Should we shoot that bloomin' lark?

Why Vaughan Williams’ reputation might be greater without his most popular work.

With two works in the Top Five of Classic FM’s Hall of Fame, many will feel justified in naming Vaughan Williams the country’s most popular composer. The cynic in me would say that 90% of the country have probably never heard of him at all. Of those that have, it will probably be down to “The Lark Ascending” and the “Fantasia on Greensleeves”. Some will also drool over “Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus” or smile at his “English Folk Suite”. Is there anything wrong with that?

Well, nothing if you look at each piece individually: they are all tuneful, memorable and well written. They are also relatively short and very much ‘folky’ pieces. This is definitely a problem for me. It gives the impression that Vaughan Williams was solely the composer of pleasantly descriptive pieces. This misrepresentation is compounded by lazy music journalists seizing on the word ‘pastoral’ whenever they write about him and referring back to cliched mis-quotes of the ‘cow-pat school’ of music or Vaughan Williams ‘rolling around in a field’. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with composing approachable, tuneful music. The Strauss family created an enormous output of waltzes, polkas and marches and are (quite rightly) remembered with no little respect. Perhaps not dissimilarly, film composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams are revered by classical musicians (and there is clear joy on the faces of the Vienna Philharmonic as they play “Darth Vader’s March” under the baton of Mr Williams) despite them not being known for writing ‘formal’ works (although John Williams has composed some challenging music including two violin concertos).

However, rightly or wrongly, these latter composers do not feature in anyone’s list of ‘greatest composers’. They tend to be seen as niche or specialist artists. (Film composers are, in my opinion, generally and unfairly looked down upon by classical music enthusiasts although much of their music is both skilfully written and enduring.) Popular composers cannot, apparently, be great (a debate for another time.) By acclaiming Vaughan Williams as Britain’s most popular composer, I think we are in danger of precluding the possibility of him being Britain’s greatest composer. This bothers me as he is not only my favourite composer, but I think I can make a good case for him being the country’s greatest. Indeed, I would not be against arguing the case for him being one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century, to be rated alongside Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Sibelius. Surely it is not too much to ask that, while attending to a composer’s celebrity status, we might also think about enhancing the reputation that they deserve?

And this is my issue with ClassicFM. What they regularly fail to mention, and what they do little to address, is that Vaughan Williams was both an immensely skilful composer and (to my mind undoubtedly) England’s greatest symphonist. (Don’t stop reading because I mentioned the ‘S’ word – if you want to get into symphonies, Vaughan Williams is as good an entry point as Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven. His is one of the most consistently successful, varied and approachable of all symphony cycles.) But this side of his output is quietly ignored rather like an embarrassing relative – let’s not talk about Uncle Ralph.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Vaughan Williams wasn’t just a composer of pleasantly tuneful works, neither was he just a symphonic composer – he composed some fine chamber music, excellent song cycles, marvellous choral works and a number of operas. Much of this is of a very high quality which is missed by listeners attracted to his lyrical, modal style. Interested readers may be interested in my brief introduction to the “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis”, in which I try to demonstrate the tremendous craftmanship which went into a hugely popular work. As in so many great works (e.g. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto) we see here the art which conceals art – listeners can enjoy the emotional impact of the music with no idea at all of how it is put together. Not that I’m suggesting one needs to understand the workings of a piece to appreciate it although I do think it enhances one’s experience of it and one’s view of the composer. (And the technical skill involved in creating the Fantasia was enormous.)

Vaughan Williams is, for me, the most English of composers (Elgar being the most British) and his music expresses many different sides of Englishness – his Sea Symphony transports us back to the era of British sailing ships while the London Symphony takes us on a tour of our capital city during the early part of the 20th Century when a cab was still horse-drawn (I will definitely blog about the symphonies another time – I feel a certain evangelical zeal for spreading the word). The song cycle “On Wenlock Edge” (which exists in two equally effective versions – one for orchestra and the other for piano quintet), setting texts by AE Housman , is typically Vaughan Williams in its use of modern composition techniques to evoke an older age. Nowhere is that heard to better effect then in his “Mass in G Minor”  which has one foot in the 20th Century and the other in the 16th. There is, in VW’s music, grandeur with modesty, passion expressed with restraint, modernism with mysticism. Not for nothing have writers talked about a ’duality’ in the composer.

In addition to composing, Vaughan Williams made an immeasurable contribution to music in England through his valuable work collecting folk songs which were in danger of being lost forever. He would travel the country, meeting ordinary people in villages and asking them to share folk songs which had been passed down orally across generations but never written down. (Cecil Sharp also did this and left an equally important legacy but is less-widely recognised amongst classical-music lovers although his name is well-known to students of folk music). Having preserved these songs for posterity, Vaughan Williams then arranged many of them for choirs so that they would continue to be heard – a wonderful act of creative preservation.  Included amongst them are “Bushes and Briars” and “Greensleeves”. His “Three Shakespeare Songs” were composed as test pieces for a choir competition but there is nothing academic about them – the technical challenges (including the tolling bells of “Full Fathom Five” or the spacious opening chords of “The Cloud-Capp’d Towers”) are intrinsic to the music and no mere add-on.

Church goers have, for more than a hundred years, benefited from his contribution to the English Hymnal  for which he arranged and composed a wonderful collection of hymn tunes. Some, such as “He who would valiant be” (a personal favourite) make use of an existing tune (in that case “Our captain cried: All hands”) whilst others such as “For all the saints” were set to an original tune. How many children have sung these hymns in school assemblies, knowing nothing of the man that composed or arranged them?

As a lover of both classical music and nature, I have no wish to impede the lark’s graceful ascent. It is a thing of beauty and has accompanied me on many country walks. I do wish, though, that its twittering would not so easily drown out the rest of Vaughan William’s output. Can you imagine the uproar if it were felt that Shakespeare was known only as the man who coined phrases such as “pound of flesh” or “to be or not to be” and not as the author of Hamlet or the Merchant of Venice? Or if Da Vinci was remembered for the Mona Lisa but not for The Last Supper or his helicopter and parachute designs? I am all for raising the profile and hopefully popularity of great figures, but I do feel this should be done in a balanced and educational way, conveying some impression of the whole greatness of the individual and not just offering a highlights disc. I note that British orchestras are beginning to champion his cause more than has been the case for some years and that even non-British orchestras are starting to program his symphonies. I could not be happier. Gustav Mahler once said “my time will come”.  Perhaps the time is coming for Vaughan Williams.

Click here to view my introduction to VW’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.