Thomas Hampson speaks about Vaughan Williams, as a musician, as a human, and as a composer of vocal music:

The Garden of Proserpine, an early work composed in 1899, is taken from A.C. Swinburne’s collection Poems and Ballads (1866), works notorious for their eroticism, republicanism and antitheism. For Vaughan Williams’ generation the book remained a watchword for modernity and rebellious free-thinking.

From the album: ALBION ALBCD 012

The Symphony No. 1 (A Sea Symphony) was written between 1903 and 1909 and was inspired by texts from Walt Whitman’s poetry collection Leaves of Grass.

While he was composing A Sea Symphony, Vaughan Williams also wrote Toward the Unknown Region, again setting Walt Whitman. He probably completed it in 1906.

From the album (Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony): WARNER CLASSICS 9029540982

From the album (Toward the Unknown Region): WARNER CLASSICS 5747822

In 1908, Vaughan Williams went to study with Maurice Ravel for a year.  He was profoundly influenced by his teacher, although mainly in matters of sonority, and not at all in any stylistic sense.  Ravel said that he was his only pupil whose music did not sound like a copy of his teacher’s.

That same year, Vaughan Williams wrote three Nocturnes for baritone and orchestra, all to texts by Walt Whitman.  The setting of “Whispers of Heavenly Death” is the only one in which the composer’s original orchestration survives.

From the album: ALBION ALBCD 028

The following year, 1909, Vaughan Williams completed his song cycle On Wenlock Edge, to poems by A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman).

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 9689392

In 1911, came incidental music for three plays by Euripides – The Bacchae, Electra and Iphigenia in Tauris. 

From the album: ALBION ALBCD 033

In 1921, Vaughan Williams composed his Mass in G Minor for unaccompanied double choir and four soloists.  The text is from the Catholic Ordinary Mass.

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 0954332

The same year (1921) he completed his Symphony No. 3, which he called his Pastoral Symphony.  He never publicly explained why he gave it that title, but a lot later, in 1938, he did confide about it to his future wife, Ursula Woods, after it had received some negative comments about its “pastoral” elements.  ‘It’s really war-time music’, he wrote to her, ‘a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night with the ambulance wagon at Ecoivres and we went up a steep hill and there was a wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset – it’s not really lambkins frisking as most people take for granted.’  The ambulance wagon was for taking the wounded and dead on the battlefields in France in World War One.  And thus the Vaughan Williams biographer Michael Kennedy has written: ‘the human voice intrudes upon the landscape, but it is an ethereal, transcendental voice.  Is it a girl singing over the killing fields…or something more mystical?’

From the album: CHANDOS CHAN 10001

It was probably in 1924 or 1925 that Vaughan Williams set “A Clear Midnight” and “Joy, Shipmate, Joy,” as two of a set of three Walt Whitman settings.

From the album: EMI 7243 5 55028 2 7

1926 was the year of Britain’s General Strike, and it was right in the middle of that momentous event that Vaughan Williams’ oratorio Sancta Civitas was premiered, the year after the composer had completed the score, which he had begun in 1923.  The texts are taken from the Bible’s Book of Revelation.

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 0954332

In 1932, Vaughan Williams completed his one act opera Riders to the Sea.  It is based on John Millington Synge’s one act play in which a woman who has already lost her husband, father-in-law and five of her six sons to the sea that surrounds the little Aran island of her home off the West coast of Ireland, now loses her sixth and last son – and she and her two daughters somehow come to terms with the forces of nature that are beyond their control.

From the album: Chandos CHAN 10870

Dona nobis pacem was composed in 1936, with an unusual and original choice of combining texts: they are taken from the Catholic Mass, three poems by Walt Whitman, a political speech by the radical British statesman John Bright, and the Bible.  The work has been seen as a plea for peace at a time when that was beginning to look less and less of a likelihood.

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 5747822

Two years later, in 1938, in great contrast Vaughan Williams composed his Serenade to Music for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra.  Setting an extract from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, it was written as a tribute to the conductor Sir Henry Wood on the 50^th anniversary of his first concert.

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 7640222

Pilgrim’s Progress, based on John Bunyan’s allegory of the same name, premiered as an opera in 1951, and was an extended revision of the music Vaughan Williams had written in 1942 a BBC radio dramatization of Bunyan’s work.

From the album: Chandos CHAN 9625

It was in 1953 and 1954 that Vaughan Williams wrote his last major choral composition with orchestra: Hodie, a Christmas cantata setting a mixture of texts from the Bible and poets.

