The Passions of Vaughan Williams


The Passions of Vaughan Williams

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Ralph Vaughan Williams is the giant of 20th century English music,

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perhaps the greatest composer of symphonies this country has ever produced

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with a magical sound all his own.

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For many people, his music encapsulates Englishness,

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whether he is describing our character, our countryside or larks ascending.

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But there's far more to Vaughan Williams than wistful evocations of the English landscape.

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This film explores the enormous musical range

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of an energetic, red-blooded man of both spirituality and passion.

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Lord, yes, passionate man. Absolutely no doubt about it. Passionate and erotic.

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I fell madly in love with him the moment I met him. Most women did.

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Vaughan Williams died 50 years ago,

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but his young widow Ursula lived on until only last year.

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The story of their secret love affair can now be told.

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It nourished the fires within him, crystallised his moral dilemmas and fertilised his music.

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He was very tall, very beautiful...

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..and he was perfect.

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And I adored him.

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DRAMATIC MUSIC

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Through most of Vaughan Williams's 85 years, one of his abiding passions was women.

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He not only loved them, he liked them.

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And he needed them. They fed his creativity.

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I remember going to a Christmas Party and looking round the room.

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There were a lot of disconsolate men and couples talking to each other.

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And Ralph was on the sofa with five women at his feet, five hanging over the back, a couple on either side.

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He really did have pulling power?

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Oh, absolutely. Yes.

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He used to call the wine waiter over and say to him, "What's the strongest aperitif you've got?"

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The chap would suggest something.

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He'd say, "Two doubles, please." And we started the dinner like that.

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He was determined to make it as nice as possible, I suppose.

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He was a touching man, but he was a touching man too with his hands.

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He gave you a good old pat if you did something. He liked the feeling.

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He'd put a hand on your knee and say, "Come on, we'd better do this."

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But Ursula said, and I'm sure it was true,

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"Nothing from the waist downwards."

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Vaughan Williams was first captivated by Ursula long before they became husband and wife

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when he was 65 and she was 27.

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But at that point she was married and so was he.

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In fact, he'd been married for 40 years.

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As a young man, he'd fallen for the cool, pre-Raphaelite beauty of Adeline Fisher,

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a cousin of Virginia Woolf.

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She played the cello rather better than Ralph played the viola.

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He wrote to a relative to announce their engagement.

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"She is two years older than I am and for many years we've been great friends.

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"And for the last three I've known my mind on the matter."

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# Kissing her hair

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# I sat against her feet

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# Wove and unwove it

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# Wound and found... #

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I do remember she had a lovely voice, a wonderful way of speaking.

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It was a deep, very articulated voice.

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Once you'd heard it, you never forgot it.

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She had this aquiline nose and rather in the air...

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A very thin, long neck, I seem to remember.

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Very aristocratic looking.

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They spent their honeymoon in 1897 in Berlin

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and stayed in Europe for six months

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to escape what Vaughan Williams had already realised were the clutches of Adeline's extensive family.

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# Kissing her hair... #

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One of the things that Ralph resented

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was that she was absolutely oriented on her family.

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She had her mother's obsession with looking after the sick.

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If one of her brothers even started sneezing, she had to go and look after them.

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Vaughan Williams still had to make his mark as a composer

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and find his own voice.

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He had been struggling to prove himself ever since his student days at the Royal College of Music

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under the guidance of two leading composers, Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford.

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'One of the first things I showed Stanford was for a string quartet.

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'I wrote feverishly at it and like every composer,

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'I thought it was the greatest work that ever had been written

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'and also this was my swansong, I'd never write anything again.

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'So I went there all het up, thinking my master would fall on his knees

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'and say, "Here's a genius at last!"

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'Stanford turned it over and dismissed it with a curt, "All rot, my boy."

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'That's all I heard about that piece.

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'That's all I can remember. He was quite right.

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'Luckily, the piece was lost years ago.'

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Living with Adeline in Westminster, he combined his composing efforts with research into English folksong

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and edited the music for a pioneering new hymn book, The English Hymnal.

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It resulted in some of his most famous tunes.

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There's nothing like a congregation

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singing a Vaughan Williams hymn. It's stirring. It moves me to tears.

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# Come down, O love divine

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# Seek thou this soul of mine

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# And visit it with thine own ardour glowing... #

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Vaughan Williams himself was an agnostic,

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but he had a passion for giving those who did go to church good tunes to sing.

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He was happy to adapt some from folk songs with what he liked to call "sexular associations".

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# And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing... #

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Half a century later, living in a much bigger London house,

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he still had his zest for hymns and Christmas carols, as Simona Pakenham discovered.

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She'd been so hooked by his later music that she wrote a book about it

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and a mutual friend, actress Jill Balcon, tried to get them to meet.

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He rang Jill and said, "Who is this Simona Pakenham?

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"Does she wear baggy tweed skirts and flat shoes?"

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-Yes, that was lovely.

-"Can I ask her to tea?"

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-"Shall I ask her to tea?"

-Jill said, "It's OK, you can ask her to tea."

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Tea is a very discreet thing if you're meeting a new lady friend.

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Ursula was going to be there, but asking someone to tea is OK.

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And I was absolutely terrified.

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I arrived much too early and walked round Regent's Park in a state of great dread.

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Ursula opened the door and Ralph was on the bottom of the stairs.

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He spread out his arms and he said, "My dear, you know my hymn books!"

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He was far more pleased with that than the fact I knew his symphonies.

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# And so the yearning strong... #

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Simona was such a beautiful woman too.

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That would have appealed to him.

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And then the next thing he said was, "You must look at Ursula's petticoat."

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So he heaved up her skirt and she had a bright yellow petticoat with black lace.

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So that was my first meeting with him.

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But I hadn't expected him to be quite so gorgeous as he was.

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# Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling... #

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By the time he reached his mid-30s, Vaughan Williams had yet to produce a major orchestral score.

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But his first symphony had the self-confidence of someone who had written symphonies all his life.

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It's one of the great beginnings of any work written in any country.

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The opening of the Sea Symphony is mind-blowing.

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# Behold the sea... #

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DRAMATIC MUSIC

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GENTLE, FLOWING STRINGS MUSIC

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# And on its limitless heaving breast, the ships

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# Its limitless heaving breast

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-# See where their white...

