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Ralph Vaughan Williams is the giant of 20th century English music, | 0:00:06 | 0:00:11 | |
perhaps the greatest composer of symphonies this country has ever produced | 0:00:11 | 0:00:17 | |
with a magical sound all his own. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
For many people, his music encapsulates Englishness, | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
whether he is describing our character, our countryside or larks ascending. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:29 | |
But there's far more to Vaughan Williams than wistful evocations of the English landscape. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:36 | |
This film explores the enormous musical range | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
of an energetic, red-blooded man of both spirituality and passion. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:45 | |
Lord, yes, passionate man. Absolutely no doubt about it. Passionate and erotic. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:54 | |
I fell madly in love with him the moment I met him. Most women did. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:03 | |
Vaughan Williams died 50 years ago, | 0:01:04 | 0:01:06 | |
but his young widow Ursula lived on until only last year. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:11 | |
The story of their secret love affair can now be told. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:17 | |
It nourished the fires within him, crystallised his moral dilemmas and fertilised his music. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:24 | |
He was very tall, very beautiful... | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
..and he was perfect. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
And I adored him. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:32 | |
DRAMATIC MUSIC | 0:01:38 | 0:01:41 | |
Through most of Vaughan Williams's 85 years, one of his abiding passions was women. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:51 | |
He not only loved them, he liked them. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:54 | |
And he needed them. They fed his creativity. | 0:01:54 | 0:01:59 | |
I remember going to a Christmas Party and looking round the room. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:06 | |
There were a lot of disconsolate men and couples talking to each other. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:11 | |
And Ralph was on the sofa with five women at his feet, five hanging over the back, a couple on either side. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:18 | |
He really did have pulling power? | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
Oh, absolutely. Yes. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
He used to call the wine waiter over and say to him, "What's the strongest aperitif you've got?" | 0:02:26 | 0:02:32 | |
The chap would suggest something. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:35 | |
He'd say, "Two doubles, please." And we started the dinner like that. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:40 | |
He was determined to make it as nice as possible, I suppose. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:45 | |
He was a touching man, but he was a touching man too with his hands. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:53 | |
He gave you a good old pat if you did something. He liked the feeling. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
He'd put a hand on your knee and say, "Come on, we'd better do this." | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
But Ursula said, and I'm sure it was true, | 0:03:06 | 0:03:10 | |
"Nothing from the waist downwards." | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
Vaughan Williams was first captivated by Ursula long before they became husband and wife | 0:03:17 | 0:03:24 | |
when he was 65 and she was 27. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
But at that point she was married and so was he. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:33 | |
In fact, he'd been married for 40 years. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
As a young man, he'd fallen for the cool, pre-Raphaelite beauty of Adeline Fisher, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:43 | |
a cousin of Virginia Woolf. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
She played the cello rather better than Ralph played the viola. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:50 | |
He wrote to a relative to announce their engagement. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
"She is two years older than I am and for many years we've been great friends. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:03 | |
"And for the last three I've known my mind on the matter." | 0:04:03 | 0:04:07 | |
# Kissing her hair | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
# I sat against her feet | 0:04:10 | 0:04:16 | |
# Wove and unwove it | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
# Wound and found... # | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
I do remember she had a lovely voice, a wonderful way of speaking. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:28 | |
It was a deep, very articulated voice. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:31 | |
Once you'd heard it, you never forgot it. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:35 | |
She had this aquiline nose and rather in the air... | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
A very thin, long neck, I seem to remember. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
Very aristocratic looking. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
They spent their honeymoon in 1897 in Berlin | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
and stayed in Europe for six months | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
to escape what Vaughan Williams had already realised were the clutches of Adeline's extensive family. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:05 | |
# Kissing her hair... # | 0:05:05 | 0:05:11 | |
One of the things that Ralph resented | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
was that she was absolutely oriented on her family. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:19 | |
She had her mother's obsession with looking after the sick. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:23 | |
If one of her brothers even started sneezing, she had to go and look after them. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:30 | |
Vaughan Williams still had to make his mark as a composer | 0:05:30 | 0:05:35 | |
