On Ralph Vaughan Williams at 150…

If you are a lover of Classical music, or British music, or twentieth-century culture it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of Britain’s most celebrated and venerated composers. There have been many, many concerts, books, lectures, radio shows and newspaper articles celebrating this anniversary and it is to be imagined that Vaughan Williams himself would have thoroughly approved (if maybe a little bashfully) of this festival of his life and music (I’m sure the RVW Trust that administers his legacy will be equally in approval). As with all these big anniversary celebrations it is a great time to revel in the achievements of one of the nation’s favourite sons, but it also a good time to take stock of their reputation and what this means to composers working today, myself included.

Firstly, I should say that Vaughan Williams has been lucky – lucky he wasn’t born in 1870 or 1871, the length and magnitude of these celebrations would have been much less in one of the recent Covid years (I often think composers such as Mark-Anthony Turnage and George Benjamin, both born in 1960, must have had miserable sixtieth birthday celebrations) and the opportunity to assess his reputation would have been much less pressing. But luckily for us, he was born in mid-Victorian splendour in the year 1872 and has thus ridden the post-Covid wave of concerts in this auspicious year. Of course, even a year of lockdowns would have done little to dim Vaughan Williams’s star, it has been rising year on year in the past thirty years and his position as a composer of national significance has arguably not been as secure since the 1940s when he was at the peak of national and international reputation. But it hasn’t always been the case, and like any composer who lives a long creative life, the ups and downs of recognition and influence can be extreme (just think of Michael Tippett today).

Certainly, by the final years of his life in the late 1950s Vaughan Williams had passed from nationalist trailblazer to establishment figure to grand old man of British music to outdated museum piece – in many ways the trajectory that many artists follow when they have the audacity to live longer than the epoch to which they belong (again, see Tippett). His centenary in 1972 was solid if muted, with only fourteen years having passed since his death and much of musical society either in open rebellion at Vaughan Williams’s generation or in the same prominent positions they had held in his final years. Contemporary music had changed so much since Vaughan Williams’s halcyon days in the 1920s and 30s that a celebration of all that the centenarian stood for in 1972 felt whimsical and parochial. By his 125th birthday in 1997 the reception was changing and in the twenty-five years since then a complete and total career rehabilitation appears to have taken place with Vaughan Williams arguably outstripping Elgar as ‘National Composer Treasure’ for modern audiences. If you want to find a barometer to assess this change, you could look no further than Vaughan Williams’s nine symphonies, one of the most substantial set of symphonies by any British composer of the twentieth century. More and more they are being referred to ‘one of the greatest symphonic achievements in twentieth century music’ being put on a pedestal along with Sibelius, Shostakovich and Nielsen. The move from provincial fayre to music of international significance is extreme and mirrors our own, national beliefs in this man and his music in all its forms and genres.  

But what of my relationship with the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams? Well, I’ll be honest, I’m not the hugest fan of his symphonies: Three is bold, Four and Six are dramatic and Five is rhapsodic – the others I can leave. For me, the beauty of Vaughan Williams’s music is in the variety, the subtlety and often the gems to be found at the outer edges of his oeuvre. I love how perplexing Flos Campi is, how unusual A Vision of Aeroplanes is and how lush the Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus are. I love well-known pieces such as ‘Rhosymedre’ from the Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes for organ but I also love works where he was still finding his voice such as Towards the Unknown Region. For me, Vaughan Williams is much like artists such as The Beatles: whether you like or loathe them, I’m just glad he was, that he existed and opened the door to all the composers that came after him, grateful that this new way of composing had been offered to them.

But what is so important to me about Ralph Vaughan Williams is one work in particular, possibly his most famous work and one that can arguably stand shoulder to shoulder with anything written by someone from these isles – the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. More and more I find this work a touchstone for composers I meet, students I work with and the wider music-loving world in general. Whereas students/composers may have cited the Rite of Spring, Le Marteau sans maître or something by John Cage in previous years (and of course, they still do, and a myriad of other pieces as well) it is no longer a taboo to look to this meeting of ancient and modern (well, modern for 1910) and find great relevance for contemporary compositional practice. Well, maybe in the circles I move in the main. If Vaughan Williams had written nothing else, I feel this one work would have assured him a place in our national musical conscious.

So, there you go. Happy Birthday Uncle Ralph, enjoy the final weeks of your centenary year. Who knows what a 175th anniversary will behold? Will we still have orchestras?

PAC