Musical Moments #26
Musical Moment #26
“All great composers have borrowed from the songs of the common people.”
Antonin Dvorák
“Fantasia on Greensleeves"
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Today, let’s give the Choir a day off, and when you hear this performance, don’t be confused; it is not Christmas in June. “Greensleeves” was an English folksong long before it became known as a Christmas carol.
This ballad was registered in London by Richard Jones in 1580 as "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves." Four years later, the song appeared in a publication “A Handful of Pleasant Delights as A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves”. This tune from the Elizabethan era was probably known by the general public given its mention in Shakespeare's Falstaff and The Merry Wives of Windsor. One such reference relays, “Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of 'Greensleeves'!” While a variety of texts have been associated with the tune, the hymn text for “What Child is This,” written in 1865 by William Dix, is the one best known today.
The beautiful version you are hearing is entitled a “Fantasia on Greensleeves" which is an orchestral interlude found in Vaughan Williams’ opera Sir John in Love. The arrangement from which he drew his “Fantasia” was composed by Ralph Greaves, who also placed a little folk song, “Lovely Joan” in the middle section.
During WWI, Vaughan Williams volunteered, at age 42, as an ambulance driver and later saw combat on the front lines where the sound of guns caused a hearing lost that became increasing problematic with age. In the 1930s, his music seemed to be unusually harsh and dark with dissonant harmony, and many of his friends suggested this reflected the rising international tension. It was in this period that he also wrote the powerful choral masterpiece, Dona Nobis Pacem, described by conductor Sir Adrian Boult as a way Vaugh Williams “seemed to get the war off his chest.” In this same period his friends Edward Elgar and Frederick Delius passed away, as well as his closest friend since college, Gustav Holst, whose death was especially heart breaking.
Vaughan Williams is an immensely important figure in English music and certainly one of the most important composers in the first half of the 20th century. The London Times wrote, “He found in the Elizabethans and folk-song the elements of a native English language that need no longer be spoken with a German accent, and from it he forged his own idiom.” While many describe him as primarily a symphonist, he loved vocal music and believed that the voice could deliver the “best and deepest human emotion." He even served as conductor of the London Bach Choir.
Vaughan Williams was humble and seemed to run from accolades, refusing a knighthood and the title Master of the King’s Music. However, at his death, he was given a state funeral with his ashes interred in Westminster Abbey near Purcell and Stanford.
The performance of this elegant and well-crafted piece comes from 2020’s February “Spiritual Spaces” program and features harpist, Dawn Edwards and flutist Dr. Nora Lee Garcia with members of the Bach Festival Orchestra.
-John V. Sinclair
“Music is the one thing which defies bombs and blitzes. Music is the one thing which binds together those who live at opposite ends of the globe. Music is the one thing which makes friends of those who have never met, and perhaps will never meet except through the power of the greatest of the arts.”
Ralph Vaughan Williams