|
Symphony No.9 in E
minor |
Ralph Vaughan Williams |
As far as we know, this is the first ever performance of Vaughan
Williams Symphony No.9 in Salisbury,
although it is particularly appropriate that it is played in this city with
which it has such strong connections.
Vaughan Williams loved
The Symphony No.9 in E minor was Vaughan Williams’ last in a composing career of well over half a century. However, rather than being the ramblings of a tired old man, it can be seen as combining the best of the composer – his well known English pastoral music with the more vibrant music of his 4th and 6th symphonies and the eeriness of his Sinfonia Antarctica. It is exceedingly varied, being at one moment sombre and contemplative and at the next defiant and playful. Maybe Vaughan Williams was looking back over his long and varied life which included both world wars and many friends lost.
The symphony was composed in 1956-7, much of it while staying in the picturesque village of Ashmansworth in Hampshire, home of the composer, Gerald Finzi, and only 30 miles from Salisbury. It was first performed under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent on 2nd April 1958 only four months before Vaughan Williams death at the age of 86.
The work is scored for large orchestra including an extensive
percussion section and unusually three saxophones and a flügelhorn, the latter
instrument more typically heard within brass bands. These instruments’ mellow voices are integral
to the timbre of the work. Vaughan
William stated that the saxophones should be “allowed to be their romantic
selves”, while he considered the flügelhorn a “beautiful and neglected”
instrument. Ursula Vaughan Williams
recalled when her husband heard a flügelhorn while on holiday in
We went on the Königsee in a silent electric boat. In mid-lake the pilot stopped, unpacked a flügelhorn and played a halted phrase, which the mountains’ echo sent back, beautifully improved – “A good sound” Ralph said. “I shall put it into the symphony”.
Although Vaughan Williams removed all programme references from the work, where they are known, I mention them below for illustrative purposes to help the listener understand this complex symphony.
I. Moderato maestoso – Originally titled Wessex Prelude, the movement starts with a distinctive rising tread in the lower brass and woodwind which resembles that in the opening of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which Vaughan Williams was known to love and associate with Salisbury Cathedral, having heard his friend, Walter Alcock (cathedral organist and founding conductor of the Salisbury Orchestral Society) play it in the darkened building on a July night in 1938. This leads into a dramatic and turbulent section. Later there is a haunting violin solo recalling that in the Lark Ascending with a mysterious theme bringing the movement to a quiet close.
II. Andante sostenuto – This movement is the one associated with Thomas Hardy’s Tess of d’Urbervilles which was a favourite novel of Vaughan Williams. It has been suggested that it “illustrated Tess herself, the forces which oppose her, her attempt to escape, her arrest at Stonehenge and her eventual execution (complete with tolling of the execution bell)”[1]. The movement starts with a plaintive flügelhorn solo which is known to have come from an unpublished tone poem The Solent of 1903 which is also referred to in Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony. This is abruptly interrupted by a barbaric figure from muted brass and then the rest of the orchestra associated with “the ghostly drummer of Salisbury Plain”. Things do calm down to a wistful pastoral episode. The movement continues straight into the following scherzo.
III. Scherzo (Allegro pesante) – There is something rather magical about the scherzo – shades of the Sorcerers Apprentice and Uranus, the Magician. The music of Shostakovich at his most satirical may also come to mind. The saxophones play a large part in this movement giving it much of its distinctive colour.
IV. Andante tranquillo – This, the longest movement is also believed to allude to Salisbury Cathedral. It begins with a pensive violin tune which turns into a rhapsodic episode passed around the rest of the orchestra. The monumental contrasting ideas suggest a Stonehenge-like landscape and wonderfully bring together the complicated threads of all that has gone before. The movement ends with three big waves of sound and final chords from the saxophones to finally fade away to conclude one of the composers greatest works.
Instrumentation (key to notation): 3/1 2+1 2+1 2+1 : 3 saxes : 4 2+1 3 1 : T 3P
Hp Str
Programme Notes by Jonathan
Hodgetts
www.SalisburySymphonyOrchestra.org.uk