-See where their white sails

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# Bellying in the wind... #

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You felt the sea almost shifting under you.

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You were there in the blustering waves.

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You entered things through his imagination.

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That was his magic.

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It wasn't just imagination.

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The symphony had taken years of struggle, at one point almost killing him.

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He had been wrestling with it in Yorkshire when he went for a swim off a beach near Robin Hood's Bay.

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The sea was rougher than he thought and he couldn't scramble back on to the rocks.

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The symphony's first audience had no idea how close a shave he'd had.

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He was already 38.

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That is a late composer.

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Was Mozart not already dead at that point?

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He was on the point of giving up in despair and exhaustion

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and letting himself drown.

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But a freak wave lifted him right on to the shore

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and preserved him for 50 more years and eight more symphonies.

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He was a late developer and he went on developing right on till the end of his life.

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1910 was a turning point.

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On top of the Sea Symphony, Vaughan Williams combined his passions for hymns, folk songs and Tudor music

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to create a quite different modern masterpiece - The Fantasia On A Theme Of Thomas Tallis.

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Its first performance in Gloucester Cathedral marked him out as a composer unlike any other.

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GENTLE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

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He used to say that any composer worth his salt had at least one piece in him

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that could not have been written by anyone else.

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This was it.

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I'm sure he had the cathedral acoustic in mind as he wrote this piece,

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with that long, long reverberation time, the beautiful resonance too of a stone building.

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A very important moment for him.

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And we don't know if we're in three-time or four-time.

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That's another thing. There's no conventional rhythm here.

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"TALLIS FANTASIA" CONTINUES

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And now VW lets the orchestra flower.

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It's a work of astonishing originality.

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I seem to remember that at that concert there was Ivor Gurney and Herbert Howells,

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two composers who became important on the English scene.

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They were walking around the streets all night because of the Tallis Fantasia

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which was a totally new world.

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At last, VW was on his way.

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When he turned his musical imagination to his beloved London,

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he had the colours to do it.

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Thanks to lessons he'd had from the young French composer Maurice Ravel,

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he had achieved a distinctive Vaughan Williams sound.

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As a resident for 20 years or more,

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he preferred to call his London Symphony "Symphony By A Londoner".

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This idea of VW as a countryman

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has always been rubbish.

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He was born in the country, but lived most of his life in London

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and he liked London, art galleries, theatres and seeing friends.

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MUSIC: "A London Symphony"

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STRIDENT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

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It was probably the richest and most romantic score of them all in many ways.

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And I heard him say when he was a very old man indeed,

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"I can't score like that now, I can't get that richness."

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His involvement in the Great War led inevitably to a change in the colour and temper of his music.

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At 42, Vaughan Williams was over-age, so he pretended he was 39

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and volunteered for the ranks, to the despair of some of his friends.

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The cantata Dona Nobis Pacem, Give Us Peace, was his own war requiem, though he was no pacifist.

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# Dona nobis pacem... #

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CHORAL HARMONIES

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DRAMATIC MUSIC

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MUSIC REACHES CRESCENDO

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# Dona nobis pacem... #

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He had a great feeling for manly life

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and I think the army made a great impression on him, the absolute goodness of these people.

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He wasn't a natural soldier. He found it difficult.

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He enjoyed the camaraderie hugely and organised music wherever he went.

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But he found looking tidy very difficult.

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Private Vaughan Williams joined the Royal Army Medical Corps

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and was sent to northern France as a wagon orderly.

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He ferried the wounded on stretchers from the front line to makeshift dressing stations.

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It gave him first-hand insight into the realities of war which coloured his music in the years to come.

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SOLEMN, MELANCHOLIC MUSIC

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He described going up night after night with the ambulance wagon at Ecoivres, up the steep hill,

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where in the midst of war he was impressed by what he called

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"the wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset".

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SLOW MARCHING RHYTHM

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# The last sunbeam

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# Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath

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# On the pavement here

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# And there beyond it is looking

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# Down a new-made double grave... #

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A new symphony began to germinate in his mind which he rather misleadingly called The Pastoral.

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People said it suggested a cow looking over a gate

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or VW rolling over and over in a field.

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But if there's any landscape here, it's a French one

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and a disturbing one at that.

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"It's wartime music," he told Ursula later, "not lambkins frisking."

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I think he maybe saw the irony of it,

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that this was or could have been a pastoral scene if it hadn't been blasted by war.

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GENTLE, THOUGHTFUL MUSIC

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It's deeply uncomfortable music actually.

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It gives me that feeling that you're standing somewhere with a cool breeze blowing on the back of your neck

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and you're not sure whether you're really enjoying it or actually it's rather scary.

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DRAMATIC, OMINOUS MUSIC

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BECOMES GENTLER AGAIN

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I wonder why do people keep talking about cowpats and English countryside?

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Because to me it seemed a most ominous, dark and formidable, threatening work even.

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Vaughan Williams uses in this movement a natural horn, a natural trumpet,

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which only plays the notes of the harmonic series, which are a little bit out of tune.

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They don't have piston stops to modify the notes

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and I think he wants to get that open air feeling that you get on folk instruments or on bugles.

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I always think in the slow movement of The Pastoral Symphony

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you're hearing something rather like a Last Post for the dead in the trenches.

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SLOW MOURNFUL MUSIC

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By the time Ralph came back to Adeline in Chelsea, the war had marked them both.

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Ralph grieved for friends like his fellow composer George Butterworth, lost at the front.

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He wrote that he dreaded returning to normal life with so many gaps

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and Adeline had lost a brother in the naval Battle of Jutland, a blow from which she never recovered.

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She wore black for the rest of her life.

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# O my soldiers twain

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# O my veterans

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# Passing to burial...

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# What I have

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# I also give you...

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# And my heart, O my soldiers

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# My veterans...

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# My heart

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# Gives you love... #

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But there were other problems too.

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Even before the war, Adeline had contracted arthritis

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and Ralph now found she was in increasing pain, often confined to a wheelchair,

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though she was only in her 40s.

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It meant in the end he had to forsake London for the Surrey he had known as a boy.

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To make life easier for her, he went into exile, as he once put it, on the edge of Dorking

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where he composed in somewhat sombre surroundings.

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I think it was what one might call

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a high-minded marriage.