and find his own voice. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
He had been struggling to prove himself ever since his student days at the Royal College of Music | 0:05:37 | 0:05:44 | |
under the guidance of two leading composers, Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:50 | |
'One of the first things I showed Stanford was for a string quartet. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:55 | |
'I wrote feverishly at it and like every composer, | 0:05:55 | 0:05:59 | |
'I thought it was the greatest work that ever had been written | 0:05:59 | 0:06:04 | |
'and also this was my swansong, I'd never write anything again. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
'So I went there all het up, thinking my master would fall on his knees | 0:06:09 | 0:06:14 | |
'and say, "Here's a genius at last!" | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
'Stanford turned it over and dismissed it with a curt, "All rot, my boy." | 0:06:17 | 0:06:23 | |
'That's all I heard about that piece. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
'That's all I can remember. He was quite right. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
'Luckily, the piece was lost years ago.' | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
Living with Adeline in Westminster, he combined his composing efforts with research into English folksong | 0:06:34 | 0:06:41 | |
and edited the music for a pioneering new hymn book, The English Hymnal. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:47 | |
It resulted in some of his most famous tunes. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:51 | |
There's nothing like a congregation | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
singing a Vaughan Williams hymn. It's stirring. It moves me to tears. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:58 | |
# Come down, O love divine | 0:06:58 | 0:07:05 | |
# Seek thou this soul of mine | 0:07:05 | 0:07:11 | |
# And visit it with thine own ardour glowing... # | 0:07:11 | 0:07:20 | |
Vaughan Williams himself was an agnostic, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
but he had a passion for giving those who did go to church good tunes to sing. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:30 | |
He was happy to adapt some from folk songs with what he liked to call "sexular associations". | 0:07:30 | 0:07:37 | |
# And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing... # | 0:07:37 | 0:07:42 | |
Half a century later, living in a much bigger London house, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:47 | |
he still had his zest for hymns and Christmas carols, as Simona Pakenham discovered. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:53 | |
She'd been so hooked by his later music that she wrote a book about it | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
and a mutual friend, actress Jill Balcon, tried to get them to meet. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:03 | |
He rang Jill and said, "Who is this Simona Pakenham? | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
"Does she wear baggy tweed skirts and flat shoes?" | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
-Yes, that was lovely. -"Can I ask her to tea?" | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
-"Shall I ask her to tea?" -Jill said, "It's OK, you can ask her to tea." | 0:08:14 | 0:08:19 | |
Tea is a very discreet thing if you're meeting a new lady friend. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:24 | |
Ursula was going to be there, but asking someone to tea is OK. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
And I was absolutely terrified. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
I arrived much too early and walked round Regent's Park in a state of great dread. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:37 | |
Ursula opened the door and Ralph was on the bottom of the stairs. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
He spread out his arms and he said, "My dear, you know my hymn books!" | 0:08:41 | 0:08:46 | |
He was far more pleased with that than the fact I knew his symphonies. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:51 | |
# And so the yearning strong... # | 0:08:51 | 0:08:58 | |
Simona was such a beautiful woman too. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:02 | |
That would have appealed to him. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
And then the next thing he said was, "You must look at Ursula's petticoat." | 0:09:05 | 0:09:11 | |
So he heaved up her skirt and she had a bright yellow petticoat with black lace. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:17 | |
So that was my first meeting with him. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
But I hadn't expected him to be quite so gorgeous as he was. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:27 | |
# Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling... # | 0:09:27 | 0:09:34 | |
By the time he reached his mid-30s, Vaughan Williams had yet to produce a major orchestral score. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:41 | |
But his first symphony had the self-confidence of someone who had written symphonies all his life. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:48 | |
It's one of the great beginnings of any work written in any country. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:53 | |
The opening of the Sea Symphony is mind-blowing. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
# Behold the sea... # | 0:10:02 | 0:10:10 | |
DRAMATIC MUSIC | 0:10:10 | 0:10:12 | |
GENTLE, FLOWING STRINGS MUSIC | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
# And on its limitless heaving breast, the ships | 0:10:27 | 0:10:35 | |
# Its limitless heaving breast | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
-# See where their white... -See where their white sails | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
# Bellying in the wind... # | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
You felt the sea almost shifting under you. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
You were there in the blustering waves. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:55 | |
You entered things through his imagination. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
That was his magic. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:05 | |
It wasn't just imagination. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
The symphony had taken years of struggle, at one point almost killing him. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:13 | |
