Vaughan Williams: 4-8.4.16, 8-12.2.21 & 2-27.5.22

[Nick Armstrong]

Or I am just fortunate to be new-ish enough to RVW’s music to be able to hear it fresh. Either way, I am enjoying this Composer of the Week.

I fell for RVW's music hook, line and sinker over 30 years ago; but have also really enjoyed this week of programmes, rediscovering pieces and being reminded how central he is to my musical feelings.

[Stanley Stewart]

COTW well timed to complement my reading of a new RVW biography, 'VW,Composer, Radical, Patriot' (Hale) by Keith Alldritt, a striking b/w cover of the composer, slightly tinted for a period flavour. Glad I wasn't tempted to skip the opening chapter with its wide family history as it presents a beguiling portrait of a large upper class family in the last quarter of the 19th century and valuable knowledge of RVW's development from primary education at Rottingdean to Charterhouse, with the two brothers travelling from their elegant Leith Hall residence to public school, through the countryside of western Surrey to the old market town of Godalming, driven by the Leith House coachman along the then quiet country roads by pony carriage, the boys' boxes piled up on the back! A promising start to further education as RVW made acquaintance with fellow pupil, Max Beerbohm.

Useful guidance, too, to view an off-air video from the mid 90s, now on DVD, of Ken Russell's, South Bank Show, 'A Symphonic Portrait' of the RVW cycle, shrewdly discussed by Ursula VW. A combination and a form indeed with a truly fascinating background.

My only contact with the VW family was a 1962 rep season, directed by great- grandson, Alan VW. Alan went on to become director at Greenwich Theatre.

An email from Presto Classical this morning also promotes a new VW cycle, Vol 1, with Royal Liverpool PO/Andrew Manze.

[Lat-Literal]

COTW well timed to complement my reading of a new RVW biography, 'VW,Composer, Radical, Patriot' (Hale) by Keith Alldritt, a striking b/w cover of the composer, slightly tinted for a period flavour. Glad I wasn't tempted to skip the opening chapter with its wide family history as it presents a beguiling portrait of a large upper class family in the last quarter of the 19th century and valuable knowledge of RVW's development from primary education at Rottingdean to Charterhouse, with the two brothers travelling from their elegant Leith Hall residence to public school, through the countryside of western Surrey to the old market town of Godalming, driven by the Leith House coachman along the then quiet country roads by pony carriage, the boys' boxes piled up on the back! A promising start to further education as RVW made acquaintance with fellow pupil, Max Beerbohm.

Useful guidance, too, to view an off-air video from the mid 90s, now on DVD, of Ken Russell's, South Bank Show, 'A Symphonic Portrait' of the RVW cycle, shrewdly discussed by Ursula VW. A combination and a form indeed with a truly fascinating background.

My only contact with the VW family was a 1962 rep season, directed by great- grandson, Alan VW. Alan went on to become director at Greenwich Theatre.

An email from Presto Classical this morning also promotes a new VW cycle, Vol 1, with Royal Liverpool PO/Andrew Manze.

Wow.

Did he go to school in Rottingdean?

Here is what was almost certainly my weirdest ever post (from September last year on Who were/are the Celts?)

Before this thread is returned to anything like it was supposed to be, I feel I need to get my own Cope out of my system. Most people tend to have a pull towards certain places. Westminster Abbey, Blackpool, the South of France, Antarctica. My main places in Britain have been Glastonbury, Lindisfarne which in actuality I have never visited, and for a reason not in the least understood until 2015, Rottingdean which is four miles east of Brighton. I also happen to like Lynton and Lynmouth, the Isle of Wight, York where I studied and many other places but the first group is different because those places have a vague spiritual hold on me. Never seeing or indeed feeling that the festival at the former was simply an epic party, this writer is a guy who very happily bought in to the idea of Avalon beyond the A303. There have also been solo pilgrimages to Avebury and up to the Tor.

While the latter have rarely been comprehended, others have recognised it is isn't possible for me to pass Stonehenge in a car without stopping there for a sandwich. It would be like ignoring a permanent friend who is there to help with any insecurity. Music has always tied in closely because it is felt to reside in that safe space between the air and the land, the land and humans and humans and the air. In the absence of music, there would be little sense of any spirituality. Of the three, it was Rottingdean I never really associated with music. Rather there was a pitch and putt course and a windmill overlooking the sea which was visited annually for over 40 years, normally in mid December for my birthday and the winter solstice. How lovely to be playing mini golf by the sea for free in thick snow and to have a feeling of affiliation with the mystery of time and space. Yes, honestly.

