Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958

Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958 PDF Author: Hugh Cobbe
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615269
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
The book comprises a selection of some 750 letters of the composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, selected from an extant corpus of about 3,300. The letters are arranged chronologically and have been chosen to provide a cumulative pen-picture of the composer in his own words. In general the letters reflect VW's major preoccupations: musical, personal and political. It was not VW's way to discuss his inner creative processes but he does discuss his music, once it had been written: for example there is much to illustrate the process of 'washing the face' of his major pieces before, and after, they had reached the concert platform. There is correspondence with collaborators such as Gilbert Murray, Harold Child and Evelyn Sharpe who provided texts; with his publishers (mainly OUP) about printing scores and parts; with conductors such as Adrian Boult and John Barbirolli about performances. He was in regular correspondence with fellow composers such as Gustav Holst, George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Alan Bush and Rutland Boughton. There were his pupils: Elizabeth Maconchy and Cedric Thorpe Davie amongst others. A series of close personal friendships is well represented: his Cambridge contemporary and cousin Ralph Wedgwood, Edward Dent, and latterly Michael Kennedy. Above all there are insights on his lifelong devotion to his first wife, Adeline, and his growing friendship with Ursula Wood, who was to become his second wife.

Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958

Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958 PDF Author: Hugh Cobbe
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615269
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 688

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book comprises a selection of some 750 letters of the composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, selected from an extant corpus of about 3,300. The letters are arranged chronologically and have been chosen to provide a cumulative pen-picture of the composer in his own words. In general the letters reflect VW's major preoccupations: musical, personal and political. It was not VW's way to discuss his inner creative processes but he does discuss his music, once it had been written: for example there is much to illustrate the process of 'washing the face' of his major pieces before, and after, they had reached the concert platform. There is correspondence with collaborators such as Gilbert Murray, Harold Child and Evelyn Sharpe who provided texts; with his publishers (mainly OUP) about printing scores and parts; with conductors such as Adrian Boult and John Barbirolli about performances. He was in regular correspondence with fellow composers such as Gustav Holst, George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Alan Bush and Rutland Boughton. There were his pupils: Elizabeth Maconchy and Cedric Thorpe Davie amongst others. A series of close personal friendships is well represented: his Cambridge contemporary and cousin Ralph Wedgwood, Edward Dent, and latterly Michael Kennedy. Above all there are insights on his lifelong devotion to his first wife, Adeline, and his growing friendship with Ursula Wood, who was to become his second wife.

Vaughan Williams and His World

Vaughan Williams and His World PDF Author: Byron Adams
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226830454
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was one of the most innovative and creative figures in twentieth-century music, whose symphonies stand alongside those of Sibelius, Nielsen, Shostakovich, and Roussel. After his death, shifting priorities in the music world led to a period of critical neglect. What could not have been foreseen is that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, a handful of Vaughan Williams's scores would attain immense popularity worldwide. Yet the present renown of these pieces has led to misapprehension about the nature of Vaughan Williams's cultural nationalism and a distorted view of his international cultural and musical significance. Vaughan Williams and His World traces the composer's stylistic and aesthetic development in a broadly chronological fashion, reappraising Vaughan Williams's music composed during and after the Second World War and affirming his status as an artist whose leftist political convictions pervaded his life and music. This volume reclaims Vaughan Williams's deeply held progressive ethical and democratic convictions while celebrating his achievements as a composer.

Ralph Vaughan Williams and Adrian Boult

Ralph Vaughan Williams and Adrian Boult PDF Author: Nigel Simeone
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783277297
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
The first detailed study of the working relationship and productive friendship between Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and Adrian Boult (1889-1983).

Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams PDF Author: Keith Alldritt
Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd
ISBN: 0719824419
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The ground-breaking biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams reveals more than any other the man behind the music. The author examines the considerable range of Vaughan Williams's work, from the English pastoral tradition to Modernism, and shows how Vaughan Williams was influenced by the Boer War, the economic depression after the First World War, the deprivations of the Blitz, and the austerity of the Cold War. He also reveals how the greatest influence on Vaughan Williams's music and creative development was his personal life, involving his seemingly secure marriage and an equally enduring love affair. The author shows how these reflected both the stability and cutting-edge aspects of his music. Like a great symphony, this book ranges from doubt to inspiration. It is the most complete biography of one of Britain's greatest composers and will be of interest to historians, students of music and Vaughan Williams enthusiasts.

Albion’s Glory

Albion’s Glory PDF Author: Stephen H. Smith
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 180046696X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
My book begins with a brief consideration of what we mean by “English music” and what factors are involved. I explain the reasons behind my choice of composers for consideration, and for the omissions from the survey.

The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams

The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams PDF Author: Alain Frogley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521197686
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
A comprehensive reassessment of this towering figure of twentieth-century music, examining works, cultural context and reception in Britain and beyond.

An Imperishable Heritage: British Choral Music from Parry to Dyson

An Imperishable Heritage: British Choral Music from Parry to Dyson PDF Author: Stephen Town
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317181867
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
The rehabilitation of British music began with Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. Ralph Vaughan Williams assisted in its emancipation from continental models, while Gerald Finzi, Edmund Rubbra and George Dyson flourished in its independence. Stephen Town's survey of Choral Music of the English Musical Renaissance is rooted in close examination of selected works from these composers. Town collates the substantial secondary literature on these composers, and brings to bear his own study of the autograph manuscripts. The latter form an unparalleled record of compositional process and shed new light on the compositions as they have come down to us in their published and recorded form. This close study of the sources allows Town to identify for the first time instances of similarity and imitation, continuities and connections between the works.

Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst PDF Author: Mary Christison Huismann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135845271
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Choral-Orchestral Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams

The Choral-Orchestral Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams PDF Author: Stephen Town
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793606013
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
The Choral-Orchestral Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: Autographs, Context, Discourse combines contextual knowledge, a musical commentary, an inventory of the holograph manuscripts, and a critical assessment of the opus to create substantial and meticulous examinations of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s choral-orchestral works. The contents include an equitable choice of pieces from the various stages in the life of the composer and an analysis of pieces from the various stages of Williams’s life. The earliest are taken from the pre-World War I years, when Vaughan Williams was constructing his identity as an academic and musician—Vexilla Regis (1894), Mass (1899), and A Sea Symphony (1910). The middle group are chosen from the interwar period—Sancta Civitas (1925), Benedicite (1929), Magnificat (1932), Five Tudor Portraits (1935), Dona nobis pacem (1936)—written after Vaughan Williams had found his mature voice. The last cluster—Thanksgiving for Victory (1944), Fantasia (Quasi Variazione) on the ‘Old 104’ Psalm Tune(1949), Sons of Light (1950), Hodie (1954), The Bridal Day/Epithalamion (1938/1957)—typify the works finished or revisited during the final years of the composer’s life, near the end of the Second World War and immediately before or after his second marriage (1953).

British Music and Modernism, 1895–1960

British Music and Modernism, 1895–1960 PDF Author: Matthew Riley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351573012
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Imaginative analytical and critical work on British music of the early twentieth century has been hindered by perceptions of the repertory as insular in its references and backward in its style and syntax, escaping the modernity that surrounded its composers. Recent research has begun to break down these perceptions and has found intriguing links between British music and modernism. This book brings together contributions from scholars working in analysis, hermeneutics, reception history, critical theory and the history of ideas. Three overall themes emerge from its chapters: accounts of British reactions to Continental modernism and the forms they took; links between music and the visual arts; and analysis and interpretation of compositions in the light of recent theoretical work on form, tonality and pitch organization.