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Adeline played a close role in everything he did.

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She listened to all his music on the wireless when she couldn't go to the concerts.

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She wrote a lot of his letters, not for him, but to his dictation.

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He did a great deal for her.

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I mean, I think more than most husbands would do.

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I think he used to really look after her, give her a bath and help her do her hair.

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But it was hopeless. It just got worse. The pain was bad.

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Quite how much of a close, romantic attachment there was after the early years, I'm not sure.

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But I suspect it became less so quite quickly.

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The exile in Surrey was to last almost a quarter of a century.

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He and Adeline never had children,

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but there were usually members of Adeline's family staying with them at the White Gates

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and other guests were somewhat wary.

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-A dark house inside.

-Very strange house really.

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A little bit like going into a church. And there was a balcony.

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I suppose the bedroom had the balcony.

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Adeline was in a wheelchair with a rug over her.

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With a green eyeshade.

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I remember particularly seeing her when she was to have a cup of tea,

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stuffing a handkerchief into the handle of the cup,

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so she could hold on to it and drink it for herself.

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I don't think she was experienced with rumbustious boys of our age.

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So after a bit we were turned out into the garden.

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There might have been a sandwich coming my way

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and I might have carefully tipped a little tea into my mouth,

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but I was there as part of the baggage, not to be shown around.

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Vaughan Williams did regularly escape to London by train

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where he drew sustenance from his female students at the Royal College of Music

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and from other young musicians he worked with.

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The letters he wrote to these younger women were signed "Uncle Ralph" and he put kisses on it.

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It was innocent and light-hearted.

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When he wrote a concerto for the pianist Harriet Cohen, all he asked in return was 10,000 kisses.

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And in his frequent letters he kept a tally of the balance he was owed.

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He needed youth. That was why he got to know us all.

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There's a very charming story about how Vaughan Williams would slowly climb up to the top floor

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of the Royal College of Music

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when a particularly beautiful young violin student

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would be practising.

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He would just climb all that way, look into the window for just a few moments

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and climb all the way back down to his teaching studio.

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He rather shocked me on one occasion because I had a friend.

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He said to her, "How's your love life, my darling?"

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I think he realised I was rather horrified. He said, "They told me everything." And I'm sure they did.

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He was, I think, a Shakespearean character.

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Large, bumbling.

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Spread all over the chair with his huge shoulders

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and a certain amount of tum.

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He had about three shelves on it and on each one was a cat.

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Yes, always with a cat.

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I don't want to be rude, but the resemblance to a sack of potatoes comes to mind.

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He wore a three-piece, heavy, tweed suit, even if it was high summer.

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With his waistcoat skew-whiff and probably a stain on his tie.

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I love the dishevelled aspect of him.

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I think it was because the other professors were so neat and dapper

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and always looked as though they had just shaved. He didn't look like that. He didn't shave a great deal.

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-# Ding...

-Dong

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-# Ding...

-Dong

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# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell

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-# Dong...

-Ding-dong

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# Ding-dong bell... #

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Musically, Vaughan Williams was just as much Ariel as Falstaff.

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# Ding-dong bell

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# Full fathom five

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# Thy father lies... #

0:31:080:31:12

He knew how to work his charms on the young.

0:31:120:31:16

# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell... #

0:31:160:31:18

The singer Robert Tear first sang this setting of Shakespeare 50 years ago

0:31:180:31:25

and was amazed when the composer turned up to hear him and his fellow students rehearse.

0:31:250:31:31

They were just wonderful.

0:31:310:31:34

# Nothing of him that doth fa-a-a-ade... #

0:31:350:31:44

I was 18 and I was singing with the King's College Cambridge Choir.

0:31:440:31:49

We came down to St Bartholomew's Church in Smithfield.

0:31:490:31:53

And there was this haystack of a man,

0:31:530:31:57

hugely big, sitting on a very small chair, looking like a sofa with the stuffing coming out.

0:31:570:32:03

He was enormously impressive.

0:32:030:32:06

# Rich and strange

0:32:060:32:10

# Stra-a-ange

0:32:110:32:14

# Stra-a-ange

0:32:140:32:17

# Stra-a-a-ange

0:32:170:32:21

# Di-i-i-ing

0:32:210:32:26

# Ding-dong bell... #

0:32:260:32:29

We went to introduce ourselves to him and he produced this enormous black ear trumpet

0:32:290:32:36

in which we had to bellow our names,

0:32:360:32:38

a bit like meeting Beethoven!

0:32:380:32:41

# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell

0:32:410:32:44

# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell

0:32:440:32:47

# Di-i-ing Ding-dong bell

0:32:470:32:51

# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell

0:32:510:32:54

# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell

0:32:540:32:57

# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell

0:32:570:33:01

# Di-i-ing...do-o-ong...be-e-ell... #

0:33:010:33:07

It was while teaching students in London in the mid-1920s

0:33:100:33:15

that Vaughan Williams produced a work which demonstrates how much he depended on the young,

0:33:150:33:21

particularly women, to motivate him.

0:33:210:33:24

Flos Campi, or Flower Of The Field,

0:33:270:33:29

was inspired by the ecstatic love poetry of the Biblical Song of Songs,

0:33:290:33:35

verses of which head every movement.

0:33:350:33:38

Flos Campi absolutely got me.

0:33:380:33:41

DRAMATIC, STRIDENT MUSIC

0:33:440:33:47

REACHES CRESCENDO

0:33:520:33:54

I think anyone that doesn't know Vaughan Williams well,

0:33:570:34:02

I would defy them to identify that as Vaughan Williams.

0:34:020:34:06

The origins of Flos Campi intrigued Michael Kennedy

0:34:060:34:10

while he was working on his definitive study of the composer.

0:34:100:34:14

Vaughan Williams gave a clue.

0:34:140:34:17

"Those pimps at the BBC," he said, "think it's religious.

0:34:170:34:21

"In fact, it's the most passionate piece I ever wrote."

0:34:210:34:26

It's almost an erotic work and the reason for it was he was very taken

0:34:260:34:31

with a young girl at the Royal College of Music.

0:34:310:34:34

When Ursula and I did our books together, we exchanged letters and she wrote to me about this.

0:34:340:34:41

She said, "I think Flos is not much mystical, but about Ralph's most sensual-sensuous work.

