Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 9 in E minor 

...bidding farewell ? What a majestic way to do it...

This wonderful symphony is a breath of fresh air in our life of less than 100 years in this transient world of so much hassle and annoyances

Such a brilliant orchestration (I expecially love the way saxophones are used!), I'd say cinematic scores owe practically everything to these XX-Century British composers (Vaughan-Williams, Holst, Walton...).

The coda is like a coda to RVW's whole symphonic work. A last pulsating remembering of every hill he climbed until the music ebbs away, enters another world - and disappears. Beautiful.

I love Vaughan Williams' symphonies and there's no question that the three in the middle (4, 5, 6) make the greatest initial impression. All 3 are masterpieces. And yet, the two Vaughan Williams symphonies I find myself returning to most often are nos. 3 & 9, two of his least played. The 9th is elusive at first but really grows on you with repeated hearings. And it has so many memorable moments: the solo violin playing the 2nd theme in the first movement, the chamber arrangement of the subordinate theme at the end of movement 2, the diabolical saxophones in the scherzo - and that mystical, timeless finale. Unbelievable that an 86-year-old man wrote such a piece.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles brought me here. What a magnificent piece of music. This has been my introduction to Vaughan Williams's music, and I'm glad for that.

Amazing how many people say they have trouble getting to grips with this symphony. I've loved it since I first heard it as a 16 year old. It makes perfect sense to me, and the conclusion must surely rank as one of the most moving farewells any composer has ever uttered; it's as if VW is waving to us as he crosses the River Styx and slowly disappears into the mist. To write a movement like that he must surely have intuited his death.

Whatever I seem to be listening to, when I come back to this work, I always think of it as one of the most underrated symphonies of all time, VW always seems all encompassing of any age & speaks to everyone at once, a massive talent indeed, a musical everyman

Still a brilliant star in his eighties!

Amazing scoring - three saxophones! R-VW took them straight out of the dance band - (this was mid-1950s after all) - and placed them in the front row of the woodwind. They feature clearly early in the first movement from 0:38. Dreamy, sleazy, out of place yet strangely appropriate. And then they run riot in the Scherzo. Enjoy!

Surely one of the most unusual and poignant moments in the symphonic repertoire is at 0:37 when a saxophone trio steps straight out of the dance band and into this work of great depth and modal darkness. An astonishing piece of orchestration.

My favourite composer along with Thomas hardys novels, this symphony is complicated, but full of wonderful passages and the finale a gem of orchestral writing .

There is a wonderful book , Sarum (also titled Sarum: The Novel of England) is a work of historical fiction by Edward Rutherfurd, first published in 1987. It tells the story of England through the tales of several families in and around the English city of Salisbury, the writer's hometown, from prehistoric times to 1985. This book should be made into a movie, its so good.

thanks from Buenos Aires

Fascinante 9ème symphonie de Vaughan-Williams ! Je l'ai découverte, voici quelques années, grâce à l'enregistrement de Sir Adrian Boult (avec la 3ème de Malcolm Arnold en complément). J'aime beaucoup cette version dirigée par Vernon Handley ! Merci Colin !

Great work by RVW, I had the honour of meeting Ursula in 1988; when I was awarded first prize in the Commandant's Quick March Competition at Kneller Hall. I was a member of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Class as a student bandmaster there.

Though I think the last movement of the 5th to be the most beautiful, the final movement of the 9th is certainly the most powerful - IMO Vaughan Williams really came of age as a great symphonist with the 8th and 9th. His style may have been way out of fashion by 1958 but now we can forget all about that and appreciate his special gifts as one of the great 20th c. composers. Thanks for the upload of this wonderful performance.

Outstanding visualization of VW's monumental last symphony. I hope the imagery will help others come to understand this magnificent but challenging music. Thanks Colin.

I love how Colin considers our inconvenience of the ads inserted by RU-vid and gives a good suggestion to enjoy the music uninterrupted!

Much as I love RVW's symphonies, this last one has somehow kept its secret from me. This excellent recording has changed all that. Thank you, Colin, for making it available to us. Ken

First RVW symphony I had ever heard. Still love it just as much.

I listened to this piece from my favorite composer while watching a baseball game ( Angels vs, Toronto )....what a nice change of pace !

The shear power of the 2nd movement .At 86 years ,he"s it all.

While listening to this glorious piece, In my mind's eye I envision Maestro Vaughan Williams ascending to the heavens, transforming into an indescribably brilliant galaxy.

Just wonderful. The music RVW was writing towards the end of his life was magnificent; very sad he couldn't have lived longer but also marvellous that he was producing inspirational, evocative and highly creative masterpieces at the age of 85. A true giant amongst composers. Thank you. Amazing visualisations to go with this fabulous work too!

