I know that Ralph V. Williams was a man of great human feeling, he understood melancholia and our struggle to live, just beautiful music, what a gift he is to us all
I'm listening to this for the first time, while still reeling from the news that a dear friend of mine, my music teacher, has died. It fits my mood perfectly, better than any words can.
I am not a professional, just an older dedicated listener from The Netherlands. I spend some years in the UK in the '70's in England and many holidays after that all over the island. Elgar and Holst were on my speakers for many years already. Vaughan Williams I discovered somewhere in the '90's , and has remained a deep interest. Specialy the delicate pieces like this Dark Pastorale, In The Fen Country and others : They seem to come from inside .
Vaughan Williams'melody has a special appeal to the Japanese hearts Vaughan Williams'melodies have a unique nostalgic feel that touches the hearts of Japanese people From Tokyo of the Land of the Rising Sun 🇯🇵
This might be so, but his music is essentially British, his musical soul is a product of English life,but music is a universal language, your statement reinforces this.
We're a simple landed people, yours and mine, but with a similar history of islanders struggling for nationhood. However all we both look for is "a small measure of peace that all men seek, and few ever find" to quote a certain film. The works of RVW call to us because they're the sounds of such themes from a time in which our people gave much to achieve something like that peace that we might enjoy the fruits of such a thing, and thereby still hear RVW in our time as it was in those days. It's good that your people still hear this and not just enjoy it, but also find something spiritual in it as our people did in those days. 元気でね、友よ
Vaughan Williams often uses the pentatonic scale which is an inherent part of Japanese music. A lot of English folk music uses modal scales and the pentatonic scale. It certainly touches the soul!
This is a score actually written by David Matthews based on fragments of a slow movement for a proposed cello concerto intended for Pablo Casals. It was composed in 2009 and first premiered at The Proms in 2010. The fragments were written by RVW at about the same time as the 5th Symphony and some have noted a kinship with the Romanza of that symphony and the Lark Ascending. It is VW's musical sensibility to the core.
in my life experience of those close to me and those who have endured horrible wars...when i heard the 3rd Symphony, knew RVW had served in ambulance service 'bringing home the pieces' of his generation and his platoon being with many of the great English music people...George Butterfield et. al., I cried for that generation lost...but also realized he 'counterposed' the Cotswold Countryside of his youth as a meditation for 'carrying on'...that there is also much good...but in Flanders fields...there is desperation for those unimaginable bucolic times; the piece feels like the heaven is weeping...and it is. This is our human experience.
RVW came into my life by chance. My background does not entertain such 'so called' music. But VW knows my true self. How odd is that. This piece came to me at a major junction in my life. It puts into a language, that which I cannot describe even to myself. It is not all his original work, but it does an incredibly good job of mimicking the sentiment he owns. I am lost in it, thankfully. Better that reality.
I haven't listened to RVW for nearly forty years.I studied his work in music appreciation at school. Oh how I should have carried on listening and enriched my life. There are no words in the English language to say how beautiful his works are. It's never to late to carry on listening.
My parents exposed me to RVW throughout my childhood, but I was young and into the Beatles, Motown, Stones, etc. As you so beautifully stated, I am closing the circle by returning to the music that formed me. All of me. RVW to wit. I am listening to everything I can, absorbing as much beauty as I possibly can without my heart bursting open from the sheer beauty of his compositions.
Another lovely and largely unknown piece by a true master of the English Pastoral genre. Vaughn Williams is a deep well to which I often come and drink. Thanks Gen for sharing.
I'd recommend watching the BBC interview with one of the men involved with bringing this piece to life. It shows up with "dark pastoral" search on RU-vid. Turns out that the first 4-5 minutes of this are pure Vaughan Williams melody with orchestration by David Matthews, who finished the previously unfinished work. After that, it's mostly Matthews' own contrasting interpretation for the middle section followed up by his returning to the original Vaughan Williams themes at the end of the piece. Awesome stuff. As a cellist, I'm really glad Matthews kept pursuing the ability to finish this piece and went through with it.
his music expresses the beauty and horrors experienced in life. The music speaks for it self defining his genius that will live on in the hearts of those who it touches.
I have loved the music of Vaughan Williams since I was at school. I remember our music teacher playing his music and saying, "He's still alive, an old man of over eighty." My own music teacher sat with him in a box at the Albert Hall for the Proms premier of his 9th symphony. This music, unknown to me until twenty minutes ago, is pure Vaughan Williams. Wonderful.
He was very well known in the UK when I was young ( I am now 82) and here in Australia too. His ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey. It’s great that through modern media that he is loved so much all around the world!
love Vaughan Williams. Any of his pastoral = best classical music ever, or at least from Britain....why couldn't he live forever and keep making this kind of music?
At the risk of cliché, he DOES live forever in his music, and I'm forever discovering new pieces I had never known about. If he had only written Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis it could -- almost -- have been enough for me. But I'm greedy, and, frankly, grateful for RU-vid for the ability to hear so much of his work.
And I'm told he also lives on in the lives and works of the many younger composers he generously (and wisely) sponsored throughout his career. Bless you, RV-W, may your tribe ever increase!
Living forever is not in the scheme of things. This should not be cause for regret. Live your life to the full and do good things. RVW did, and if everyone did the same the world would be a far better place!
Nothing else to add ,as much say , music for the feelings & sensitive beings whose hearts would go peacefully on their lives .that is R. V.WILLIAMS ' .
I don't think anyone's music creates so many images in the mind as VW's it is heart-breaking on one hand and uplifting on the other, I would love to know what drove and inspired him.
Thank you for NO ADS! I am removing other selections from my listening lists because of annoying, loud ads that interrupt the flow of beautiful Vaughan Williams! John R. Ralph Vaughan-Williams FB Group
I had no idea there was a VW FB! I will look it up...how wonderful to talk with others who love this music as I do! Doesn't hurt that RVW initials were also my dear father's.....
Thank you very much for uploading this beautiful work. I have been listening to VW for forty years and I had no idea this piece existed in any form. Exquisite performance, too.
I have been listening to this work by Vaughan Williams in 1942 for years. And I would compare it to Holst's Lyric Movement of 1933. I recommend the comparison. They are both great beyond words.
This piece is exquisite. Why , why have'nt I heard it before now ? - another of RVW's heartbreakers- why has'nt it been exposed on Classic fm, like say the the 'Talliis' or the 'Lark' ? Some of it's restlessness seems to me like further reference to the trenches of Piccardy .
He was one of the most 'spiritual' composers though like all moderns, academically agnostic,....he writes about real things in the human experience....his is 'high and human' art rather than the modern nihilistic theoretical crap most of us must endure called modern music.....our STLSO performed 'Thomas Tallis Theme' in our very large New Cathedral....however any of us be...it took us to the upper realms of our human experience...and we do so need that in our lives....
Drunken Pirate - Your ear is picking up the 5 note Pentatonic scale that is a true musical chameleon. Based on the setting, it can be a traditional melody from Ireland / British Isles, China and Japan or the basis for a blues melody and improvisation.
