I learned early on about the planet inhabited by Ralph Vaughan Williams. While in high school I played a concert consisting of two settings of the Magnificat. The first was J. S. Bach’s and the second was by Vaughan Williams. It was my first time to hear or play either piece.
The Bach was unbuttoned jubilation, all chirp and cheer. With shining brass, scurrying strings and a full choir singing forte, you might have thought the Virgin Mary had bought a page in the New York Times as soon as Gabriel departed.
Then came the Vaughan Williams—dark, muted strings and soft winds adrift in a sea of harmonic and rhythmic ambiguity. No twittering trumpets here. No men’s voices, either, only women. The contrast could not have been more striking.
One can appreciate the energy and devotion of Bach, but for a glimpse into the startling and otherworldly experience of a young Jewish girl, the Englishman wins hands down. Vaughan Williams ushers us into in this realm again in such pieces as Five Mystical Songs, Flos Compi, Toward the Unknown Region, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, and the Tallis Fantasia. I love this music, and I find it interesting to ponder that for all the profound spiritual intensity of these pieces, Vaughan Williams was essentially agnostic. This is especially meaningful to me as no fewer than three of Vaughan Williams’s hymn tunes will be sung at my funeral.
“The Lark Ascending” is usually not identified with the mystical side of Vaughan Williams, rather it’s a prime example of the English folk-song school. It’s this style that was also exemplified by the music of Arnold Bax, Frederick Delius, and the lamented George Butterworth, killed in the First World War. In addition to smaller pieces such as “In the Fen Country”, “Fantasia on Greensleeves”, and the “Norfolk Rhapsody”, Vaughan Williams used this style in large pieces, too, such as the Fifth Symphony—which was so unrelentingly bucolic as to cause Aaron Copland to opine that hearing it was like “staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.”
So, next weekend, I hope the fifteen minutes we spend with a serene lark will not induce a fit of boredom to rival Copland’s. For me, there are few moments in music as magical as the very opening of this piece, and I hope I succeed in drawing the audience immediately into the wonderful world created by this English master.