0:34:410:34:48

"He behaved rather badly to a woman who was obviously in love with him as he used to go and see her a lot

0:34:480:34:55

"to work himself up into the terrific state he needed to be in to write it, but never got involved.

0:34:550:35:01

"Rather a fine tightrope performance.

0:35:010:35:04

"He was much surprised when I said I thought it was immoral to go so far and no further."

0:35:040:35:10

There was another young woman in Surrey who was burnt by the Vaughan Williams flame.

0:35:100:35:17

For years he had been harvesting the efforts of village choral societies and amateur orchestras

0:35:170:35:23

for the Leith Hill Musical Festival.

0:35:230:35:26

Its secretary was Frances Farrer or Fanny as she was known.

0:35:260:35:30

She was more than 20 years Ralph's junior, but they became close.

0:35:300:35:35

It was probably the most important relationship of her life.

0:35:350:35:40

He was obviously very fond of her.

0:35:400:35:43

I think Adeline was considerably an invalid at that time,

0:35:430:35:47

so he needed somebody to keep him company.

0:35:470:35:51

He liked her being so dashing. They went for drives in her car and went very fast round corners probably!

0:35:510:35:57

The family treasures the manuscripts he gave Fanny and his jokingly affectionate letters.

0:35:570:36:04

-He says, "My darling sec," and "Your conductor."

-"Your loving conductor."

-"Your loving conductor," indeed.

0:36:040:36:11

Making arrangements to meet, "it was so lovely to see you."

0:36:110:36:16

-"Longing to see you again."

-Yes.

0:36:160:36:18

Aunt Fan, say her family, was an energetic, get-up-and-go character.

0:36:180:36:23

She ran the festival and sometimes wrote lyrics for Ralph to set to music, but she wasn't a musician.

0:36:230:36:30

So when Ralph was asked to write a piece for amateurs to play at the opening of a village hall in 1925,

0:36:340:36:42

he arranged a folk dance with a simple percussion part for Fanny.

0:36:420:36:47

CHEERFUL MELODIC MUSIC

0:36:530:36:56

Fanny never talked of her friendship with him and wanted his letters burned after her death,

0:37:060:37:13

tell-tale signs, in her family's view, of a broken heart.

0:37:130:37:17

When I was about 12 or something, I wanted a pair of binoculars.

0:37:240:37:29

Aunt Fan had two, so she gave me one. They were lovely binoculars.

0:37:290:37:34

Obviously war surplus and in a lovely leather case, so I thought they were great.

0:37:340:37:40

A week later, she said, "I'll give you a new case for those binoculars. I'll have the other one back."

0:37:400:37:47

I looked at the case and there, very worn on it, was "RV Williams".

0:37:470:37:51

She didn't want me to know they'd been his binoculars.

0:37:510:37:56

HARMONISED SINGING

0:38:020:38:04

SENSUAL, ENERGETIC MUSIC

0:38:040:38:07

MUSIC REACHES CRESCENDO

0:38:410:38:44

GENTLE VIOLA MUSIC

0:39:250:39:27

After 18 years, Fanny Farrer gave up running the festival

0:39:440:39:49

and moved away.

0:39:490:39:51

She couldn't feel interest in other men.

0:39:550:39:59

She was friendly with lots of them, but wasn't able to go further.

0:39:590:40:04

-She never married?

-No.

0:40:040:40:06

He was always there.

0:40:060:40:09

The 4th Symphony in 1934 bewildered his friends.

0:40:190:40:23

There was nothing romantic, nothing pastoral here.

0:40:230:40:28

It came at the time of growing frustration in his home life and the rise of Hitler.

0:40:290:40:35

Vaughan Williams had found a new language, but it was still indisputably his.

0:40:350:40:41

You see, this is a well of passion building up.

0:40:440:40:49

Because this was the way whatever was inside could get out.

0:40:520:40:57

OMINOUS, DRAMATIC MUSIC

0:41:010:41:04

It's an incredibly angry work. It really stirs you up. He was a real human being.

0:41:120:41:17

That's a genuinely modernistic work, shatteringly dissonant.

0:41:170:41:22

I was doing the ironing and I always had the radio on when I was ironing.

0:41:240:41:29

And I suddenly heard this extraordinary music.

0:41:290:41:33

Like nothing that I had ever heard before.

0:41:330:41:38

And yes, in some strange way, it made all the rest of music fall into place.

0:41:440:41:50

MUSIC REACHES CRESCENDO

0:41:520:41:55

This is the way he erupts.

0:41:570:42:00

This is why he had to write music.

0:42:000:42:04

VW always hated his music being given meanings.

0:42:070:42:11

He did discuss this F Minor Symphony with a friend,

0:42:110:42:15

but was cagey about what had been in his mind.

0:42:150:42:19

"I agree with you that all music must have beauty,

0:42:190:42:23

"the problem being what is beauty?

0:42:230:42:26

"So when you say you do not think my F Minor Symphony is beautiful,

0:42:260:42:31

"my answer must be that I do think it beautiful,

0:42:310:42:35

"not that I did not mean it to be beautiful because it reflects unbeautiful times.

0:42:350:42:41

"We know that beauty can come from unbeautiful things.

0:42:410:42:45

"As a matter of fact, I'm not at all sure I like it myself now.

0:42:450:42:51

"All I know is that it is what I wanted to do at the time.

0:42:510:42:56

"I wrote it not as a definite picture of anything external, eg, the state of Europe,

0:42:560:43:02

"but simply because it occurred to me like this. I can't explain why."

0:43:020:43:07

He may have been thinking about what was going on in Germany and in his own life,

0:43:070:43:12

but he was thinking about how he could write this symphony. He was interested in music.

0:43:120:43:19

He was a big man. He had a big voice.

0:43:220:43:25

And he used it, bless his heart!

0:43:250:43:28

If things went wrong, he got very cross.

0:43:280:43:31

He could be frightening, obviously. He had the rage of Zeus.

0:43:310:43:36

He couldn't bear being late.

0:43:360:43:39

He was going somewhere and the train was late coming in.

0:43:390:43:43

When he got into the train,

0:43:430:43:46

he had screwed his gloves up so much that he'd torn them in the middle!

0:43:460:43:51

The famous picture of him haranguing an orchestra! I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of VW in a rage.

