Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 2, 'london' / The Wasps Overture

Description

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958)A London Symphony (Symphony No.2)Overture: The WaspsRalph Vaughan Williams was born in the Gloucestershire village of Down Ampneyin 1872, the son of a clergyman. His ancestry on both his father's and mother'sside was of some intellectual distinction. His father was descended from afamily eminent in the law, while his maternal grandfather was a Wedgwood and hisgrandmother a Darwin. On the death of his father in 1875 the family moved tolive with his mother's father at Leith Hill Place in Surrey. As a child VaughanWilliams learned the piano and the violin and received a conventional uppermiddle class education at Charterhouse, after which he delayed entry toCambridge, preferring instead to study at the Royal College of Music, where histeachers included Hubert Parry and Walter Parratt, later Master of the Queen'sMusick, both soon to be knighted. In 1892 he took up his place at TrinityCollege, Cambridge, where he read History, but took composition lessons fromCharles Wood. After graduation in both Music and History, he returned to theRoyal College, where he studied composition with Stanford, and, perhaps moreIimportant, became a friend of a fellow-student Gustav Holst. The friendshipwith Holst was to prove of great importance in frank exchanges of views on oneanother's compositions in the years following.In 1897 Vaughan Williams married and took the opportunity to visit Berlin,where he had lessons from Max Bruch and widened his musical experience. InEngland he turned his attention to the collection of folk-music in variousregions of the country, an interest that materially influenced the shape of hismusical language. In 1908 he went to Paris to take lessons, particularly inorchestration, from Ravel, and had by now begun to make a reputation for himselfas a composer, not least with the first performance in 1910 of his firstsymphony, A Sea Symphony, setting words by Walt Whitman, and his Fantasia ona Theme of Thomas Tallis in the same year. The even tenor of his life wasinterrupted by the war, when he enlisted at once in the Royal Army MedicalCorps. 1914 was also the year of A London Symphony and of his rhapsodicwork for violin and orchestra, A Lark Ascending. Three years later, afterservice in Salonica that seemed to him ineffective, he took a commission in theRoyal Garrison Artillery and was posted to France, where he was also able tomake some use of his abilities as a musician.After the war Vaughan Williams returned to the Royal College of Music, now asa professor of composition, a position he retained until 1938. In these years hecame to occupy a commanding position in the musical life of the country, with aseries of compositions that seemed essentially English, the apparent successorof Elgar, although his musical language was markedly different. The second warbrought the challenge of composition for the cinema, with notable scores for The49th Parallel in 1940 and a number of other films, culminating in 1949 inmus