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The Ravishing Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Good for the Holidays and all Through the Year

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My wife and I don’t listen to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) only during Christmas season, though this is a particularly good time to do so, since a great deal of his output is connected to the annual fest. In fact, on Dec 25th 2013, I shared about the British composer in this appreciative post. Over a prodigiously productive career that included nine symphonies, RVW discovered and wrote a banquet of ravishing choral music, folksong cycles, smaller chamber and symphonic works, and more, lots of it in the idiom of British folk melodies, much of which he gathered and notated in the field from nonprofessional musicians and singers, while also traveling with early recording equipment, which he used to gather direct sound.

In the early decades of the twentieth century there were other song collectors doing similar work in Britain (Cecil Sharp and others) and in North America (Alan Lomax, John Cohen). And, twentieth century composers in other lands were also fascinated with borrowing from indigenous musics, like Sibelius did in Finland, Smetana in Hungary, Copland in America, etc. I’ve always been most fond of RVW among this ilk because—though my ethnic roots are all in Eastern Europe—I’m a never-closeted Anglophile, a fan of Gaelic cultures and lover of the highlands and the North, regardless of country and continent. Vaughan Williams also composed modernist, often challenging music, like his Sixth Symphony which includes a passage for saxophone, so to me he never became saccharine or merely stuck in the past. I have many precious LPs of RVW’s, several vinyl sides of which I bought secondhand on my first visit to Britain in 1980 (one of which is pictured here), but this year our turntable is on the fritz, so I’ve gone searching for his music on youtube, and thankfully, I’ve found a very productive rabbit hole over there, just using the search term ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams songs voice‘. One piece in particular that we adore is “Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus,'” from a New Testament source, which I’ve found in an orchestral version and a version sung by Maddy Prior, longtime member of the British folk revival group of the 1970s, still going strong, Steeleye Span. In the sung version, I appreciate the combination of lyrics oriented toward the sacred, and those about meat and drink and other earthly pleasures. At this link, you may listen to the orchestral version and prepare to have your ears caressed for 13 minutes, and follow the suspense of the biblical tale in the sung version.

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Enjoying the Holiday with the Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams

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Going back to my days at Franconia College, when a professor there, Bill Congdon, introduced me to the work of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) I’ve adored his music. And though I’m Jewish and don’t observe Christmas, I also enjoy RVW’s “seasonal” music. So, just like this day last year, I’m listening to some of my treasured LPs, one with songs he collected in the field with early recording equipment from nonprofessional musicians and singers. This was similar to the work of Alan Lomax in the U.S., in later decades. RVW was part of a worldwide interest on the part of symphonic composers who cultivated folk idioms, such as Smetana and Dvorak in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; Sibelius in Finland; and Aaron Copland in the States. It should be said, that Vaughan Williams didn’t just take folk themes and rework them–-he was also a bold, original composer with an edge, exhibited in such works as his modernist Fourth and Sixth symphonies. Having enjoyed the album of songs pictured in my tweet above, I’m now playing a gem of RVW’s called “Five Tudor Portraits.” If you’ve never had the pleasure of listening to RVW’s music, I urge you to discover his work. For starters, here’s his Wikipedia page.

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Our Holiday Soundtrack–Ralph Vaughan Williams and Bob Dylan with Friends

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Last night in my household we listened to music from several old LPs featuring folk songs, folk themes, and original music for chamber groups and orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), the English composer whose work I’ve listened to since I was a student at Franconia College, a student at Franconia College, when a professor there, Bill Congdon, turned me on to his music. Appropriate to the season, we heard RVW’s arrangements of “Wassail Song,” and similar songs. Not carols, exactly, but old folk songs of the season. I’m Jewish and so don’t observe Christmas, but I do love this music without reservations. RVW was part of a worldwide interest in folk idioms that also engaged many of his musical forebears and contemporaries in other countries–like Smetana and Dvorak in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; Sibelius in Finland; and Aaron Copland in the States. Like Alan Lomax in the U.S. in later decades, RVW took early recording equipment in to the field and had nonprofessional musicians sing and play songs for him, also making notes of what he was told. It should be said, that Vaughan Williams didn’t just take folk themes and rework them–he was also a bold, original composer with an edge, exhibited in such works as his modernist Fourth and Sixth symphonies.