0:43:510:43:58

And you hear that in the music.

0:43:580:44:00

ENERGETIC, STRIDENT MUSIC

0:44:000:44:03

One of the soloists didn't arrive for a rehearsal.

0:44:080:44:12

But he left word with a secretary, "Don't worry, I know it backwards."

0:44:120:44:18

And Vaughan Williams immediately was very, very angry. He was very, very angry.

0:44:180:44:25

He said, "Well, I don't want him to sing it backwards!"

0:44:250:44:29

Vaughan Williams was now well into middle age.

0:44:290:44:33

One of his stage works at the time exemplified the tensions in his personal life.

0:44:330:44:40

The virtuous patience of Job is tested through many tribulations at the hands of God and Satan.

0:44:400:44:47

After 30 years of Ralph's high-minded marriage, Job was to become the catalyst for change.

0:44:560:45:03

It's so glamorous

0:45:040:45:07

in its wonderful satanic manner. It's really beautiful.

0:45:070:45:11

This 1930 ballet is based on drawings by William Blake.

0:45:220:45:27

Rather like Milton in Paradise Lost, Blake portrayed Satan as an attractive, handsome figure.

0:45:280:45:35

Gosh, it's masculine stuff, that!

0:45:370:45:40

-You feel Vaughan Williams has sympathy for Satan!

-Oh, yes! But everybody likes Satan really.

0:45:450:45:52

He certainly does, as far as I can tell.

0:45:520:45:56

The sheer power of this music first drew the young and beautiful Ursula to Vaughan Williams.

0:46:040:46:11

It was at the Old Vic, where I was a drama student and we were allowed to go on Mondays free

0:46:190:46:26

so I went to the ballet every Monday

0:46:260:46:29

and was rewarded with Job, which knocked me sideways.

0:46:290:46:32

I knew the Blake drawings and I had heard very little music in my life.

0:46:370:46:43

So it was a surprise, a revelation and, in a way, a shock.

0:46:430:46:48

Directly because of Job, Ursula eventually contacted Vaughan Williams with a new ballet scenario.

0:46:570:47:03

He turned it down with a "Dear Madam" letter. She was now married.

0:47:030:47:08

But she persisted until she met him.

0:47:080:47:11

I think she wrote him a fan letter, didn't she?

0:47:110:47:15

And managed to get him to take her out to lunch.

0:47:150:47:19

The date was fixed for March 31st, 1938, in a letter from Ralph.

0:47:190:47:26

But, ironically, the way things turned out, the handwriting was not Ralph's, but Adeline's.

0:47:270:47:33

Ursula anticipated the encounter by writing a poem that was strangely prophetic.

0:47:370:47:43

"Fleshed at this meeting moves her aware and sensual

0:47:440:47:49

"Threading between casual moments and things, to loves

0:47:490:47:54

"Destined by some choice

0:47:540:47:57

"Made with both mind and voice

0:47:570:48:00

"but blindly.

0:48:000:48:02

"Minds like a bird in air

0:48:040:48:06

"A comet which scars in flight

0:48:060:48:09

"The distance and delight to find such freedom there

0:48:090:48:14

"But will not stare behind to trace the path we find blindly.

0:48:140:48:21

"I am two fools, I know For loving and for saying so."

0:48:210:48:27

March 31st dawned.

0:48:290:48:32

A day that would complicate both their lives for many years and change them forever.

0:48:320:48:38

Events unfolded in London, which was still the place where Ralph's heart beat fastest.

0:48:380:48:44

He'd arranged to collect Ursula from her parents' flat. She was impressed that he kept the taxi waiting

0:48:440:48:50

and by his green pork pie hat.

0:48:500:48:53

He was very tall and he was very beautiful

0:48:540:48:58

and he was perfect.

0:48:580:49:01

Some 60 years later, Ursula spoke for the only time about what happened on that momentous day.

0:49:030:49:09

It was in a research interview for a book, never heard before.

0:49:100:49:15

She later told friends that in the taxi "voice, eyes, hands were somehow familiar,

0:49:370:49:43

"so that I felt I was meeting again someone I'd known before and this recognition was the same for him."

0:49:430:49:49

After the lunch, the taxi stopped short,

0:49:500:49:55

they touched hands and, at that point, there was a romantic embrace

0:49:550:50:02

and a passionate kiss.

0:50:020:50:04

Now I'm unclear as to whether he initiated the passionate kiss

0:50:190:50:25

or she initiated it,

0:50:250:50:27

but, whatever the situation, she certainly enjoyed it

0:50:270:50:33

and told me he was a terrific kisser.

0:50:330:50:36

He was, you know, like that.

0:50:560:50:58

It was instantaneous. I'm sure it was.

0:50:580:51:02

Ambushed by love is the word. You never know when it'll hit you.

0:51:020:51:07

He was loving. He was really loving.

0:51:260:51:30

And I adored him.

0:51:300:51:32

She responded to their first meeting by sending him some of her poetry.

0:51:320:51:37

He told her, "I loved having your poems. The one about your hair particularly."

0:51:370:51:43

'When I unplait my hair at night I touch it as a stranger might.'

0:51:430:51:48

It was now some five years since Ursula's marriage to an army officer, Michael Wood.

0:52:000:52:06

He was often away on duty and she rented a small flat in London.

0:52:060:52:12

Living in the same block was her friend Jean Stewart:

0:52:120:52:16

The Serenade to Music later that year was ostensibly VW's tribute to the conductor Henry Wood.

0:52:490:52:55

But those sounds of music had a settled romantic glow that spoke of personal experience.

0:53:030:53:09

I think the occasion of that work was his meeting and love of Ursula.

0:53:140:53:21

I think that this brought about an extraordinary release of feeling, of sustained feeling.

0:53:270:53:36

It's not to say that Vaughan Williams had not been incredibly vigorous

0:53:390:53:46

and passionate previously.

0:53:460:53:48

But it's the specific expression of that work which I think is new.

0:53:500:53:55

Ralph and Ursula were now involved in an intense secret affair that was to last 15 years.

0:53:560:54:03

Valentine poems she lavished on him each February have come to light.

0:54:040:54:09

Although he remained based at home in Dorking, and she was in London,

0:54:090:54:14

there were no half measures in their relationship.

