RVW on Front Row, Radio4

[smittims]

This evening (19/9/22) at 7.15 on Radio 4 'front Row' is a 40-minute chat and music programme introducing Ralph Vaughan Williams, his life and music , presented by Samira Ahmed (or 'Smear Ahmed' as she used to be called by radio4 announcers). It's currently available to hear on BBC Sounds.

I think it might be best suited to a 'middlebrow' audience who have heard of VW but don't know anything about him. As someone who can just remember him as a living person and who's been listening to his music for 60 years, I found it a bit simplistic; they spend a lot of time on folk songs and hymn tunes, whereas VW for me is a symphonist and opera composer first. But I don't mean t sneer (or smear) as it might be just the thing for others.

[smittims]

Yesterday's 'Front Row' on Vaughan Williams was certainly, I thought, aimed at listeners who don't mind having classical music on inthe background and sometimes wished they knew more about it. I hope Radio 3 will keep above that level.

[Master Jacques]

Yesterday's 'Front Row' on Vaughan Williams was certainly, I thought, aimed at listeners who don't mind having classical music on inthe background and sometimes wished they knew more about it. I hope Radio 3 will keep above that level.

I must agree that it was thin and often lazy, apart from the communicative and intelligent Neil Brand, talking about the film music but spiralling out interestingly into RVW's wider symphonic world. One contributor (who should have known better) even repeated the old canard, placing the German insult "Das Land ohne Musik" as an accurate, 19th comment on Victorian times. Historically, the phrase only achieved infamy when German musicologists were (inaccurately) trying to reclaim Handel as their own, for propaganda purposes during World War 1.

[Barbirollians]

Strange that when it does it Radio 4's classical music programmes often put Radio 3 to shame - Tales from the Stave for example.

[hmvman]

Strange that when it does it Radio 4's classical music programmes often put Radio 3 to shame - Tales from the Stave for example.

Agree, Tales from the Stave is a very good series. Thanks, smittims, for the 'heads up' on the Front Row programme. I don't usually listen to it but will catch up with this one. I think you're right that this programme will be aimed at listeners not necessarily knowledgeable about VW. However, I think it's good that such programmes are produced which might stimulate a desire to learn more.

Incidentally, while watching the TV broadcast of the funeral services yesterday at Westminster Abbey and St George's I was intrigued that the subtitles that came on at the beginning of each piece of music gave the composers' full names, e.g Judith Weir, James MacMillan, Hubert Parry, but for the VW psalm setting 'Taste and see' the credit read simply "Vaughan Williams". I wonder if this was deliberate or did, perhaps, the person in charge of generating the graphics think that the composer's christian name was Vaughan!

[Serial_Apologist]

Also on Radio 4, next week's Book of the Week is Caroline Davison's The Captain's Apprentice. at 9.45am and 12am each weekday - 5 episodes. Here'e the header item in Radio Times for the series, followed by a link to the first:

In January 1905 the 32-year-old Vaughan Williams had yet to find his way as a composer, when his passion for English folk music took him to a sailor's pub in King's Lynn. While he was there, an old fisherman sang him a song that, as he later recalled, "finally opened the door to an entirely new world of melody, harmony and feeling". In her new book, published to mark VW's 150th anniversary, Norfolk-based author and musician Caroline Davison reveals her own links to the song that influenced all his works to come, alongside the brutal tale of child abuse at sea that belies the beautiful melody.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bktp

I hope she mentions Bushes & Briars, which I've been led to understand he first heard at Great Warley in Essex, and was the first folk tune he set.

[Serial_Apologist]

Also on Radio 4, next week's Book of the Week is Caroline Davison's The Captain's Apprentice. at 9.45am and 12am each weekday - 5 episodes. Here'e the header item in Radio Times for the series, followed by a link to the first:

In January 1905 the 32-year-old Vaughan Williams had yet to find his way as a composer, when his passion for English folk music took him to a sailor's pub in King's Lynn. While he was there, an old fisherman sang him a song that, as he later recalled, "finally opened the door to an entirely new world of melody, harmony and feeling". In her new book, published to mark VW's 150th anniversary, Norfolk-based author and musician Caroline Davison reveals her own links to the song that influenced all his works to come, alongside the brutal tale of child abuse at sea that belies the beautiful melody.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bktp

I hope she mentions Bushes & Briars, which I've been led to understand he first heard at Great Warley in Essex, and was the first folk tune he set.

Recommended, thus far.

[makropulos]

I hope she mentions Bushes & Briars, which I've been led to understand he first heard at Great Warley in Essex, and was the first folk tune he set.

She most certainly does mention it –pp. 175–9 of the book are all about it, and there's even a facsimile of RVW's transcription. Apparently it was at Ingrave (a few miles from Great Warley).

[gradus]

The Captain's Apprentice was included in a WRC recording of RVW's folk song arrangements conducted (I think) by Imogen Holst that I acquired in the early sixties and it's wonderful melody has stayed with me since. I didn't realise until I heard the Norfolk Rhapsody some years later that it had been used by RVW in an orchestral work and the emotional hit that it gave me has lost nothing of its impact over the years.