The Lark Ascends with Piano.

[Anna]

Are you still listening on repeat play?

No. I decided in for a penny, in for a pound, it's the rather thrilling No. 6 at the mo!!

[Nick Armstrong]

No. I decided in for a penny, in for a pound, it's the rather thrilling No. 6 at the mo!!

A different kettle of fish. Strong stuff. And yet a dying away ending too... albeit in a completely different mood...

[Pabmusic]

I just selected, random like, a RVW, turns out to be Flos Campi! Who she?

RVW and Gustav Holst were close friends, discussing works as they were being composed. They often referred to it as "Camp Flossie".

[Anna]

I may, after Symph 9 in e minor, have finally falllen in love with RVW !!

[Nick Armstrong]

I may, after Symph 9 in e minor, have finally falllen in love with RVW !!

No 9 is quite a toughie...

Try the slow movement of the Sea Symphony as well... Walt Whitman ("O vast Rondure").... I had one of my most extraordinary musical experiences with that.

The opening ("Behold, the Sea!") is pretty special too....

[Anna]

No 9 is quite a toughie...

You think so? I don't. I'm not a child who needs to be led by the hand through the big world of symphonies! I cut me teeth on Shosta! Nighty Nighty, it's late, I must to bed, sleep well.

[salymap]

Morning all. Anna I still haven't really got to know RVW 8 and 9. I was at no 6's early performances which more or less was the time of the new R F Hall.

They all have their own personalities, I still think we took RVW too much for granted. A great man.

[Pabmusic]

(By the way "Vaughan Williams": Welsh ancestry there, surely?)

Yes. His great-great-grandfather was John Williams, born in Job's Well, Carmarthenshire (as it then was). He studied at Oxford, married an English girl called Mary Clarke, and became a Serjeant-at-Law in London. His second son, Edward, was RVW's grandfather; he was the first person to become a Justice of Common Pleas, and was knighted in 1847. He had been born in London and married Jane Bagot, who was a descendant of the Bagot who is a 'favourite of King Richard' in Shakespeare's Richard II. Sir Edward became a Lord Justice of Appeal and seems to have been the first to use his middle name, Vaughan, as a family name. It was never hyphenated. There is no connexion, though, with any famous Vaughans - Cardinal, poet or Frankie. Sir Edward's second son, Arthur, was RVW's father and kept the double-barrelled name, which RVW inherited. It's noteworthy that RVW entered Charterhouse, Cambridge and the RCM as 'R. V. Williams'.

All this is on the father's side, of course. RVW's mother was a great-granddaughter of Josiah Wedgewood and Erasmus Darwin (Charles was RVW's great-uncle). In fact, each of his maternal line, going back to the great-great-grandparents, had been both Wedgewoods and Darwins. Phew!

[salymap]

Thanks Pabmusic. Which background partly explains why he had no need or time for titles, pomp or ceremony, and took his place in the queue to pay for his mss paper behind ordinary mortals.

[Pabmusic]

Which background partly explains why he had no need or time for titles, pomp or ceremony, and took his place in the queue to pay for his mss paper behind ordinary mortals.

He must be related in some way to Tony (Wedgewood) Benn, but I'm not sure exactly how. I do understand, however, that Margeret Rutherford (Benn)'s father killed his own father (and Tony Benn's grandfather) by hitting him over the head with a chamber pot. But that's not relevant here, of course.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks, Pab; I didn't know anything of RVW's Welsh ancestry, just thought there must be some from his name.

Do I understand your #39 correctly: RVW is a distant relation of both the actress Margaret Rutherford and Tony Benn? It gets better and better!

[Serial_Apologist]

He must be related in some way to Tony (Wedgewood) Benn, but I'm not sure exactly how. I do understand, however, that Margeret Rutherford (Benn)'s father killed his own father (and Tony Benn's grandfather) by hitting him over the head with a chamber pot. But that's not relevant here, of course.

Thanks very much indeed for that "potted" history, Pabmusic.

Re saly's remark, it's worth, I think, pondering VW's friendship with Holst as regards both men's exposure, both direct and through family connections, with radical politics. Here's what Paul Harrington has written:

"Holst and Vaughan Williams both came from what used to be called 'free thinking' families. Holst's great grandfather was an unwelcome liberal in early 19th century Russia and came, like many after him, to England. His son quickly acquired a resentment of blossoming bourgeois society through providing music for fashionable 'At Home' concerts where 'his patrons treated him with a snobbish discourtesy that was almost unendurable' ( 'The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams', M Kennedy). Holst's step-mother was a Theosophist and as a child he inhabited a world where progressive liberal thinking and a progressive approach to spiritual values were inevitably linked.

"Vaughan Wiliams' radical lineage is extremely impressive. The family's money was based on generations of lawyers, judges, scientists and clergymen who included Charles Darwin and the first judge of Common Pleas, John Williams. The household atmosphere seems to have been remarkably enlightened for a Victorian home on the foothills of the English aristocracy. Vaughan Williams was an atheist as a boy at Charterhouse. It can only seem very strange that the composer of the Mass in G Minor and Sancta Civitas should have been an atheist all his adult life, but it is really no stranger than a Catholic writing an opera about Orpheus or a Jew sculpting the risen Christ. Vaughan Williams saw Christianity in the same symbolic terms that had been applied to Greek and Roman religion for thousands of years. He was non-believer deeply absorbed by the lyricism and huge idealism of faith. 'Who believes in God nowadays, I should like to know'. (Kennedy book), he declared to Bertrand Russell in Cambridge in 1892. The remark was scandalous in the Cambridge of Latin grace and clergymen dons but it was representative of the radical group of students of which Vaughan Williams was a member. His friends and contemporaries at this time included the historian G E Trevelyan, the philosopher G E Moore and the economist Maynard Keynes. And it was Russell who, when they were undergraduates, introduced him to one of the great enthusiasms of his life, the poetry of Walt Whitman".

('Holst and Vaughan Williams: Radical Pastoral' Harrington, P., in 'Music and the Politics of Culture', Ed Christopher Norris, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1989, PP 110/111)

Harrington also drew attention to Holst's youthful membership of the Hammersmith Socialist Club, from whence connections with Morris and Marx may be deduced.

Although I had long loved Vaughan Williams and Host for their personalities as much as their music, these things I had not known prior to reading abovequoted book. Strange how the loves and passions of ones life can converge into one consistent stream...

S-A

[Pabmusic]

Do I understand your #39 correctly: RVW is a distant relation of both the actress Margaret Rutherford and Tony Benn? It gets better and better!

I'm not sure if there's a blood relationship with Margaret Rutherford (but wouldn't it be entirely right if there were!) as she seems to have been related to Tony through the Benn family (a second cousin). But Tony was definitely a Wedgewood - Anthony Wedgewood Benn.

What an interesting post, S-A. I'd read that RVW was an atheist in his youth. Ursula seems to suggest he was in his old age, too, although the usual line is that he was an agnostic.

[aeolium]

All this is on the father's side, of course. RVW's mother was a great-granddaughter of Josiah Wedgewood and Erasmus Darwin (Charles was RVW's great-uncle). In fact, each of his maternal line, going back to the great-great-grandparents, had been both Wedgewoods and Darwins. Phew!

And wasn't Francis Darwin (the great Darwin's son) the brother-in-law of RVW's first wife Adeline (and Virginia Woolf a cousin), Pabmusic? It does seem a very small world.

[Pabmusic]

And wasn't Francis Darwin (the great Darwin's son) the brother-in-law of RVW's first wife Adeline (and Virginia Woolf a cousin), Pabmusic? It does seem a very small world.

I think that's right. Not much natural selection there!