Ralph Vaughan Williams
(Born in Down Ampney, England in 1872; died in London in 1958)
“Pastoral Symphony” (Symphony No. 3)
1. Molto moderato
2. Lento moderato
3. Moderato pesante
4. Lento
Ralph Vaughan Williams became a kind of “Dean of English music” in his lifetime. He spearheaded a deep study and collection of English hymns and folk music, as well as the “classical” music of his forebears, like Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (1505 – 1585) and Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) among others. He also achieved fame in his long career as England’s premiere writer of symphonies. By 1914, he had completed his first two of his eventual nine, and was contemplating a third, when the world erupted into World War I.
As so many other of his countrymen did, Vaughan Williams volunteered for military service. Because of his age, 41, armed service was ruled out, so he instead joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, carrying bodies off the battlefield (as well as additional assignments over the course of the War). One of Vaughan Williams’ colleagues described the “typical” night that a Medical Corpsmen such as Vaughan Williams would have experienced:
“Slowly we worked our way along the trenches, our only guide our feet, forcing ourselves through the black wall of night and helped occasionally by the flash of the torch in front. Soon our arms begin to grow tired, the whole weight is thrown onto the slings, which begin to bite into our shoulders; … we feel half suffocated, and with a gasp at one another the stretcher is slowly lowered to the duckboards. A twelve-stone man rolled up in several blankets on a stretcher is no mean load to carry when every step has to be carefully chosen and is merely a shuffle forward of a few inches only.”
Vaughan Williams survived the War, but so many of his countrymen did not, including fellow musicians and composers. He wrote to his friend, Gustav Holst, in 1916:
“I sometimes dread coming back to normal life with so many gaps…out of those 7 who joined up together in August 1914 only 3 are left – I sometimes think now that it is wrong to have made friends with people younger than oneself.”
But return he did, and he resumed his life as a composer, teacher, and researcher. But it took him another three years after the end of the War, in 1921, to commit his wartime experiences to music. It took shape as his Pastoral Symphony (later numbered as Symphony No. 3) the genesis of which had been interrupted in 1914. He felt lucky to be alive, but rather than recreate the violence and cruelty and death that he had experienced in the War, Vaughan Williams sought to capture peace. Peace in nature, peace in living, peace in quietude – the nurturing calm that was likely taken for granted before the war, was now used as one of the few balms for healing. His Pastoral is, in some ways, an escape into beauty – yet, not quite. As Vaughan Williams described it in 1938:
“It’s really wartime music – 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 [French landscape painter 1796 – 1875] in the sunset – it’s not really lambkins frisking at all as most people take for granted.”
Though this “pastoral” symphony may be filled with lush soundscapes and languid tempi, Vaughan Williams created a work that keeps slipping away, disappearing, not only harmonically and lyrically, but also structurally. His Pastoral contains some of the most beautiful music that he wrote, certainly, but big climaxes and bucolic lingering on lyrical tunes are extremely spare. The Pastoral is Vaughan Williams’ Corot-easel that captures the dark, lovely, and lonely figures at sunset, but is profoundly shadowed by the loss and death of the battlefield and the carnage below the hill.
The first movement begins with undulating woodwinds, like zephyrs across the fields at the change of day. The woodwinds are soon accompanied by a four-note motif in the cellos, basses, and harp. Both motives will pervade the movement. The feeling is light and gentle, until a solo violin enters with a melancholic air. The movement proceeds in this hallowed glow, with those wafting undulations murmuring through all the instruments. Solos from the winds, French horn, and strings converse with each other briefly and move on, creating a sound-world awash in subtle sounds and colors, but with a slightly uncanny feeling of wandering or being lost in thought. The harmonies are gorgeous, but underneath, typically in the low strings and brass, deeply dark movements occur, just in the margins, just off the canvas. At one point early in the movement, one of these deep rumblings moves upwards in grinding half steps, creating a momentarily disturbing feeling of bending light.
The second movement, Lento moderato (moderately slow), begins with a similar tone to the first, though more emphasis is given to melodic direction. But in the middle comes a breath-taking moment, where, over sustained strings, a solo trumpet plays a version of the British military bugle call, the “Last Post.” This trumpet call signals the end of the day’s activities, and, more importantly here, is played at military funerals to signify that the lost soldier has died and gone to their “Last” and final “Post.” Vaughan Williams’ idea for this moment came from the battlefield, when on several evenings a military bugler was practicing this call in the distance and missing the top notes (which on valveless brass instruments can be notoriously difficult). Vaughan Williams suggests that the solo be played on a particular type of trumpet to replicate the military bugle, to capture its “true intonation” (for our civilian, concert-hall ears, it may seem slightly out of tune). No doubt, in 1921, the passage also reminded Vaughan Williams of another lost artist, the British war poet Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918), who, before his death in the War, penned:
“Bugles sang, saddening the evening air;
And bugles answered, sorrowful to hear.”
After this Last Post solo, the horn and clarinet have simultaneous solos, the horn as a far-off answer to the bugle, the clarinet, instead, detached from the pathos in a moment that is simultaneously lovely and chilling.
The third movement brings energy and high spirits. A muscular theme is introduced right off, with full orchestra, with a faster tempo and a jaunty rhythm. Soon, a flute solo flutters like a bird, answered by a violin solo reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’ 1914 work The Lark Ascending. Tempos and themes change rapidly and orchestral effects are colorful and splashy. But just when one theme seems to be gaining momentum, it quickly changes to something new. For example, listen for a sea shanty to appear, but just as it begins to rollick, a new tempo and theme swiftly displace it. Even a frisky and brilliant fugue flashes past our ears. It’s as though celebration and musical forms cannot really succeed or take root. Despite the many attempts, jubilance here is almost sinister: For “wartime music,” there can be no true festivity.
The final movement returns to melancholy and quietness. The timpani begins with a soft roll and a gentle swell. Over top of this floats a soprano voice, almost aimlessly, vocalizing without words. The music is marked “without measure” creating a pulseless, floating effect. Like the end of Boulanger’s piece on war, For a Soldier’s Funeral, it’s as though words cannot convey the experience of war. This moment is both meltingly beautiful and emotionally unsettling. The movement nostalgically recalls past themes from earlier moments in the work, and then leads to the Symphony’s ultimate climax as the violins alone take up the soprano’s opening tune. Likely the loudest moment in the piece, it’s almost unbearably vulnerable. But after this deafening climax, the music floats like smoke from cannon blasts back to earth, drifting back to the wafting zephyrs of the Corot landscape. After a moment of magisterial beauty with full orchestra and triumphant brass, the Symphony ends in a troubled quiet, as the soprano sings us wordlessly home.
© Max Derrickson
