BEAUTY AND THE BLEAK.

Byline: CRAIG SMITH

Craig Smith I The New Mexican

Ralph Vaughan Williams is widely regarded as the king of the English pastoralists. He was the man who, by tonally expressing the streams, sun, showers, and meadows of his native land, freed its musical life from a century of complicated Germanic contrapuntal dominance and led composers back to the serene fields of Purcell, Tallis, and Byrd.

Along the way, the story goes, he rediscovered

the treasures of English folk song; did some excellent hymnal editing and hymn and organ writing, not to mention notable film scores, including Scott of the Antarctic; composed works in all media for individuals, organizations, and major national occasions, including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; and lived his own life sturdily in the process.

But no matter how grandly scaled his music was, it was never colossal or tormented. Rather, it was based in larks ascending, surging strings, tidy vocalism, and "Greensleeves"-like courtliness, plus a healthy fascination with the ancient musical modes.

As with many lingering legends, there's truth in those thoughts but just as much falsehood. Personally, RVW -- as many knew him -- was, like any man, a mixture of personal strengths and, fortunately, not many frailties. Professionally, he did his work well but also used it as an outlet for his own hopes, fears, and furies.

I found that out 30 years ago, when I did my master's-degree research paper on his solo song cycles. As I read, worked, and listened, the vague vision I had of a beatific being writing the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and the bucolic boy who penned Songs of Travel became concretized. My initial image was a shell that needed to be filled up with anecdote, fact, and, above all, the message of the music. Only then would I have any true idea

of the man's measure.

"Think again, young man"

Ralph (pronounced "Rafe") was born in 1872 in comfortable circumstances. His father was a parson from a line of famous lawyers, and through his mother (a Wedgwood) he was related to the Darwins. From his earliest student days he worked exceptionally hard as a musician, even though his family's affluence meant he never had to hold a 9-to-5 job.

He was always true to his own ideals: when he was well over conscription age, he joined the British army to serve as an ambulance driver in World War I and dealt bravely with the horrible things he saw.

He loved Bach and studied with Ravel, who taught him that counterpoint should be "complex but not complicated." He also studied with the great English masters and in Germany. His friends included many internationally famous musicians, but his closest friendships were reserved for English compatriots such as Gustav Holst and Gerald Finzi.

Vaughan Williams married Adeline Fisher, a pre-Raphaelite beauty with family connections as eminent as his own, in 1897. They had no children, and she died in 1951. He married Ursula Wood, a young World War II widow, in 1953. Born in 1911, Ursula survived him by almost 50 years. She died in 2007 at age 96; he died in 1958.

Throughout his life, Vaughan Williams went his own way and expressed his own vision. When his opera The Pilgrim's Progress premiered at Covent Garden in 1951, Ursula quoted him as saying, "They won't like it, they don't want an opera with no heroine and no love duets -- and I don't care, it's what I meant, and there it is."

More recently, when Tony Palmer -- director of the excellent 2007 documentary on Vaughan Williams' life, O Thou Transcendent (see sidebar) -- spoke to the composer's old colleague Roy Douglas, Palmer was asked sharply what Vaughan Williams' music was about. When Palmer spoke of belief in humanity and optimism, Douglas pulled him up sharply.

"Oh, yes? End of the Sixth Symphony? Fourth Symphony? Ninth Symphony? Even the Norfolk Rhapsody?" Douglas said, as Palmer recounts in the DVD booklet. "A very bleak vision. Just think of the times he lived through. Think again, young man."

Yes, some of that vision was bleak, and much of it was painful. But all of it was glorious.

A choral tribute

To close its 2008 season, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale performs Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Retrospective in tribute to the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. Two Santa Fe performances are set -- one at Cristo Rey Church and one at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. British conductor Jonathan Willcocks conducts the ensemble and the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra in several major works.

For an opener, there's the overture from the incidental music for Aristophanes' play The Wasps. Then come the a capella, double-choir Mass in

G Minor and the orchestral-vocal Five Mystical Songs, with baritone and former Desert Chorale member David Farwig as soloist. After intermission, Willcocks' own Lux Perpetua, commissioned by the Hinsdale Township High School District near Chicago, is slated. The text includes excerpts from the traditional Requiem Mass as well as contemporary poetry.

I reached Willcocks at his London home by phone.

Pasatiempo: How do you feel about leading this repertoire -- and had you heard of the Desert Chorale before?

Jonathan Willcocks: I am really thrilled that in

the 50th year after his death, I've gotten the opportunity to present his music. I'd heard of

them, the chorale, but actually I didn't know anything about them. So I did a bit of research. It's obviously a very strong program, and I gather they're in the process of choosing a music director. I'm delighted they asked me!

Pasa: The chorale has done the Mass in G Minor before. How do you regard it?

Willcocks: The Mass, obviously, is quite unusual for Vaughan Williams. Many of his major choral works are for large orchestra [accompaniment]. One thinks not only of the Sea Symphony but Hodie and Dona Nobis Pacem. This is a much more intimate work in a way, but it's by no means a small work. It's a major piece for double chorus and solo quartet.

As well, there's a rather nice tie-in with the piece of mine which makes up the second half of the program. Vaughan Williams wrote the Mass after he was involved in the thick of things in World War I. He was in his 40s

but had enlisted, and he had a very vivid firsthand experience of the slaughter. The Mass in G Minor is very much a reflective work.

My own Lux Perpetua, of which the main theme is peace and unity, draws on material from First World War poets. And especially, my

moving visiting of war graves in many parts of Europe, where much of the bloodshed took place.

Pasa: Perhaps you recall your first experience with the Mass.

