Vaughan Williams - Softcover

Simon Heffer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753811243 ISBN 13: 9780753811245

Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2001

Synopsis

In the first years of the twentieth century, Ralph Vaughan Williams led an English musical renaissance. Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar, the fathers of English music in the nineteenth century, took their lead from the German masters. Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst took theirs, exceptionally, from the neglected sources of folk song. The result was a distinctive English voice that changed the culture of a nation. After a long struggle to develop his talents, Vaughan Williams established himself as a composer whose music, through his promotion of folk song and editorship of the English Hymnal, made him a household name and caused his work - most famously The Lark Ascending, Greensleeves, the Tallis Fantasia and nine outstanding symphonies - to be loved by generations in Britain and around the world.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Heffer was born in 1960 and educated at King Edward VI School, Chelmsford, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read English. He is now a political columnist with the Daily Mail and has previously been political editor of The Spectator and deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph.

From Publishers Weekly

It is to be questioned whether a new study of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is called for, when a couple of good biographies are already available, including one by his widow, Ursula, and Michael Kennedy's excellent book on the music. But journalist and author Heffer (Nor Shall My Sword: The Reinvention of England), who seems to have no special musical training (which his subject would probably have wryly appreciated) has done a thoroughly workmanlike job of evoking the composer's peculiarly English ethos. VW (as he is known in England) set out consciously to be an English composer rather than a member of any international group or movement, and though there were critics who derided what they saw as his parochiality, his music, Heffer observes, has survived with remarkable strength, some of it now even seen as prophetic. Heffer is particularly insightful about VW's last symphonies, the unaccountably neglected piano concerto and his long and constantly thwarted ambition to compose operas that would hold their place in the repertory. But Heffer has nothing much to add, in this slim volume, to what is already known of the life. (If only some scholar could unearth a more complete account of VW's period of study with Ravel in Paris surely one of the unlikeliest matchings of two great composers ever made.) What Heffer has done very convincingly is to set forth eloquently what makes VW's music not only internationally admired, but a source of particular pride and solace to his countrymen. Heffer concludes with an all-too-brief critical discography.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0753811243
• ISBN 13: 9780753811245
• Binding: Paperback