Vaughan Williams Essays

Description

Serious scholarship on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams is currently enjoying a lively revival after a period of relative quiescence, and is only beginning to address the enduring affection of concert audiences for his music. The essays that comprise this volume extend the study of Vaughan Williams's music in new directions that will be of interest to scholars, performers and listeners alike. This volume contains the work of eleven North American scholars who have been recipients of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship based at the composer's own school, Charterhouse, which was created and has been supported by the Carthusian Trust since 1985. This wide-ranging and detailed collection of essays covers the spectrum of genres in which Vaughan Williams wrote, including dance, symphony, opera, song, hymnody and film music. The contributors also employ a range of analytical and historical methods of investigation to illuminate aspects of Vaughan Williams's compositional techniques and influences, musical, literary and visual. Cover Half Title Dedication Title Copyright Contents List of Music Examples List of Plates List of Tables Acknowledgements List of Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellows, 1985-2002 Introduction 1 The Stages of Revision of Vaughan Williams's Sixth Symphony 2 Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony: Ideology and Aural Tradition 3 A Deconstruction of William Blake's Vision: Vaughan Williams and Job 4 Vaughan Williams and the 'night side of nature': Octatonicism in Riders to the Sea 5 'Full of fresh thoughts': Vaughan Williams, Whitman and the Genesis of A Sea Symphony 6 Hymn Tunes from Folk-songs: Vaughan Williams and English Hymnody 7 Robert Louis Stevenson, Ralph Vaughan Williams and their Songs of Travel 8 A Critical Appraisal of the Four Last Songs 9 'Words and music that are forever England': The Pilgrim's Progress and the pitfalls of nostalgia 10 Music, Film and Vaughan Williams 11 Vaughan Williams and the English Music Festival: 1910 Contributors Index