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 9689342

The folk song settings included in this project were made at various times in various locations between 1908 and 1946.

From the albums: ALBION ALBCD 042, 043, 044, 045 034

Below:
Excerpt of Vaughan Williams conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1958, as well as interviews with Renée Stewart and Lewis Foreman.

Additionally, Albion Records have most generously provided an extract from the BBC talk that Vaughan Williams gave that was entitled “Bach – The Great Bourgeois” – it was aired on the 28th of July 1950.

From the albums: PEARL GEMS 0079 & ALBION ALBCD 014

On the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, Albion Records and the Ralph Vaughan Williams
Society Journal:

Walt Whitman song settings:

From the album: EMI 7243 5 55028 2 7

From DONA NOBIS PACEM:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 5747822

Folk Song Settings:

From the albums: ALBION ALBCD 042, 043, 044, 034

From Hodie:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 9689342

From MASS IN G MINOR:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 0954332

From MUSIC FOR GREEK PLAYS:

From the album: ALBION ALBCD 033

From NOCTURNES:

From the album: ALBION ALBCD 028

From ON WENLOCK EDGE:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 9689392

From RIDERS TO THE SEA:

From the album: CHANDOS CHAN 10870

From SANCTA CIVITAS:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 0954332

SERENADE TO MUSIC, Excerpt:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 7640222

From SYMPHONY NO. 1, “A Sea Symphony”:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 9029540982

From SYMPHONY NO. 3, “Pastoral”:

From the album: CHANDOS CHAN 10001

From THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE:

From the album: ALBION ALBCD 012

From TOWARD THE UNKNOWN REGION:

From the album: WARNER CLASSICS 5747822

The speakers in this feature are:

A) Exclusively recorded for the Hampson Foundation:

• Sir Andrew Davis – Conductor: President of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
• John Francis – Treasurer and Vice-Chairman of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
• Thomas Hampson – Baritone: Founder/President of the Hampsong Foundation
• William Hedley – Conductor: Journal Editor of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
• Graham Muncy – Information Officer of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society

B) Recorded for the radio program “Ralph Vaughan Williams – Mystical Chameleon”:

• Lewis Foreman – Author and Musicologist
• Richard Hickox – Late Conductor
• Renée Stewart – Late Secretary and Archivist of the Leith Hill Musical Festival

The exclusive newly recorded interviews have necessarily been made via Zoom during the Covid pandemic, therefore the sound quality varies from good to not very good. In some of the interviews, the producer’s voice is also heard.

The topics each speaker discusses are identified in the audio files’ titles. They are as follows:

SIR ANDREW DAVIS:
Interview 1 – Symphony No 1 (Sea), and Toward the Unknown Region
Interview 2 – Symphony No 3 (Pastoral)

LEWIS FOREMAN:
Interview 1 – Atheism and Sacred Texts, and Dona Nobis Pacem
Interview 2 – On Wenlock Edge
Also: Vaughan Williams conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Extract, embedded in the extract

JOHN FRANCIS:
Interview 1 – Ralph Vaughan Williams Society and Albion Records
Interview 2 – “Earth and Sky” Albion Records Disc
Interview 3 – Music for Greek Plays
Interview 4 – Vaughan Williams and Folk Music
Interview 5 – Nocturnes, and also short reference to The Garden of Proserpine
Interview 6 – Vaughan Williams and World War One
Interview 7 – Riders to the Sea

THOMAS HAMPSON:
This is a continuously running introductory overview, with special emphasis on the influence of Walt Whitman on Vaughan Williams.

WILLIAM HEDLEY:
Interview 1 – The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal
Interview 2 – Sacred Texts, and The Oxen (Hodie), and Dona Nobis Pacem

RICHARD HICKOX:
Pilgrim’s Progress Music Extract, embedded in the extract
Riders to the Sea Music Extract, embedded in the extract

GRAHAM MUNCY:
Interview 1 – Walt Whitman and other transcendental poets’ influence on Vaughan Williams
Interview 2 – Symphony No 1 (Sea)
Interview 3 – Symphony No 3 (Pastoral)
Interview 4 – Riders to the Sea
Interview 5 – Atheism and Religious Settings, and Mass in G Minor
Interview 6 – Serenade to Music

RENÉE STEWART:
Vaughan Williams conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Extract, embedded in the extract

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