore
the people's music, and other composers such as Gustav Holst, George Butterworth (if you wish, you may read my post about him and Oscar Hammerstein II
earlier in this blog) and Percy Grainger also joined in.  Then, in 1904, VW was asked to take up editorship of the proposed new _English_ _Hymnal_, and
this too was a valuable influence on him.  In addition to discovering many previous tunes, he wrote some himself, of which "Sine Nomine (Latin for "Without
A Name")," for the text "For All The Saints," and "Down Ampney (the name of the town where he was born), for the text "Come Down, O Love Divine," are probably
the best known.  By the bye, for those not acquainted with the Anglican Communion, it is customary there to give hymn tunes names apart from the names
of the poems set to them, and thus one finds some seemingly-unusual ones alongside those more straightforward.  I am assuming that VW's decision to call
the tune for "For All The Saints" "Sine Nomine" came from his playful sense of humour.  Meanwhile he began to compose original works, several early examples
being solo songs.  His first published work is probably his most famous song, "Linden Lea."  There is further a beautiful and rather-famous song cycle
from the first decade of the Century, _Songs_ _Of_ _Travel_, to texts by Stevenson, the author of _Treasure_ _Island_.  This was further the period of
A. E. Housman's book of poems, _A_ _Shropshire_ _Lad_, and VW was one of several English composers to set some of these, his best-known settings being
a song cycle named after one of its poems, _On_ Wenlock_ _Edge_, originally composed for tenor soloist, string quartet and piano, but later orchestrated.
 More is said about Housman in my Butterworth/Hammerstein post.  And then there was the famous American poet, Walt Whitman, to whose work 20th-Century
English composers were also drawn.  VW's earliest familiar choral work is a Whitman setting, _Toward_ _The_ _Unknown_ _Region_, and, in 1910, there was
the first performance of a work on which he had been occupied for several years, _A_ _Sea_ _Symphony_, the first of nine symphonies he would write and
his only choral one, he beginning his symphonic career with such while Beethoven ended so.  As related in my earlier cited post, it was Butterworth who
would spur this composer on to his Second, _A_ _London_ _Symphony_, his personal favourite and mine as well.  After his two big 1910 successes, the next
decade would prove quite fruitful for him, some highlights, besides the _Second_ _Symphony_, being his George Herbert settings, _Five_ _Mystical_ _Songs_,
the _Fantasia_ _On_ _Christmas_ _Carols_, his first opera, _Hugh_ _The_ _Drover_, and a popular work for violin solo and small orchestra called _The_ _Lark_
_Ascending_.  During the First World War he drove an ambulance in France, and while there he heard both a bugler playing his calls with a flattened seventh
as well as a woman singing while washing.  Reminiscences of these found their way into his next symphony, _A_ _Pastoral_ _Symphony_, from 1922 if I have
the year right.  Though his earlier works had at least some dissonance in them, this symphony really began to explore some new harmonic territory for him,
though his music never went as far with that as the 12-tone composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Webern and other progressivists.  As of when I last
heard, Mr. Michael Kennedy, VW's musical biographer, regarded this symphony as his greatest, though in his book, _The_ _Works_ _Of_ _Ralph_ _Vaughan_ _Williams_
(Oxford University Press, 1964-80), he gives that distinction to the _Fifth_.  Some musical highlights for this composer from the 1920's include his much-loved
_Mass_ _In_ _G_ _Minor_ for soloists and unaccompanied chorus, his second full-length opera, _Sir_ _John_ _In_ _Love_, based on Shakespeare's _The_ _Merry_
_Wives_ _Of_ _Windsor_, his relatively-short but large-scale oratorio based on the later part of the _Book_ _Of_ _The_ _Revelation_ called _Sancta_ _Civitas_
(The Holy City in Latin), and what the composer called an "exotic suite" for viola solo, wordless chorus and small orchestra called _Flos_ _Campi_ (Lily
of the Valley if I recall correctly), based on the _Song_ _Of_ _Solomon_.  And then there was a pastoral episode, _The_ _Shepherds_ _Of_ _The_ _Delectable_
_Mountains_, based on an episode in Bunyan's _The_ _Pilgrim's_ _Progress_.  VW had first set music for a dramatization of that book in 1906, and this later
1920's episode would set him more fully thinking about writing a complete opera on the subject of that famous allegory, the fruit of which would be his
morality, discussed more fully in my 11-June post, which he would complete in 1949 and first see staged at Covent Garden in 1951.  1930 would bring his
most famous work for dance, _Job_, a masque for dancing based on William Blake's illustrations of the _Book_ _Of_ _Job_.  There would be two more operas
during the '30's, _Riders_ _To_ _The_ _Sea_, a rather-short but highly-dramatic as well as musically-dissonant work giving an almost-complete setting of
a play by the Irish playwrite John Millington Singe about the misfortunes of an Irish seacoast family, which at least some, Mr. Kennedy among them, regard
as his most-successful stage work (and, despite my partiality toward the _Pilgrim_, they may well be right), and a lighter one, _The_ _Poisoned_ _Kiss_,
concerned with a pair of lovers, one of whom has been brought up on poisons and the other on antidotes to these and that which results from this.  It only
received its first recording a few years ago.  There were also the _Five_ _Tudor_ _Portraits_, settings of the Tudor poet John Skelton, whose poetry would
further be set in an _ENTIRELY_-different work later and a special favourite of mine, _Prayer_ _To_ _The_ _Father_ _Of_ _Heaven_, in 1948.  Yet the fourth
of these portraits, depicting the funeral of a pet sparrow in a convent killed by a cat, is also a religious work full of compassion whereas the third
is a celebration of the death of an unpopular deacon in a mixture of Latin and English (as is also that 4th portrait).  And, with World War II coming nearer,
there was _Dona_ _Nobis_ _Pacem_, that title perhaps familiar as the closing words of the Ordinary of the Latin Mass, this VW cantata also returning to
Whitman, including a setting of his _Derge_ _For_ _Two_ _Veterans_ from the first Decade of the Century, the decade of those early Whitman settings.  Yet
this work ends as I personally feel it should, with God being the ultimate bringer of peace after the humanistic pleadings of Whitman and a quotation from
a speech given on the floor of the House of Commons.  But arguably the most significant work of that decade was the _Fourth_ _Symphony_.  As written above,
VW explored dissonant harmonies in his _Third_, but this, perhaps because it begins so loudly, caused consternation at first, this often-pastoral composer
now writing something brutally harsh.  People also tried to attach this work to the current world situation, as they would later do with his _Sixth_, but
VW was having _NONE_ of it, insisting that these two works were just pieces of music, though he did concede that the last movement of the _Sixth_ might
have had a Shakespearean association, of which perhaps more later.  The _Fourth_, unlike the _Sixth_, does not overly appeal to me personally, but its
importance cannot be denied.

I am going to take a so-far unprecedented step for this blog here.  Since this post has so far grown to a length which perhaps even I did not first consider,
I think, given that I have dinner and the last two acts of the _Pilgrim_ for this anniversary to which to get, that I will soon publish what I have here
written, leaving the rest for a separate post either tomorrow or soon thereafter.
Until then, as usual, I hope this finds my visitors well.

J. V.