0:54:140:54:18

That remains, for some, a delicate subject, even 50 years after his death.

0:54:180:54:24

In his nature there was an earthiness

0:54:240:54:29

and a passionate quality,

0:54:290:54:32

which was not nourished

0:54:330:54:37

as it could have been.

0:54:380:54:40

And when Ursula came upon the scene, maybe she was able to give him some of this.

0:54:400:54:48

And while it didn't disturb his devotion to Adeline,

0:54:490:54:54

it provided another dimension in his life.

0:54:540:54:59

Opened new doors?

0:54:590:55:01

Opened new doors.

0:55:010:55:04

I should think the question was that there was very little sex

0:55:040:55:08

in the marriage with Adeline,

0:55:080:55:11

whereas Ursula sort of transformed his life completely

0:55:110:55:16

I think when he met Ursula he'd never had a love affair like that before.

0:55:160:55:20

My understanding from Ursula was that they consummated their relationship physically

0:55:200:55:27

very shortly after they met.

0:55:270:55:30

-Within a few dates, let's say.

-And how long did that last?

0:55:310:55:36

Until the day he died.

0:55:360:55:39

She was extraordinarily beautiful.

0:55:410:55:44

Very, very pronounced and definite,

0:55:440:55:49

whereas Adeline was the other thing, very sort of wispy.

0:55:490:55:53

So I understand how it all worked and it was lovely for Ralph. He really was lucky.

0:55:560:56:02

The correspondence between Ralph and Ursula was affectionate, but mostly discreet.

0:56:020:56:08

A year into the affair, Ursula encountered his wife in London.

0:56:100:56:14

Indeed, they all met up at a performance of Vaughan Williams' romantic opera Hugh the Drover.

0:56:140:56:21

# I bring you toil and strife... #

0:56:220:56:26

Present were Ralph and Adeline Vaughan Williams and Michael and Ursula Wood.

0:56:290:56:36

Hugh the Drover rides into town

0:56:360:56:39

and romances the town beauty.

0:56:390:56:42

It's early Vaughan Williams. It's so romantic and windblown.

0:56:460:56:51

It's just as erotic as Puccini.

0:57:000:57:03

It must have been an extraordinarily uncomfortable evening.

0:57:070:57:12

Some months later, Ursula was invited down to Dorking for tea at The White Gates.

0:57:240:57:30

She was clearly nervous about meeting Adeline on her home ground.

0:57:300:57:35

She reported that Adeline was "alarming" in her high-backed wheelchair.

0:57:470:57:52

"She seemed infinitely older than Ralph," she said, and her fragility, her crooked hands

0:57:520:57:58

her grey hair and pallor seemed to remove her from life's ordinariness.

0:57:580:58:04

It was a relief when the other guests arrived.

0:58:040:58:09

One of VW's associates told Byron Adams he had a similar reaction after visiting The White Gates.

0:58:140:58:20

One of the startling things he said was that Adeline Vaughan Williams had a tongue like a viper

0:58:220:58:28

and that he was very frightened of her.

0:58:280:58:32

Ursula did spend time with her husband Michael during his rare periods of leave.

0:58:390:58:45

She said they'd begun to feel like strangers.

0:58:450:58:49

Years later, she confided in some of her friends that she'd become pregnant.

0:58:490:58:55

Ursula told me twice, in 1994 and 1997,

0:58:560:59:02

that she had at one time had to have an abortion.

0:59:030:59:07

Now she very much wanted to believe

0:59:070:59:11

that the child was Vaughan Williams's.

0:59:110:59:15

However, we don't know whose child it was.

0:59:150:59:20

This was her decision, as she stressed to me.

0:59:200:59:24

Neither Michael Wood nor Ralph Vaughan Williams put her up to it in any way.

0:59:240:59:30

-Were they aware of it?

-Oh, yes. She told them both.

0:59:300:59:35

Then, in June 1942, in the middle of WWII,

0:59:380:59:42

Ursula's husband, Michael, died suddenly of a heart attack.

0:59:420:59:46

The news reached London in a telegram that was opened by her neighbour Jean Stewart.

0:59:460:59:52

Ralph made clear to Ursula that he would never leave his invalid wife.

1:00:291:00:34

Adeline played her cards shrewdly by continually inviting her to Dorking.

1:00:341:00:39

This generosity kept a jealous Ursula on the back foot.

1:00:391:00:43

Adeline was charming.

1:00:431:00:46

She wore black, mostly.

1:00:461:00:48

But I bought her another one, a dark brown one,

1:00:481:00:54

with loose sleeves that tied up.

1:00:541:00:57

I don't think she was very pleased by that.

1:00:571:01:01

She was crippled and I know it was absolutely agony to have that.

1:01:011:01:08

She was very...miserable.

1:01:081:01:12

The war, as for so many people, served to intensify and complicate these personal relationships.

1:01:131:01:20

For Vaughan Williams, the Blitz brought back into focus his own active service 25 years earlier

1:01:211:01:27

and the principles that motivated him. This time he took on war work as a civilian.

1:01:271:01:34

He had no doubt where his moral duty lay.

1:01:341:01:38

He did respect the pacifist conviction of the young composer Michael Tippett

1:01:381:01:44

and wrote a testimonial in his support, but he told him with some vehemence he was wrong.

1:01:441:01:51

"If your house was on fire," he wrote, "you would not ignore it and go on writing

1:01:511:01:57

"until you'd helped to put it out and saved the inmates -

1:01:571:02:01

"if for no other reason because if your music paper was burnt, you'd not be able to go on composing."

1:02:011:02:07

As he reached 70, Vaughan Williams was the doyen of British music.

1:02:141:02:18

Symphony Number 5, which he'd worked on ever since he met Ursula,

1:02:221:02:27

came as unforeseen balm in the midst of battle.

1:02:271:02:31

I was simply knocked sideways by this work.

1:02:501:02:55

It was 1944 and it was the time of what we called the buzz bombs, the flying bombs, the V1s.

1:03:001:03:09

I was working in the bowels of the Overseas Department of the BBC,

1:03:091:03:14

living like a mole in appalling air.

1:03:141:03:17

Sleeping there and working there and so on.

1:03:171:03:20

And I'd been on duty and Simona Pakenham's first husband, Noel Iliffe,

1:03:201:03:27

said, "I'd like to play you this piece."