Willcocks: My first experience of the G-Minor Mass was singing it as a boy chorister at King's College, Cambridge, nearly 50 years ago! The choir performed the Mass on several occasions. In those early days of stereo recording, the choir recorded a lot of the great English church music. My father was the musical director, [Sir] David Willcocks. He had come to King's in 1957 and was there to 1974. I'm his greatest fan! He's still busy working at age 88, still very active as a director. Much of my early development as a choral director was instanced from him.

Pasa: This sounds like a fine program to me, but I admit I wish I could hear the Five Tudor Portraits or another one of the big pieces.

Willcocks: The original idea was to do Dona Nobis Pacem, but it needs a very large choral force. Even though they're very fine singers [in the Chorale], 32 or 36 singers would not work but would be appropriate for the

G-Minor Mass. As you know, we're working with the Santa Fe Symphony, and they will accompany the Five Mystical Songs and other pieces.

Pasa: When you are doing a concert such as this, how do you approach the English texts?

Willcocks: I think with all sorts of music one directs, one starts with the setting that the composer has given one. Through his music, you can tell how he feels the phrasing should be. It's my intention to reflect the musical intent and the literary intent. I'm very fond of the Five Mystical Songs; I think his settings of George Herbert are really very varied. I'm a great fan of Vaughan Williams' setting of texts -- his vocal music, solo or choral.

Pasa: I gather Lux Perpetua was a commission.

Willcocks: Yes, it was commissioned in 1999 for a group of high schools and first performed in 1999, and I went and directed the first performance there. In no way did I feel myself writing for students. I was trying to write a choral work they would find challenging and approachable. It's a work that many choirs, largely adult choirs, have done, and I've recorded it as well, for Priory Records.

Pasa: What other U.S. conducting do you have coming up?

Willcocks: I'm going to be there the week before I go to Santa Fe, at the Harbor Choral Festival in Michigan. It's based quite near Grand Rapids. I'm doing the Durufle Requiem and two of the Handel Coronation Anthems: "Zadok the Priest" and "The King Shall Rejoice." The adult chorus rehearses for a week, then gives a performance. They're also doing my children's chorus, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. A setting of the very familiar poem for kiddies, brass quintet, percussion, and narrator.

details

Santa Fe Desert Chorale: Ralphilliams: A Retrospective

8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8; Cristo Rey Church, 1120 Canyon Road

4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 10; Lensic Performing Arts Center,

211 W. San Francisco St.

$25-$55 depending on venue; 988-1234

50 years, 30 CDs

Among the musical tributes occasioned by the 50th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams' death is a 30-disc release by EMI: Vaughan Williams: The Collector's Edition. The subtitle is "The Masterpieces; The Greatest Artists," and there's no question that the label has gone back into its vaults for notable performances by many musicians who knew and worked with him.

It's not a complete sonic catalogue raisonee, but it offers plenty to enjoy, with performers including Dame Janet Baker, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductors Sir Adrian Boult,

Sir John Barbirolli, and Richard Hickox. I remember listening to most of these works over the course of my college and graduate-school work, and

I must say they've worn exceptionally well.

The orchestral musinine symphonies -- A Sea Symphony, A London Symphony, A Pastoral Symphony, Sinfonia Antarctica, and the unnamed rest. The famous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is, of course, here, as are Five Variants of "Dives and Lazarus", the Oboe Concerto, the Violin Concerto, both the orchestral and two-piano versions of the Piano Concerto in C Major, and the "Aristophanic Suite" to The Wasps. The tuba concerto and harmonica concerto are interesting works, seldom heard, while The Lark Ascending for violin and orchestra is a perennial favorite.

Major vocal works with orchestra are the operas Hugh the Drover, Sir John in Love, Riders to the Sea, and The Pilgrim's Progress; the big-scaled Five Tudor Portraits; the gorgeous Serenade to Music; the compelling Five Mystical Songs; and the oratorios Hodie and Dona Nobis Pacem. Song cycles take in Songs of Travel, The House of Life, On Wenlock Edge, Four Hymns, and Ten Blake Songs. There are also ballets, chamber music, hymns, and piano, organ, and church music, and the list is by no means finished.

EMI has also issued a single companion disc, The Essential Vaughan Williams. With 31 pieces drawn from the larger set, it certainly takes a greatest-hits approach, but there's nothing wrong with that. And of course, many other labels will be putting out tributes: Naxos is releasing all the Vaughan Williams symphonies this month.

-- C.S.

The man and the music: O Thou Transcendent

This 148-minute documentary on Vaughan Williams by filmmaker Tony Palmer, released last December and available in the U.S. through Naxos, really is a stunning achievement. Even though the film was commissioned by the Vaughan Williams Trust, it isn't a panegyric but a vivid and successful attempt to put the man's life, music, and learning in context.

Palmer's own words are apropos. "O Thou Transcendent is not a hymn of praise. Far from it. My intention is to explode forever the myth of Vaughan Williams as a cuddly old uncle endlessly recycling English folk songs. ... Vaughan Williams bestrides English music in the 20th century like a colossus. Every aspect of our musical life stands in his shadow."

I know quite a bit about RVW, but I didn't know that it was hearing the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis that led the young American composer John Adams to want to be a composer, or that Neil Tennant of the Pet Shops Boys had a striking encounter with RVW's music as a student, or that the adolescent Harrison Birtwistle once approached the octogenarian composer to ask for advice on how to achieve those same creative heights. Similar stories, a fantastic interview with Ursula Vaughan Williams (the composer's second wife) a few weeks before her death, and excerpts from many of the great works make this documentary vivid, well-paced, and exceptionally telling. I highly recommend it.

-- C.S.

CAPTION(S):

See pdf's for caption, graphics and photographer info.