Colin: My comment on this wonderful performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 9 comes in gratitude for your many excellent and high quality postings of RVM compositions. To my uninformed attention was recently drawn the fact that my favorite RVW symphony, the No. 2 London Symphony, was originally somewhat lengthier than the versions to which I had been listening for decades. I now have a recording of the original and it is just fantastic. I had the privilege of being a member of the bass section of the University of Illinois Oratorio Society in a performance some 44 years ago of "Hodie." Symphonies No. 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9 are personal favorites. Thank you for spotlighting this brilliant composer's music. I hope people for centuries to come will appreciate the music of RVW as much as I have.

Wow,… wasn’t expecting this. Quite exciting!!

Gosh, that opening reminded me of late Bruckner. What a stalwart musical statement! Thanks, Colin.

Colin,has the BBC contacted you yet regarding your sublime talent in the audio-visual arts? I mean, seriously, this is a stunner! Congratulations...and thanks.

I totally agree with Peter Clamp's comment. It is a joy to listen to RVW's works combined with your thoughtful sequence of images. Looking at the videos on your channel I detect a kindred spirit. I too am uplifted, inspired, transported by the composers you have chosen. I much appreciate your channel.

A great symphony expressive of the British soul. Vaughan Williams is the Winston Churchill of music.

Thank you Colin and Paul. This movingly, defiant and valedictory work is one of my all time favourites; a great way for the old man to 'sign off'. This is a wonderful performance and features the clearest recording of those wonderful harps at the end.

0:09 First Movement 8:56 Second Movement 16:23 Third Movement 21:49 Fourth Movement

Grandioso R V W .Gran sinfonía .Se nota que es su última sinfonía..Gracias From Argentina

I never see ads interrupting on my laptop. Whatever blocker I have is fantastic. Thank you for providing this work.

Allways a pleasure to return to VW's Ninth. Thanks, Colin.

RVW would be touched by your visualizations. Wishes for continued good works.

Thank you so much. Brilliantly chosen images to accompany a relatively neglected symphony.

Great video! Hardy is one of my favorite authors, and Tess and Jude are at the top of my list. I cycled around the Salisbury area in the summer 1981.

You evoke, with your images, the mysterious, mystical qualities of the ninth. I would love to attend a performance where your images appear on an IMAX screen. Great job, Colin, and thank you.

It may be the greatest symphony RW ever wrote...

thanks for all your hard work and very skilful arrangement of images

Colin, these visuals are so stunning, and so perfect for this most mysterious music. Bravo to you.

this is lovely, thanks so much , hearing the piece at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on tuesday so this is great way to familiarise myself with the music .Very evocative and well chosen images thanks

Thanks, as always, Colin!

I very much appreciate all your RVW uploads. I have learned so much more about Vaughan Williams by listening to the music you have uploaded and watching the beautiful videos you have so skillfully given us. This 9th symphony is really powerful, dark, disturbing and thrilling. As someone who originates from Dorset, I can connect to the images very powerfully. Thank you so much for what you do.

Colin, what a fine achievement to match this extraordinarily enigmatic and brooding symphony with such creative use of imagery which is difficult to do in a work with such variation in mood. I like the way you literally draw the viewer into the music at the very start and thereafter we are continually confronted by striking images associated with Thomas Hardy's novel which the composer seem to love so much.The allusions to Tess in the slow movement I thought were beautifully done. I like how you conveyed the quirky yet sometimes nightmarish quality of the music in the Scherzo. And in the last movement you convey the bitter-sweet quality of the music so clearly and indeed throughout the whole symphony. You've done a great service to what Robin Barber rightly described as magnificent music.

Thank you for the well-chosen images which complement this extraordinary music so beautifully.

I first heard this symphony more than 45 years ago, and I still vividly remember the flugelhorn solo and the very end. It's only recently that I've been, shall we say, brooding over the connection with "Tess." The more I brood, the less I think of the symphony as programmatic and more as a kinship between VW and Hardy. Like some other composers of his time, VW pushed the modernist envelope forward and backward. His agnosticism was less an exclusion of western Judeo-Christian tradition than an inclusion of awe for "unredeemed nature," something not centered around human civilization. Plus he was a survivor of inhuman war traumas that most Americans are only beginning to comprehend. As for an aside, what makes me enjoy the scherzo more these days is how much it reminds me of "Pink Elephants on Parade"--in Walt Disney's animation a singular cocktail of the silly and the sinister.

Brilliant visuals......and of course sublime VW! Thanks.

"Like" on 29 October 2017. A very subtle symphony.

Another great upload Colin- thank you for your efforts.

No mention in the comments about what I consider one of the most incredible symphonies of all time - RVW's lst symphony. Given a great performance in a suitable venue (BBC Proms/RAH on YT) and it's a knock out!

I never heard this one...thank you for posting.

Colin, thank you very much for uploading this fantastic video. The music, with which I wasn’t familiar with, is very beautiful and the accompanying visuals as one listens to this symphony are truly spectacular.