Anyhow, there is a rumour on the grapevine that the host of the World Music forum used to live if not inside the Rottingdean windmill then very close to it. I am not sure that he and I have ever discussed the Copper Family. But three things occurred strangely within 48 hours in February this year. First, I discovered that Bob and Ron Copper's "Traditional Songs From Rottingdean" recorded in 1963 had recently been made widely available in this country for the first time in its original album form. That has close esoteric connections with the early folk music collections of Cecil Sharp in North London and others. Secondly, I had for reasons I won't say here a lengthy chat with an organizer at the local church, an innocuous place on the edge of the South London suburbs and one which I had not had any verbal communication with previously. Thirdly - and I have absolutely no idea how or why I did this - I watched on You Tube "Voices of Albion", a film first screened at the second Portobello Film Festival Annual Film Makers' Convention in 2007. That charts in the style of a modern antiquarian the historical origins of many of the contemporary and near contemporary left field subcultures such as Spiral Tribe, the Exodus Collective and the Dongas and traces their origins to the Digger and Leveller Movements of the Seventeenth Century. A fair number of the Dongas would turn up regularly at Michael Eavis's farm.

Briefly, there is a map in the film - blink and you would miss it - depicting a line between Rottingdean and the North London Borough of Barnet. Specifically, the de Mandeville family is mentioned as being relevant to the latter and hence the former in that they were among a number of Templar families who were allegedly party to an ancient secret that linked music, landscape and locality. The line on the map is presented as a direct connection from the village of the Coppers to the de Mandevilles' manor. We are also told in the film that there was a strong legendary link between the de Mandevilles and Arthur's Camelot Castle, for which read Avalon or Glastonbury. There are umpteen references to the de Mandevilles in the correspondence of William Stukeley who Cope discusses in his article. But what was incredible was that on viewing "Voices of Albion" I thought I saw marked with a big x and its name my local church on the line on the map. Convinced I had imagined it, I had to replay it but, on repeated viewing, there was no doubt that it was true.

Intensive research followed in which I managed to ascertain that the de Mandevilles' manor was situated in what is regarded spiritually as the Barnet Triangle. The line is drawn from its location and its Glastonbury associations though Gog and Magog at Totteridge and then it travels south to Rottingdean on the coast via my local church. Why? Well, it turns out that there is a South London companion to the Barnet Triangle and it is the equally spiritual Croydon Triangle which has the church here at its southern tip. The line in London connects the two. From there, the connection continues for 40 or 50 miles to Rottingdean not as a ley line but as a sort of energy line which is designed to enhance how music blends with the landscape and location so that those things may be felt to merge. I would be very surprised if anyone who attends the church has ever heard of the Croydon Triangle or is aware the church is on the film as being linked to Rottingdean in one direction, the de Mandevilles and Stukeley in the other and by association out towards Arthurian legend in the west. But I have now got it into my head that my musical outlook was somehow pre-determined by my location. For what it is worth - and I don't have a strong religious faith - I was Christened in that very church in the year the Copper Family's album was recorded. What I now want to learn is whether it was recorded in the same month!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm9zotZFCR8

http://www.earthstars.co.uk/earthstars-sites-to-visit/

[vinteuil]

... yep, them magic mushroomz is still workin'!





'The Croydon Triangle'...

[Lat-Literal]

... yep, them magic mushroomz is still workin'!





'The Croydon Triangle'...

Yes indeed and it all pre-dates the Fairfield Halls and Bernard Weatherill House. I have written about the pull to Leith Hill before. It's annual. What the latest information does is reinforce the line from Rottingdean to our St John's at the southern tip and then place RVW on the sweep across south west from here to Avalon. It makes absolute sense to me.

In more of a scholarly vein, it links RVW in locational terms to the Cooper Family and associated folk traditions.

[LeMartinPecheur]

.Boult did a proper Job!

If anyone fancies his 78rpm set I saw one in a charity shop in Plymouth last week.

Only £15...

[Stanley Stewart]

[QUOTE=Lat-Literal;552051]Wow.