He had been wrestling with it in Yorkshire when he went for a swim off a beach near Robin Hood's Bay. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:20 | |
The sea was rougher than he thought and he couldn't scramble back on to the rocks. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:32 | |
The symphony's first audience had no idea how close a shave he'd had. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:37 | |
He was already 38. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:43 | |
That is a late composer. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
Was Mozart not already dead at that point? | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
He was on the point of giving up in despair and exhaustion | 0:11:55 | 0:12:01 | |
and letting himself drown. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
But a freak wave lifted him right on to the shore | 0:12:03 | 0:12:07 | |
and preserved him for 50 more years and eight more symphonies. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:12 | |
He was a late developer and he went on developing right on till the end of his life. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:24 | |
1910 was a turning point. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:26 | |
On top of the Sea Symphony, Vaughan Williams combined his passions for hymns, folk songs and Tudor music | 0:12:26 | 0:12:33 | |
to create a quite different modern masterpiece - The Fantasia On A Theme Of Thomas Tallis. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:40 | |
Its first performance in Gloucester Cathedral marked him out as a composer unlike any other. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:49 | |
GENTLE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
He used to say that any composer worth his salt had at least one piece in him | 0:12:59 | 0:13:05 | |
that could not have been written by anyone else. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
This was it. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
I'm sure he had the cathedral acoustic in mind as he wrote this piece, | 0:13:20 | 0:13:26 | |
with that long, long reverberation time, the beautiful resonance too of a stone building. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:33 | |
A very important moment for him. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
And we don't know if we're in three-time or four-time. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:45 | |
That's another thing. There's no conventional rhythm here. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:49 | |
"TALLIS FANTASIA" CONTINUES | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
And now VW lets the orchestra flower. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
It's a work of astonishing originality. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:11 | |
I seem to remember that at that concert there was Ivor Gurney and Herbert Howells, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:17 | |
two composers who became important on the English scene. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:22 | |
They were walking around the streets all night because of the Tallis Fantasia | 0:14:22 | 0:14:28 | |
which was a totally new world. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:30 | |
At last, VW was on his way. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:40 | |
When he turned his musical imagination to his beloved London, | 0:14:40 | 0:14:45 | |
he had the colours to do it. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
Thanks to lessons he'd had from the young French composer Maurice Ravel, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
he had achieved a distinctive Vaughan Williams sound. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
As a resident for 20 years or more, | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
he preferred to call his London Symphony "Symphony By A Londoner". | 0:15:02 | 0:15:07 | |
This idea of VW as a countryman | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
has always been rubbish. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
He was born in the country, but lived most of his life in London | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
and he liked London, art galleries, theatres and seeing friends. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:26 | |
MUSIC: "A London Symphony" | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
STRIDENT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
It was probably the richest and most romantic score of them all in many ways. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:54 | |
And I heard him say when he was a very old man indeed, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
"I can't score like that now, I can't get that richness." | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
His involvement in the Great War led inevitably to a change in the colour and temper of his music. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:09 | |
At 42, Vaughan Williams was over-age, so he pretended he was 39 | 0:16:09 | 0:16:14 | |
and volunteered for the ranks, to the despair of some of his friends. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
The cantata Dona Nobis Pacem, Give Us Peace, was his own war requiem, though he was no pacifist. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:26 | |
# Dona nobis pacem... # | 0:16:27 | 0:16:42 | |
CHORAL HARMONIES | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
DRAMATIC MUSIC | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
MUSIC REACHES CRESCENDO | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
# Dona nobis pacem... # | 0:17:16 | 0:17:27 | |
He had a great feeling for manly life | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
and I think the army made a great impression on him, the absolute goodness of these people. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:35 | |
He wasn't a natural soldier. He found it difficult. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
He enjoyed the camaraderie hugely and organised music wherever he went. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:45 | |
But he found looking tidy very difficult. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
Private Vaughan Williams joined the Royal Army Medical Corps | 0:17:50 | 0:17:55 | |
and was sent to northern France as a wagon orderly. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
He ferried the wounded on stretchers from the front line to makeshift dressing stations. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:05 | |
It gave him first-hand insight into the realities of war which coloured his music in the years to come. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:12 | |