Famously, RWV arranged and reworked “Greensleeves,” as a song, and as a suite for orchestra, and many lesser known songs with names like “The Captain’s Apprentice,” “The Lark in the Morning,” “Bushes and Briars, and “The Unquiet Grave.” His output was vast and in the years when vinyl was still the dominant music medium I bought a lot of it. When I visited London for the first time, in 1980, I bought secondhand albums, releases that were never even brought out in the U.S., such as EMI’s boxed set of his nine symphonies and other orchestral music, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The album covers still bear the name of the dealer where I found them, Harold Moores Records. The records I bought there all evidently came from a public or college library, because inside I found little index cards, which had noted each time a patron or student had checked out the item. On “English Folk Songs, Arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with the Purcell Singers conducted by Imogen Holst” a tiny, spidery hand had recorded each of the 13 times the album  was requested and played between 1963-78.  A scant 13 plays in 15 years? The album was in great shape when I brought it back home, and still is. Checking the Internet, I see that Harold Moores Records is still in business on Great Marlborough Street in London.

This afternoon, we made a change of pace and have been listening to a magnificent live album, “Bob Dylan–The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration,” the Madison Square tribute concert staged in 1992 to commemorate Dylan’s first recordings. This is a 3-LP six-sided banquet that features guest performances of 28 Dylan songs by–brace yourself, in order–John Mellencamp; Stevie Wonder; Eddie Vedder; Lou Reed; Tracy Chapman; Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash; Willie Nelson; Kris Kristofferson; Johnny Winter; Ron Wood; Richie Havens; the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem; Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, and Shawn Colvin; Neil Young; Chrissie Hynde; Eric Clapton; the O’Jays; The Band; George Harrison; Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers; and Roger McGuinn. The house band was Booker T & the MGs, while Al Kooper makes a key appearance on Mellencamp’s rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone.” Toward the end, Dylan steps on stage at the Garden to play 4 songs, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” “Girl of the North Country,” and “My Back Pages and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” with McGuinn, Harrison, Clapton, Petty, and Neil. I bought my copy about 15 years ago, again secondhand, and it still sounds great, as day has slipped on toward night.

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Alan Lomax, Song Collector

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On the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I’ve lived for 20 years I used to see this big man with a scratchy looking goatee. He seemed somehow familiar, and interesting, like if each of us hadn’t been hurrying we could’ve had a good conversation at a neighborhood diner. Eventually, a neighbor pointed to me who he was–“That’s Alan Lomax, the song collector.” Of course, that’s why I recognized him.

Before I moved to New York, I ran Undercover Books, a Cleveland, Ohio bookstore that also sold recorded music. We used to handle albums from such venerable labels as Folkways, Nonesuch, and Rounder. I had seen Lomax’s picture on the liner notes, as he had for decades been recording field hands, convicts, laborers, and other bearers and keepers of musical traditions. Leadbelly was only one of his great discoveries. I admired Lomax, just as I admired the Englishman Ralph Vaughan Williams, who earlier in the 20th century, even before he would become a brilliant composer of orchestral music, had ventured into the fields, docks, and sheep-shearing paddocks with early recording equipment to hear and record the tunes of local folk.

I never did get to have that sit-down with Alan Lomax, who died in 2002. But I was delighted to read tonight, via this article in the New York Times, that the vast archive he left behind is soon going to be accessible in a digital storehouse that will be widely accessible to scholars, musicians, and the public. Hooray for Alan Lomax, and the Association for Cultural Equity, the project under the hands of his daughter Anna Lomax Wood that is making these treasures available. When you read the Times article, don’t miss the interactive feature with recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bessie Jones, and other greats.

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