Dear Colin: Thanks for sharing this. Listening to this gem is most enjoyable! And the accompanying images make this an outstanding experience indeed.

Surely one of the most remarkable moments in the 'classical' symphonic repertoire is at 0:38 when the three saxophones enter. Strangers escaped from the dance band to lull but also to chill us with their unnervingly smooth and melodious phrase.

I love listening to this kind of stuff. I’m a metal head so when I listen to this it has all the inspiration for just a powerhouse of a song.

Over the final bars of the symphony is written a single word - Niente, the Italian word for 'nothing'.

Splendid. MR

An inspired work, sir. Oh, and the music is good, too, LOL. Now I can not think of one without the other.

Give an ear at 6:44. An amazing Flugelhorn player!

I'm still puzzling over that theme at the beginning of the second movement. I mean, he's used it in The Solent and the Sea Symphony, so it could be something like a "sea theme". On the other hand Whitman used the sea as a symbol for life, didn't he? This tune must have been very important to RVW to use it at the beginning of his musical life and then at the very end. Astonishing... and yet I can't really figure out why. Must have been something of a "life theme" for him.

Wonderful music-- I love the pictures of stonehenge and other places of worship, but somehow its not quite what I associate with this music. But then, I haven't read Hardy's Tess..

This symphony is filled with fleeting and ambiguous harmonies as if RVW is attempting to be free of any attachment to a particular tonal center for more than a few seconds at a time. Only at the 9th's conclusion does he arrive at a tonal center to dwell on for an extended period of time and which happens to be a nod to European tradition going back to the Renaissance: A symphony in E Minor ending on an E Major chord in the manner of the 'tierce de picardie' or Picardy Third (a raised third scale degree in the final chord). Was recording producer George Martin thinking of RVW's 9th when he utilized that same elongated E Major chord coming out of an extended orchestral dissonance at the conclusion of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life" (Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) approximately ten years later? Both endings fade away into the distance.

Thank you, Colin. I enjoyed it very much. I sometimes wish it were possible to identify the images easily, but I guess there is no simple way to make that possible.

Too often overlooked, this is a forward looking symphony which is apparently hard to play. Composed when the composer was deaf and used ungainly hearing aids made by several manufacturers "so I can be useful them" he said. This massive work of perfect proportions is close to late Shostakovich in some ways and hints at post-Sibelius Nordic music to come after both composers died within a year of each other. Vaughan Williams looks back a little to his other E minor symphony but also late Holst. Block structures linked by counterpoint fading in and out was really something new. One 'gets' it or doesn't. Boult, Handley and Manze are probably the best.

Did Vaughan Williams now the music by Viktor Ullman? The thematic material does have comparison with the finale of the variation and Fugue of his last Piano Sonata, later orchestrated as his second Symphony.

Apparently if you listen to RU-vid videos on Brave, the ads don't appear. What a crime it is for YT to stick ads into the midst of videos like this.

Big up salisbury my home!!!

Gave details of the performance below. Best wishes Jeffrey

Wonderful visuals. The composer in an essay, I think, wrote about linking visual images with music. I'm sure that he would have approved of your wonderfully selected ones - far more appropriate than the images of war and famine used in the TV film about Vaughan Williams. Which recording is it please?

19:50 (saving this for future reference)

Quizás esta 9ª, y última sinfonía, sea la más lograda del ciclo sinfónico del maestro, aunque yo siga prefiriendo la dimensión, grandiosidad y ambición que destila su 1ª. Sin olvidarme de Walt Whitman, por supuesto.

V-W was an ambulance driver on the war frontline in the 1st world war saw horrific scenes which stayed with him, then witnessed no doubt more death and destruction in the 2nd world war on a civilian population.

Hello. I'm listening to RVW's music recently..Trying to listen to all he wrote ( short tunes too )..It will take time.I like his symphonies. So far I only listen to the complete " Antartica "and I'm now on this 9th. To my ears and my heart they sounds more shymphonic poems," visual trips " then real symphonies..I always feel than up to a certain period ( Bruckner been the "gate" of separation )of time You'll be listening to notes, chords progressions and so on..After that ( from Mahler on.. ) You just pass that and You go mainly to feelings and "visual" fantasy/places..Hope it make sense. I'm trying to explain it better : Bruckner and Brahms were in the same age but Brahms was still a real " classic", Bruckner ( at least for me ) was the first "visionary"..Anton Bruckner is my favourite composer, his adagio ( mainly ) just put me on a "trip" :) :)..I'm a music eater, from Byrd to Bach to Opera to Mozart..You name it..I'm in love with all has been wrote on the wonderful music world.

ace

For some reason everything Williams writes sounds like a movie soundtrack.

To my untrained ear it begins like a Shostakovich symphony

Aaron Copland must have been listening to another work before he said this: "Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes" This is contemplative but far from boring.

The End of the World