Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) - Fantasia on a Theme
of Thomas Tallis
Vaughan
Williams believed that a composer “should make his art an expression of
the whole life of the community”. His music reveals that he meant this
at the “personal” rather than the “national” level, and as a basis for
his development as a composer he turned to the music he felt most representative
of long, communal tradition: English folk-song and the music of Sixteenth
Century composers. The former influence earned him a place in the school
referred to scathingly as “cow-pat composers”. In the present work, a product
of the latter, there's not a cow-pat in sight (or smell). The theme Vaughan
Williams used is Tallis' Why Fumeth in Fight, the third of nine
psalm tunes of 1567, written for Archbisop Parker's Psalter, and which
Vaughan Williams had already included in his own English Hymnal.
The Tallis
Fantasia, premiered in Gloucester in 1910, is also a product of the
aftermath of Vaughan Williams' three months' pilgrimage to Paris to study
with Ravel, specifically to sharpen up his orchestral technique. These
studies he put into practice with a vengeance, scoring the Fantasia
for unusual, and sonically challenging, forces: a large string orchestra,
a chamber-sized string orchestra, and a string quartet.
These
particular forces were not chosen “just to be different”: if you think
of the main band as the “universal”, the chamber band as “community”, and
the soloists of the quartet as “members of the family”, then they begin
to reflect Vaughan Williams's professed credo. They also reflect the acoustic
of a large ecclesiastical enclosure, in which Vaughan Williams envisaged
them being distributed antiphonally. Moreover, in the music itself, he
deploys these forces strategically. Starting with the main band only, projecting
“immensity”, he gradually draws the chamber band into a dialogue, zooming
in to the “communal”. Likewise, the introduction of the string quartet
pares down the scale to one of intimate, personal communion. Like in a
painting, our attention is drawn in, focused onto this still centre, from
where Vaughan Williams builds outwards, purposefully revealing a “whole”
that is more than the “sum of its parts”.
It's a
bit like the experience of visiting a cathedral. On entering, you sense
only the immense space, but as you tread (respectfully) inwards, you gradually
become aware of the columns and arches defining that space, and the pews
that contain the congregational community. Having advanced all the way
down the nave to stand before the altar, you can now see the attendant
array of artefacts concerned with personal communion. Here, you turn around
- and are engulfed by the vastness of the whole, now magnified by
your awareness of its parts. But, it's not just that, is it? These
buildings span the ages, connecting us to our mysterious forebears. In
his music Vaughan Williams, through his reworking of Tallis' resonant melody,
creates an analogous continuity, a stairway from “now” receding into the
mists of time. Two words say it all: awe-inspiring.
.
© Paul Serotsky
29, Carr Street,
Kamo,
Whangarei 0101,
Northland,
New Zealand
Conditions
for use apply. Details here
Copyright in these notes is retained by the author without whose prior written permission they may not be used, reproduced, or kept in any form of data storage system. Permission for use will generally be granted on application, free of charge subject to the conditions that (a) the author is duly credited, and (b) a donation is made to a charity of the author's choice.
Return to:
Music
on the Web