SOLEMN, MELANCHOLIC MUSIC | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
He described going up night after night with the ambulance wagon at Ecoivres, up the steep hill, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:39 | |
where in the midst of war he was impressed by what he called | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
"the wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset". | 0:18:43 | 0:18:47 | |
SLOW MARCHING RHYTHM | 0:18:47 | 0:18:50 | |
# The last sunbeam | 0:18:56 | 0:19:01 | |
# Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath | 0:19:01 | 0:19:08 | |
# On the pavement here | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
# And there beyond it is looking | 0:19:12 | 0:19:18 | |
# Down a new-made double grave... # | 0:19:19 | 0:19:26 | |
A new symphony began to germinate in his mind which he rather misleadingly called The Pastoral. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:35 | |
People said it suggested a cow looking over a gate | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
or VW rolling over and over in a field. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
But if there's any landscape here, it's a French one | 0:19:49 | 0:19:54 | |
and a disturbing one at that. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
"It's wartime music," he told Ursula later, "not lambkins frisking." | 0:19:57 | 0:20:02 | |
I think he maybe saw the irony of it, | 0:20:04 | 0:20:08 | |
that this was or could have been a pastoral scene if it hadn't been blasted by war. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:14 | |
GENTLE, THOUGHTFUL MUSIC | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
It's deeply uncomfortable music actually. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
It gives me that feeling that you're standing somewhere with a cool breeze blowing on the back of your neck | 0:20:43 | 0:20:50 | |
and you're not sure whether you're really enjoying it or actually it's rather scary. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:57 | |
DRAMATIC, OMINOUS MUSIC | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
BECOMES GENTLER AGAIN | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
I wonder why do people keep talking about cowpats and English countryside? | 0:21:15 | 0:21:21 | |
Because to me it seemed a most ominous, dark and formidable, threatening work even. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:27 | |
Vaughan Williams uses in this movement a natural horn, a natural trumpet, | 0:21:29 | 0:21:35 | |
which only plays the notes of the harmonic series, which are a little bit out of tune. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:42 | |
They don't have piston stops to modify the notes | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
and I think he wants to get that open air feeling that you get on folk instruments or on bugles. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:54 | |
I always think in the slow movement of The Pastoral Symphony | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
you're hearing something rather like a Last Post for the dead in the trenches. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:04 | |
SLOW MOURNFUL MUSIC | 0:22:09 | 0:22:12 | |
By the time Ralph came back to Adeline in Chelsea, the war had marked them both. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:31 | |
Ralph grieved for friends like his fellow composer George Butterworth, lost at the front. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:38 | |
He wrote that he dreaded returning to normal life with so many gaps | 0:23:38 | 0:23:43 | |
and Adeline had lost a brother in the naval Battle of Jutland, a blow from which she never recovered. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:50 | |
She wore black for the rest of her life. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
# O my soldiers twain | 0:23:55 | 0:23:59 | |
# O my veterans | 0:23:59 | 0:24:04 | |
# Passing to burial... | 0:24:04 | 0:24:08 | |
# What I have | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
# I also give you... | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
# And my heart, O my soldiers | 0:24:41 | 0:24:49 | |
# My veterans... | 0:24:53 | 0:25:00 | |
# My heart | 0:25:13 | 0:25:19 | |
# Gives you love... # | 0:25:19 | 0:25:28 | |
But there were other problems too. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
Even before the war, Adeline had contracted arthritis | 0:25:30 | 0:25:34 | |
and Ralph now found she was in increasing pain, often confined to a wheelchair, | 0:25:34 | 0:25:40 | |
though she was only in her 40s. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
It meant in the end he had to forsake London for the Surrey he had known as a boy. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:49 | |
To make life easier for her, he went into exile, as he once put it, on the edge of Dorking | 0:25:49 | 0:25:55 | |
where he composed in somewhat sombre surroundings. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:59 | |
I think it was what one might call | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
a high-minded marriage. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
Adeline played a close role in everything he did. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
She listened to all his music on the wireless when she couldn't go to the concerts. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:16 | |
She wrote a lot of his letters, not for him, but to his dictation. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:21 | |
He did a great deal for her. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:23 | |
I mean, I think more than most husbands would do. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:27 | |
I think he used to really look after her, give her a bath and help her do her hair. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:34 | |
But it was hopeless. It just got worse. The pain was bad. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:40 | |
Quite how much of a close, romantic attachment there was after the early years, I'm not sure. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:48 | |
But I suspect it became less so quite quickly. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:52 | |
The exile in Surrey was to last almost a quarter of a century. | 0:26:52 | 0:26:57 | |
He and Adeline never had children, | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
but there were usually members of Adeline's family staying with them at the White Gates | 0:27:00 | 0:27:06 | |
and other guests were somewhat wary. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
