Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 / Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 / Flos Campi

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Cat No: 8557276

Release Date: 09 January 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313227624

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Description
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)Symphony No. 4 Flos Campi Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in theGloucestershire village of Down Ampney in 1872, theson of a clergyman. His ancestry on both his father'sand mother's side was of some intellectual distinction.His father was descended from a family eminent in thelaw, while his maternal grandfather was a Wedgwoodand his grandmother a Darwin. On the death of hisfather in 1875 the family moved to live with hismother's father at Leith Hill Place in Surrey. As a childVaughan Williams learned the piano and the violin andreceived a conventional upper middle class educationat Charterhouse, after which he delayed entry toCambridge, preferring instead to study at the RoyalCollege of Music, where his teachers included HubertParry and Walter Parratt, later Master of the Queen'sMusick, both soon to be knighted. In 1892 he took uphis place at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he readHistory, but took composition lessons from CharlesWood. After graduation in both History and Music, hereturned to the Royal College, where he studiedcomposition with Stanford, and, perhaps moresignificant, became a friend of a fellow-student,Gustav Holst. The friendship with Holst was to proveof great importance in frank exchanges of views on oneanother's compositions in the years that followed.In 1897 Vaughan Williams married and took theopportunity to visit Berlin, where he had lessons fromMax Bruch and widened his musical experience. InEngland he turned his attention to the collection offolk-music in various regions of the country, an interestthat materially influenced the shape of his musicallanguage. In 1908 he went to Paris to take lessons,particularly in orchestration, from Ravel. By now hehad begun to make a reputation for himself as acomposer, not least with the first performance in 1910of A Sea Symphony, setting words by Walt Whitman,and his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis in thesame year. At the outbreak of war in 1914 he enlistedat once in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private.This was also the year of the London Symphony and ofhis rhapsodic work for violin and orchestra, The LarkAscending. Three years later, after service in Salonicathat seemed to him ineffective, he took a commissionin the Royal Garrison Artillery and was posted toFrance. There he was also able to make some use of hisabilities as a musician.After the war Vaughan Williams returned to theRoyal College of Music, now as a professor ofcomposition, a position he retained until 1938. In theseyears he came to occupy a commanding place in themusical life of the country, with a series ofcompositions that seemed essentially English, theapparent successor of Elgar, although his musicallanguage was markedly different. The war of 1939brought the challenge of composition for the cinema,with notable scores for The 49th Parallel in 1940 and anumber of other films, culminating in 1949 in hismusic for the film Scott of the Antarctic, the bas
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