BRITISH COMPOSER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 135, 5 December 1938, Page 3

BRITISH COMPOSER

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

POPULAR IN UNITED STATES

REGARD OF CRITICS

It is interesting that Ralph Vaughan Williams should be one of the most popular present-day composers with radio audiences, because although he; has been little publicised, he is regarded highly by most musicians, 'writes L. A. Sloper in the "Christian Science Monitor." This good opinion of him is of course not universal. Most musicians have their blind spots, and Vaughan Williams is bound to serve in that capacity to somej Thus Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, one of the most catholic of conductors, does not care for the music of Vaughan Williams. He has never,said so publicly, so far as I know—but he never plays this music publicly either; nothing could be more eloquent than that. Nevertheless, for all the indifference of Dr. Koussevitzky and some others, Vaughan Williams holds a high rank among creative musicians. The English are proud of Elgar, too, but this pride was confined to the British Isles, or at least to the British Empire, whereas admiration for Vaughan Williams is pretty generally shared elsewhere. England was once in the forefront j of the musical world. That was in Elizabethan days, when Britain led in literature, commerce, and politics as, well. There followed a long period when English music seemed to be dormant. Handel came from Hanover to impress a German mark upon it. In the nineteenth century Schumann and Mendelssohn were probably the standard for most Englishmen. The twentieth century has brougnt what looks rather like a minor revival of English music. And if posterity is destined to find that a composer arose in the first quarter, of this century who brought to English music something approaching the glory of Byrd, there are many people, outside England at least, who believe that it is more likely to be Vaughan Williams than Elgar. TWO WORKS POPULAR. The two works of Vaughan Williams that are most popular, with radio listeners are the "London" and the "Pastoral" Symphonies, certainly two of his most important and most characteristic compositions. They also raise again the problem of programme music. It is a convention among composers to insist that their works, even when they have descriptive titles, are to be regarded and judged as pure music. When a work has a detailed "programme," it is usual to let it be understood that this "programme" was supplied by a commentator, and that the composer assumes no responsibility for it. Strauss... takes this attitude, and even Stravinsky. . Now the "London" Symphony, for example; has a detailed "programme"; written, however, by. Albert. Coates, who first conducted the second or revised version, of the symphony at a Queen's Hall concert in London. According to Mr. Coates, the symphony depicts, in the first movement, the flow of the Thames at dawn, the half-hour struck by Big Ben, the bustle of the Strand, the peace of the Adelphi, and again the noise of the Strand; the second movement, the damp and foggy twilight of a late November day in Bloomsbury, the bleakness of poverty, a fiddler in a pub, the cry of a sweet lavender vendor; the third movement, the Temple Embankment, with the sound of Saturday night revelry coming from the south side of the Thames, then the silent, mysterious flowing of the river again; the fourth movement, the London of the down-and-outer, with a hunger march, then Big Ben again, and finally an epilogue in which we are invited to feer "the great, deep soul of London," with the Thames again saying the'last word. COMPOSER EXPLAINS. A very detailed description indeed; yet the composer himself has said: "The title might run, 4A Symphony by a Londoner'—that is to say, various sights and sounds of London may have influenced the composer, but it would hot be helpful to. describe these. The work must succeed or fail as music, and in no other way. Therefore, if the hearers recognise a few suggestions of such things as the Westminster chimes, or the lavender cry, these must be treated as accidents, and not essentials of the music." So there you are. Undoubtedly it is easy, if you listen to the symphony with Mr. Coates's "programme" in mind, to follow the story as he gives it. And as Philip Hale commented, it is doubtful whether a hearer, without that aid, would say, "Aha! London—l hear the Thames, the roar and bustle of the streets. Now we are in/ foggy, J dismal Bloomsbury." Let us leave it at this: With the "programme," the symphony comes to the ear as a dramatic picture of a great city; without it, the music stands by itself firmly on the symphonic base, and, besides, conveys an impression 6f a great city to one "who has no more than looked 'at the title and heard Big Ben and the lavender cry. The "Pastoral" Symphony is considered by many a greater work than the "London." It was composed in 1921, about seven years after its companion piece. " This. symphony by its title inevitably provokes thoughts of Beethoven's Sixth. This theme is discussed by Sir Donald Tovey in his brilliant "Essays in Musical Analysis." BEETHOVEN AND WILLIAMS. "in his Pastoral Symphony Vaughan Williams. has set his imagination at work on lines which at no point traverse the ground covered by Beethoven. The very title of Beethoven's first movement shows that Beethoven is a town-dweller who is glad of a holiday in the country; and the other scenes, by the brook, at the country dance, and during and after the thunderstorm, are all conceived as interesting to the visitor who has left town for the sake of the experience. The experience is deep and poetic; but Beethoven never thought of describing any of his compositions as a 'town' sonata or symphony. One does not describe what has never been conceived otherwise. Now Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral' Symphony is born and bred in the English countryside as thoroughly as the paintings of Constable. If he had not' given us his 'London' Symphony we should have no artistic evidence that- this composer had ever thought of town in his life. But whether in town or in the coun-' try, this music is contemplative in a way that was not possible a century ago. Beethoven's Nature-worship has much in common with Wordsworth's; but since that time pantheism and mysticism have gone a long way further towards Nirvana. • "Beethoven's touch, in his 'Pastoral' Symphony, is so light that, as with Mozart passim,' the listener forgets the power. In Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral' Symphony the listener cannot miss the sense of power behind ail this massive quietness; it is as manifest in the music as in a bright sky with i*ow«ang, gunliV cumulus cioud»—and

as little likely to rouse us to action. Across this landscape of : saturated colours there float the sounds'of •melodies older than any folk song. These melodies are harmonised on the plan first reduced to formula by Debussy: ' whatever chord the melody begins with is treated as a mere sensation, and the chord follows the melody up and down the scale, instead of dissolving into threads of independent melodic line. But.Vaughan Williams adds to this principle another, which is that two or even three melodic threads may run simultaneously, each loaded with its own chord, .utterly regardless of how their chords collide."