1:03:271:03:30

So we sat in a studio and he played me the 5th Symphony.

1:03:301:03:35

It's one of the most wonderful musical experiences I've ever had and I've listened to music all my life.

1:03:441:03:51

We were so tired of living underground and never knowing if we'd see the next day, you know.

1:04:021:04:08

In Surrey, the Vaughan Williamses were anxious about the doodle bugs and the cut out of their engines.

1:04:201:04:26

During one night raid, Adeline invited Ursula to join them in the bedroom.

1:04:331:04:39

Ursula lay on a mattress between Adeline's bed and Ralph's,

1:04:391:04:43

holding hands with both of them in reassurance.

1:04:431:04:48

I was very frightened. I was horrified.

1:04:481:04:51

Ralph and Adeline slept in adjoining beds and Ursula lay in between them on the floor.

1:04:511:04:58

Yes, and we all sat there and we were clenching.

1:04:581:05:03

This extraordinary image was an emblem of the balance that Ralph seemed to have found

1:05:081:05:14

between the two women in his life.

1:05:141:05:16

It's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful tune.

1:05:301:05:35

Not many composers manage serenity.

1:06:051:06:07

Bach does it and Beethoven does it, but Vaughan Williams, who saw the dark side of things,

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nevertheless is serene.

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He can face the world in all its nastiness and still remain serene by encompassing it.

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Where does it come from? This is what we all want to know.

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We can sort of understand how a painter paints and how a poet finds words,

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but where does this... this...?

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Much of the symphony drew on his love of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,

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but it's hard not to connect its inner radiance with his feelings for Ursula.

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As she told me, "All the symphonies from Number 5 on are mine." And she's right.

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The moral duty about which Ralph was so certain as regards war

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was perhaps harder to work out in terms of Adeline and Ursula.

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It must have been a fairly friendly relationship or they'd hardly sleep in one room during the Blitz.

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So I think Adeline must have accepted Ursula.

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I dare say a few people might have thought it a scandal,

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but they didn't blazen it abroad.

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Mind you, she always appeared with him at concerts.

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But friends and family often misunderstood the way Ursula fitted in

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and no one rushed to put them right.

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She was there right through the war, or most of the war.

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I think it was her phrase that her war work was looking after the VWs.

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I think to begin with she appeared as more or less a sort of nurse or whatever to Adeline.

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That's how we all took it, anyway.

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Both my parents were quite shy, but it amused them enormously that Ina Boyle, the Irish composer,

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who I think didn't ever understand the relationship, referred to Ursula as "the secretary".

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There was not a very good reception for Ursula in the family. How unfair that was, I don't know.

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-Why?

-I think they felt that she was probably what my grandmother would call "an adventuress".

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Any remaining doubt over whether Adeline knew about Ralph's affair

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is dispelled by a Valentine card sent to him by Ursula two years after the war.

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The envelope that landed on The White Gates' doormat made little attempt at concealment.

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I think all of them were tactful

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and behaved - I was going to say in a gentlemanly way! Whatever the word would be.

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And were concerned not to hurt each other. They were all vulnerable.

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Did it represent any disloyalty to Adeline?

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I can't answer that.

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I really don't know. She might have sanctioned it and been glad for him. Who knows?

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Of all the great composers, the one for which Vaughan Williams had lifelong reverence

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was JS Bach.

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Year after year, he recreated the pain and suffering of the Bach Passion settings

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in performances he conducted in Dorking.

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It was the first time it meant anything to me.

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If I listen to the recording that was made of his performance

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of the St Matthew Passion,

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the whole thing clicks back into place and the years fall away.

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Vaughan Williams had his own way with Bach. He added in clarinets

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and a piano, not a harpsichord.

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For him, the anguish of the Passion was simply the best story ever told

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and in the way Bach himself would have expected, everyone present had a role to play.

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That was a passionate part of his musical philosophy.

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His shouting of the Barabbas was louder than any choir had ever been

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because he wanted them to make it sound as though it was really so important.

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CHOIR CRIES OUT

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He made everybody scream! You know?

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They used to get quite...

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..het up over, "Crucify! Crucify! Crucify him!"

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We were all tingling on the edges of our... I've never known such emotion, really,

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as when he conducted. He went through it himself and that was why.

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It wasn't his beat, it was his...it was his heart, really, that he threw into it.

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It was very thrilling, turning round to conduct the audience.

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He'd make sure everybody was standing and if not he was rather like a schoolmaster. "Come on, get up!"

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The entire audience sang the chorale.

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It was Ralph's idea.

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-Probably very authentic.

-Yes. That's what they did in Germany, so he said, "Why not here?"

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He told his performers, "Make the words apply to you."

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It was a great communal musical event.

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They all sang their hearts out.

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-VAUGHAN WILLIAMS:

-I like to think of our musical life as a great pyramid

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at the apex of which are the great virtuosi performers and composers of international renown.

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Then, immediately below this, come devoted musical practitioners,

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true artists who by precept and example spread the knowledge and love of music in our schools,

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our choral societies, our musical festivals.

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Then comes the next layer of our musical structure,

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that great mass of musical amateurs who make music for the love of it in their spare time

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and play and sing for their own spiritual recreation in their homes.

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In the Matthew, there's a chorus near the end and people sing, "Oh, where..."

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Well, when he was conducting, the "Oh, where" went everywhere!

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People would laugh a little bit.

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He wasn't much help as a conductor, but as an inspirer...!

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With him it was anything. You never knew what could happen.

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But I trusted him.

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In the late 1940s, Vaughan Williams could have sat on his laurels, but he kept on exploring.

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His Sixth Symphony emerged from the shadow of the new Iron Curtain.

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Serenity and certainty had vanished.

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Instead, it ended with 12 minutes of undiluted pianissimo -

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bleak, uncomfortable music that cannot settle or find rest.

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I can remember the audience looked fairly shocked at the end of that.

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You've been taken to somewhere very, very dark.

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It told me about...

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..finality.

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It told me...

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..about... the concept of nuclear winter.

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It told me about nothingness.

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Somebody else called it an agnostic's Paradiso, which I thought was a wonderful way to describe that music.

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Adeline was now in her twilight years. She was almost 80 and had become virtually immobile.

