Holst and Vaughan Williams: Making Music English - BBC2, Sat Nov 17th

[Bryn]

Can't find it. Link please?

Thx.

See the OP, i.e. #1, or quoted in #2.

[pastoralguy]

Lovely programme. I MUST listen to more of Holst and Vaughan-Williams' music.

[Richard Tarleton]

Lovely programme. I MUST listen to more of Holst and Vaughan-Williams' music.

My feelings exactly, pg. Very touching.

[pastoralguy]

My feelings exactly, pg. Very touching.

[ardcarp]

Is the above heavy irony, or was I watching a different programme? I survived (just) Tom Service 'playing' a Grade 1 version of Linden Lea...arhythmically....and just prayed that Amanda Vickery wouldn't attempt the trombone.

As a tiny matter of fact, is it true that RVW's Pastoral landscape was actually that of Northern France?

Edit: Just read that RVW himself said that it was. Mea culpa.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Can't find it. Link please?

Threads duly merged.

I was a bit disappointed by the programme - the Foundling Hospital docu that the VickeryService duo made some years ago was much better than this. (And, yes, TS's piano skills make mine seem brilliant!) But for BBC2 viewers coming to either composer for the first time, I felt it might successfully have introduced them to Music and ideas that they may not have previously encountered. (Personally, I could have done without Ms Vickery's describing how the Music made her feel - a tendency that spoiled her series of women artists a couple of years ago, too - I don't see how that is supposed to add anything to a viewer's appreciation of a work in question, but perhaps that's just me.)

One factual error, I thought - the idea that the gramophone brought the Music to a wider audience, including those who would never dream of going into a concert hall. Not at the price Classical records sold for in the 20's and after - a set of The Planets could have been afforded only by those middle-class (and "above") audiences who would already have been regular attendees at concerts. (Even avid concert-goers from the lower middle classes typified by Leonard Bast in Howards End, for example, would not have been able to afford such albums of discs.)

[Richard Tarleton]

Not ironic at all - there has always been a VW-shaped hole in my musical knowledge and appreciation which I'm sure would horrify many forumites. (I have always had a problem with late 19thC-early 20thC English music which I blame on having to sing annual Te Deums by the likes of Stanford and Parry at school - more fairly, perhaps, on the way we were introduced to and taught them - an earlier generation of composers, I realise). So I found this quite informative . I knew he drove ambulances but didn't know until Pabs's post on the They Shall Not etc. thread the other day that he then served in the artillery. I got the impression from the programme that the reason I know so little Holst apart from the obvs. is that there isn't a great deal anyway. I remember seeing Imogen once or twice sitting with Britten in the Maltings in his final years.

I do however love the Fantasia. At an earlier school, aged around 10, we had to sing Linden Lea at an inter-school competition in Hastings. Listening to it last night it occurred to me the setiments expressed are not unlike those in Roy Orbison's "Blue Bayou"

[BBMmk2]

It was very good to see Leith Place, of which I have visited a few years ago. Those Surrey hills, are something else. Where was that walk they showed the two great men going over?

[pastoralguy]

It was very good to see Leith Place, of which I have visited a few years ago. Those Surrey hills, are something else. Where was that walk they showed the two great men going over?

Wasn't it the Malvern Hills in Worcester?

[Stanfordian]

Those tight jeans worn by presenters Vickery and Service. Ouch!

[BBMmk2]

Wasn't it the Malvern Hills in Worcester?

Thank you PG! The paths there look quite accessible for motorbility scooters?

[ardcarp]

I think both the Malverns and the Surrey countryside were featured, though geography isn't my strong point. It is because I am so passionate about the work of Holst and Vaughan Williams that I found the presentation style [e.g. hugs between Him and Her] so cringeworthy. The film could have had such a beautiful elegaic quality had it been done with a dignified voice-over....which would have allowed for more music to be played. Presenters ENTIRELY unnecessary. Quasi spontaneous dialogues especially awful. I feel uneasy making these criticisms, as it is good that the BBC should commit themselves to an arts programme with (what they see as) a minority interest. But c'mon BBC, accept you're not going to get 5 million viewers for this subject matter, and treat us like grown-ups.

[Nick Armstrong]

just prayed that Amanda Vickery wouldn't attempt the trombone.

[Serial_Apologist]

Threads duly merged.

I was a bit disappointed by the programme - the Foundling Hospital docu that the VickeryService duo made some years ago was much better than this. (And, yes, TS's piano skills make mine seem brilliant!) But for BBC2 viewers coming to either composer for the first time, I felt it might successfully have introduced them to Music and ideas that they may not have previously encountered. (Personally, I could have done without Ms Vickery's describing how the Music made her feel - a tendency that spoiled her series of women artists a couple of years ago, too - I don't see how that is supposed to add anything to a viewer's appreciation of a work in question, but perhaps that's just me.)

One factual error, I thought - the idea that the gramophone brought the Music to a wider audience, including those who would never dream of going into a concert hall. Not at the price Classical records sold for in the 20's and after - a set of The Planets could have been afforded only by those middle-class (and "above") audiences who would already have been regular attendees at concerts. (Even avid concert-goers from the lower middle classes typified by Leonard Bast in Howards End, for example, would not have been able to afford such albums of discs.)

There was a very British, or at any rate English spin given to the music of these two greats - no mention of RVW's vital study with Ravel, of the latter's clear obvious influence on Holst (both harmonically and in 5/4 metre in the "Mars" movement, clearly having its precedent in the finale of "Daphnis & Chloe"), or of the Russian Five together with Stravinsky of the "Petruschka" period on both. How significant at this time should we be taking this to be? It wouldn't have needed to muddy any untrammelled fishing rights further by delving into the influence of Schoenberg's Op 16 orchestral pieces, allegedly always on the joanna while GH was composing The Planets. A bit of gentle arm-twisting around questions re English national identity arising from post-Brexit, what with Scotland likely to go for another Independence referendum?

Oh, and thanks for merging our two threads, ferney.

[LMcD]

My feelings exactly, pg. Very touching.

I couldn't agree more. It was informative, visually arresting (something that not all TV producers seem to realize), it didn't patronise the viewer, and the presenters didn't let their evident love of the music descend into self-indulgence. The device of having them recreate the two composers' works was very successful IMO. I'm normally not an admirer of Tom Service, but on this occasion he (thankfully) abandoned his customary erratic machine gun-like delivery and both he and Amanda Vickery pitched their contributions perfectly.
It would be nice to think that somebody out there heard some of this wonderful music for the first time, including the Tallis Fantasia, which is the piece that I would rescue from the waves on DID. Anybody introduced, in particular, to the music of Vaughan Williams by this programme has many pleasures to look forward to!
The photo of the two composers walking in the Malvern Hills was taken by William Whittaker.