Did he go to school in Rottingdean?

Here is what was almost certainly my weirdest ever post (from September last year on Who were/are the Celts?)

Indeed, Lat-Lit:

"...At the age of ten, in Sept 1883, Ralph was sent to his preparatory school, Rottingdean, named for the village in which it was then situated, close to Brighton in East Sussex. The origins of the school went back to the late eighteenth century when the vicar of Rottingdean at that time, Dr Thomas Hooker, founded a small educational establishment where boys could be boarded...Some five years after Ralph left, the school was reconstituted and renamed St Aubyns and continues as such today. But in Ralph's day it was known as Field House. The original building is a large white house on Rottingdean High Street....He enjoyed being in Sussex. He recalled, 'most of the boys thought the country around dull. I thought it lovely and enjoyed our walks. The great bare hills impressed me by their grandeur. I have loved the Downs ever since.' His sensitivity to landscape showed early in his life, although the living conditions were rather harsh."

A further case of 'pulling power' is shown in the Stone Henge sequence in the South Bank Show when Ursula talks with eloquence about the appeal of the site to RVW.


]

[jean]

I didn't know until this week that you're not supposed to pronounce the p in Down Ampney.

[Lat-Literal]

"...At the age of ten, in Sept 1883, Ralph was sent to his preparatory school, Rottingdean, named for the village in which it was then situated, close to Brighton in East Sussex. The origins of the school went back to the late eighteenth century when the vicar of Rottingdean at that time, Dr Thomas Hooker, founded a small educational establishment where boys could be boarded...Some five years after Ralph left, the school was reconstituted and renamed St Aubyns and continues as such today. But in Ralph's day it was known as Field House. The original building is a large white house on Rottingdean High Street....He enjoyed being in Sussex. He recalled, 'most of the boys thought the country around dull. I thought it lovely and enjoyed our walks. The great bare hills impressed me by their grandeur. I have loved the Downs ever since.' His sensitivity to landscape showed early in his life, although the living conditions were rather harsh."

A further case of 'pulling power' is shown in the Stone Henge sequence in the South Bank Show when Ursula talks with eloquence about the appeal of the site to RVW.

That's excellent. Thanks very much Stanley. I have seen the name St Aubyns in the vicinity. The Coppers were originally landlords at the Black Horse in the High Street.

Quote:

"In 1950 Jim and his son Bob sang on BBC Radio, and for the first time the songs were heard by a national audience. Two years later Jim, his brother John and their respective sons Bob and Ron sang at the Royal Albert Hall. Many broadcasts, concerts and recordings followed, and in 1958 Bob and Ron sang when the English Folk Dance and Song Society celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of one of its parent organisations, the Folk Song Society. On a large cake were written the opening bars of "Claudy Banks", a song collected by Kate Lee from their grandfather 60 years before. It was the first song collected for the Society. They sang it while the Society's President, Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams, cut the cake."

I didn't know until this week that you're not supposed to pronounce the p in Down Ampney.

I didn't know that either but then I've only just realised Honiton is pronounced Hunniton. I did try to learn the unusual pronunciations of English place names early on - Stiffkey etc.

[EdgeleyRob]

I didn't know until this week that you're not supposed to pronounce the p in Down Ampney.

I was told years ago that the traditional pronunciation is Amney,I know this is how the older locals say it.
The pronounced p has crept in through modern usage.

[Beef Oven!]

I was told years ago that the traditional pronunciation is Amney,I know this is how the older locals say it.
The p has crept in through modern usage.

Can I have a p please Bob?

[EdgeleyRob]

Can I have a p please Bob?

I'll set 'em up you put 'em in the back of the onion bag

[Serial_Apologist]

I was told years ago that the traditional pronunciation is Amney,I know this is how the older locals say it.
The p has crept in through modern usage.

I wonder if the same applies to Newpnett Thrupwell, in Somerset.

[Nick Armstrong]

I did try to learn the unusual pronunciations of English place names early on - Stiffkey

... so how's Stiffkey pronounced? "Steeplebumpstead"...? (the p being silent)?

[cloughie]

That's excellent. Thanks very much Stanley. I have seen the name St Aubyns in the vicinity.


.

Interesting. Is there any link with the St Aubyn estate in West Cornwall?