(Vaughan Williams' setting of three traditional English ca...)
Vaughan Williams' setting of three traditional English carols, The Truth sent from Above, Come All You Worthy Gentlemen, and On Christmas Night all Christians Sing was composed in 1912. The premiere was given under the composer's direction on September 12 of that year at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford Cathedral. This new edition of the vocal score by Richard Sargeant has been prepared with chorus' needs in mind. The layout is music improved over the original 1912 score, with the vocal staves at full size while the piano reduction is produced in smaller type. It is printed in a convenient, easy to hold size which fits comfortably in any choir folder.
(for soprano solo, SSA chorus, and full orchestra This new...)
for soprano solo, SSA chorus, and full orchestra This new edition of Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 7, the Sinfonia Antartica, has been prepared by David Matthews with support from the Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust. The work was drawn from the music Vaughan Williams provided for the film Scott of the Antarctic in 1947 and was completed in 1952. In it the composer skilfully evokes the sparse beauty and grandeur of the landscape with a large orchestra and percussion section, including - famously - a wind machine, to create a work of great power and intensity. This new edition contains an introduction and textual commentary and is published as a full score, study score, and women's chorus, with all performing material on hire.
The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Clarendon Paperbacks)
(This is the authoritative account of Vaughan Williams's m...)
This is the authoritative account of Vaughan Williams's musical life-- the story of a great composer's career, and at the same time the story of music in England for over half a century. Kennedy considers the principal works in chronological order, outlining the main features of each and discussing details of the music's structure, often illuminating his point with a musical quotation. He also provides a good deal of biographical data, and so builds up a picture of the composer, as well as providing thumbnail sketches of many of Vaughan Williams's friends and colleagues. Kennedy's extensive knowledge of Vaughan Williams's output also enables him to refer back and forth across the works to pick out lines of development and influence. Along with Michael Kennedy's new preface, the second edition includes a full classified list of Vaughan Williams's works.
Songs of Travel: Low Voice New Edition with Online Audio of Piano Accompaniments
((Boosey & Hawkes Voice). A new, easier to read music engr...)
(Boosey & Hawkes Voice). A new, easier to read music engraving of these perennial voice studio favorites with recorded audio accompaniment for practice and historical introduction.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.
Background
Vaughan Williams was born on October 12, 1872 in Down Ampney, England, the third child and younger son of the vicar, the Reverend Arthur Vaughan Williams (1834-1875) and his wife, Margaret, née Wedgwood (1842-1937). Arthur Vaughan Williams died suddenly in February 1875, and his widow took the children to live in her family home, Leith Hill Place, Wotton, Surrey. The children were under the care of a nurse, Sara Wager, who instilled in them not only polite manners and good behaviour but also liberal social and philosophical opinions.
Education
Vaughan Williams received his musical education at Trinity College, Cambridge (B. Mus.
1901), and the Royal College of Music, London, with some subsequent study under Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris.
Career
After World War I, in which he served in Macedonia and France, Vaughan Williams became professor of composition at the Royal College of Music and remained there until 1940. In 1935 he received the Order of Merit, but in the main he avoided official recognition, preferring to maintain unhampered the independence of mind and speech for which he was noted. Apart from teaching, some conducting (especially of amateur groups), and acting as judge at music festivals, he devoted his career entirely to composition. He continued to lead an immensely active life right up to the time of his death on August 26, 1958, in London. Early in this century Vaughan Williams became strongly interested in English folk song; and this interest, which never waned, played its part in shaping his own musical ideas. But despite the traditional English roots in his work, Vaughan Williams was an adventurous composer: both harmonically and contrapuntally he was uncompromising when he needed to be. His use of the orchestra became more colorful in his later years. He was a prolific composer in most fields except those of chamber music and the piano. A remarkable range of mood is to be found in his nine symphonies, of which perhaps the sixth (1948) was his masterpiece. His next most important contribution was to church and choral music, his major works here include the Mass in G Minor (1923), Sancta Civitas (1926), Five Tudor Portraits (1936), Serenade to Music (1938), and This Day (Hodie) (1954). He had less success with his stage works, though the operas Sir John in Love (1929) and The Pilgrim's Progress (1951) contain some of his finest and most characteristic music.
Achievements
Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.
Collard life fellowship of the Worshipful Company of Musicians (1934), honorary fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge (1935)
Connections
In October 1897 Adeline Fisher, and Vaughan Williams were married. They honeymooned for several months in Berlin, where he studied with Max Bruch. On their return they settled in London, originally in Westminster and, from 1905, in Chelsea. Adeline died in 1951. There were no children of the marriage. In February 1953, Vaughan Williams married Ursula Wood.