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She was very much a sort of ghost by that time,

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in the background.

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My sister, for instance, said she became a figure saying very little in a chair at the back of the room.

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Ralph could have been forgiven for wondering, "when will this long, weary day have end?"

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Listen to the chords.

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Is it E flat major?

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Is it E minor?

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Who knows?

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Adeline died in May, 1951.

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Ursula wrote of her derelict body with a wrecked face lying on the iron bed,

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an influence still to be felt as if she'd not entirely relinquished her hold.

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Her death provoked in Ralph a torrent of rage.

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DRAMATIC MUSIC

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He smashed her chair, Adeline's chair, and began to rip up photographs.

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When he got back from the funeral, it was photographs of certain of her relatives.

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that he threw away or burnt.

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As though to say, "There! That's all finished with."

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TRANQUIL SINGING

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# Silence

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# Si-i-ilence

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# Si-i-i...

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# Si-i-i-lence... #

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# I see a sleeping swan

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# A sleeping swan Wings closed

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# And drifting where the water... #

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Although we all know that Ralph was not an obvious Christian, in spite of those wonderful hymns,

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it was a spiritual quality

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that made me think that everything would be all right.

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# A grove where shadows dream... #

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He was a man who had great awe.

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He...certainly didn't regard himself as the centre of the universe.

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# ..hollow reeds... #

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I think he was a religious composer, yes, but he was undoubtedly an agnostic religious composer.

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# The four winds in their litanies can tell... #

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They don't understand what they are talking about when they say, "Did he believe this or that?" Idiotic.

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# ..weep and cry

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# Wee-ee-eep and cry

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# Weep, wee-ee-eep and cry... #

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His whole life was giving people lovely things to listen to,

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being so nice himself and generous to the young.

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If you could think of anyone more Christian than Ralph, I simply can't.

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# The birds rejoice

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# Rejoi-oi-oice... #

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In February, 1953, Ralph and Ursula were married quietly.

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He was 80. She was 41.

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At last they could be open, as the card sent to their friends showed.

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"You will we think not be surprised," they said.

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How nice! I don't remember getting that card. Go on.

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It's an unusual way of putting it. What...

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Well, I suppose we all knew they'd been lovers.

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If that's what you mean.

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Very discreetly.

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Now they made up for lost time.

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Ralph had never flown before. They travelled to France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece

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as well as all over Britain. And they crossed the Atlantic.

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It was a perfect marriage. And they had such fun together.

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They fitted in a trip right across the United States to go and see the Grand Canyon.

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They never stopped travelling after that.

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We went everywhere. We went absolutely everywhere.

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The long exile in Dorking was over.

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He moved back to London, to a grand house overlooking Regent's Park.

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The exuberance of his Eighth Symphony spoke of a man in the prime of life.

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The house was very beautiful. She filled it with beautiful things.

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It was full of light and sunlight and laughter.

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He suddenly came out with this ridiculous rhyme.

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"Uncle Joe and Auntie Mabel fainted at the breakfast table.

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"Children, let this be a warning Never do it in the morning."

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He and Ursula used to seize upon Vogue the moment it came out!

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And he would make a little note of all the pairs of shoes he'd like to see her wearing.

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She was a wonderful dresser. And Ralph, so she told me - he didn't tell me -

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he loved her in high heels. And she was rather tall. But that didn't matter.

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They must have gone out every night to a concert or to the theatre.

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Or had people to dinner. It must have been heaven for him.

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He was very serious and he laughed all the time.

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But he was now in his mid-eighties.

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For one of his four last songs, he set a poem by Ursula, written as she watched him.

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"Sleep and I'll be still as another sleeper

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"Holding you in my arms Glad that you lie so near at last."

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# Sleep

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# And I'll be still as another sleeper

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# Holding you in my arms

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# Glad that you lie so near At last... #

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"This sheltering midnight is our meeting place

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"No passion or despair or hope divide me from your side..."

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# This sheltering midnight is our meeting place

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# No passion or despair

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# Or hope divide me from your side

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# I shall remember firelight

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# On your sleeping face

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# I shall remember shadows growing deeper

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# As the fire fell to ashes

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# And the minutes passed. #

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"I shall remember firelight on your sleeping face

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"I shall remember shadows growing deeper

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"As the fire fell to ashes

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"And the minutes passed."

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OK?

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When Vaughan Williams turned 85, it emerged he'd been writing yet another symphony, his ninth.

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Despite all the activity, the creative urge never slackened, as a young composer friend overheard.

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When the fire was up, he would come up with extraordinary new things.

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It was about 4am. Simply out of my sleep I heard this extraordinary sound

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trickling down through the ceiling, where there was a honky tonk piano.

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And then stomp, stomp, stomp as he'd go back to his desk.

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And then he'd go back to the piano. It went on and on and on.

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He was working on, as I realised later, the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony.

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It was very strange music,

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music actually being called for from silence and from the night.

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It was a magical experience, obviously, to me as a young composer,

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to hear above this very great man searching for his own dream.

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I think he's England's greatest composer of the 20th century.

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I adore and know all of Elgar, one of my favourite composers,

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but I do place him above that.

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The older I get, I think I love it even more.

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Having worked a lot with Britten and Tippett, it is so equal to them and just so different.

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I find it more enriching the longer I live.

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I can swallow it whole, even the weaker pieces. That's its significance. It doesn't change.

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I hope I change in listening to it.

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The brooding unease of the Ninth Symphony escaped its first audience.

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They cheered him to the echo, but few understood it.

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Only later did they realise his passions had taken him further on into another world.

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I wrote to VW afterwards and said that I was very impressed, but I didn't quite get the hang of it.

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He said, "Dear Jeremy, thank you so much for writing.

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"I am so glad you liked it, as far as you did.

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"As the man said about Brahms, 'It ought never to be heard for the first time.'

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"I hope you're doing some fine composition yourself. Ursula sends her love. Yours, RVW."

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Touche!

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# The cloud-capp'd towers

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# The gorgeous palaces

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# The solemn temples

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# The great globe itself

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# Yea, all which it inherit

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# Shall dissolve

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# And like this insubstantial pageant faded

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# Leave not

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# A rack behind

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# We are such stuff

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# As dreams are made on

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# And our little life

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# Is rounded with a sleep. #

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