-A dark house inside. -Very strange house really. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:21 | |
A little bit like going into a church. And there was a balcony. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:26 | |
I suppose the bedroom had the balcony. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
Adeline was in a wheelchair with a rug over her. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:37 | |
With a green eyeshade. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
I remember particularly seeing her when she was to have a cup of tea, | 0:27:40 | 0:27:45 | |
stuffing a handkerchief into the handle of the cup, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
so she could hold on to it and drink it for herself. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:53 | |
I don't think she was experienced with rumbustious boys of our age. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
So after a bit we were turned out into the garden. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:04 | |
There might have been a sandwich coming my way | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
and I might have carefully tipped a little tea into my mouth, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:12 | |
but I was there as part of the baggage, not to be shown around. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
Vaughan Williams did regularly escape to London by train | 0:28:18 | 0:28:23 | |
where he drew sustenance from his female students at the Royal College of Music | 0:28:23 | 0:28:29 | |
and from other young musicians he worked with. | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
The letters he wrote to these younger women were signed "Uncle Ralph" and he put kisses on it. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:39 | |
It was innocent and light-hearted. | 0:28:39 | 0:28:41 | |
When he wrote a concerto for the pianist Harriet Cohen, all he asked in return was 10,000 kisses. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:48 | |
And in his frequent letters he kept a tally of the balance he was owed. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:53 | |
He needed youth. That was why he got to know us all. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:58 | |
There's a very charming story about how Vaughan Williams would slowly climb up to the top floor | 0:28:58 | 0:29:05 | |
of the Royal College of Music | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
when a particularly beautiful young violin student | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
would be practising. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:15 | |
He would just climb all that way, look into the window for just a few moments | 0:29:15 | 0:29:21 | |
and climb all the way back down to his teaching studio. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
He rather shocked me on one occasion because I had a friend. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:30 | |
He said to her, "How's your love life, my darling?" | 0:29:30 | 0:29:34 | |
I think he realised I was rather horrified. He said, "They told me everything." And I'm sure they did. | 0:29:34 | 0:29:41 | |
He was, I think, a Shakespearean character. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
Large, bumbling. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:51 | |
Spread all over the chair with his huge shoulders | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
and a certain amount of tum. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
He had about three shelves on it and on each one was a cat. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:04 | |
Yes, always with a cat. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:06 | |
I don't want to be rude, but the resemblance to a sack of potatoes comes to mind. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:13 | |
He wore a three-piece, heavy, tweed suit, even if it was high summer. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:18 | |
With his waistcoat skew-whiff and probably a stain on his tie. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
I love the dishevelled aspect of him. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:27 | |
I think it was because the other professors were so neat and dapper | 0:30:27 | 0:30:32 | |
and always looked as though they had just shaved. He didn't look like that. He didn't shave a great deal. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:40 | |
-# Ding... -Dong | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
-# Ding... -Dong | 0:30:43 | 0:30:48 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell | 0:30:48 | 0:30:53 | |
-# Dong... -Ding-dong | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
# Ding-dong bell... # | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
Musically, Vaughan Williams was just as much Ariel as Falstaff. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:03 | |
# Ding-dong bell | 0:31:03 | 0:31:05 | |
# Full fathom five | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
# Thy father lies... # | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
He knew how to work his charms on the young. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell... # | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
The singer Robert Tear first sang this setting of Shakespeare 50 years ago | 0:31:18 | 0:31:25 | |
and was amazed when the composer turned up to hear him and his fellow students rehearse. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:31 | |
They were just wonderful. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
# Nothing of him that doth fa-a-a-ade... # | 0:31:35 | 0:31:44 | |
I was 18 and I was singing with the King's College Cambridge Choir. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:49 | |
We came down to St Bartholomew's Church in Smithfield. | 0:31:49 | 0:31:53 | |
And there was this haystack of a man, | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
hugely big, sitting on a very small chair, looking like a sofa with the stuffing coming out. | 0:31:57 | 0:32:03 | |
He was enormously impressive. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
# Rich and strange | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
# Stra-a-ange | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
# Stra-a-ange | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
# Stra-a-a-ange | 0:32:17 | 0:32:21 | |
# Di-i-i-ing | 0:32:21 | 0:32:26 | |
# Ding-dong bell... # | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
We went to introduce ourselves to him and he produced this enormous black ear trumpet | 0:32:29 | 0:32:36 | |
in which we had to bellow our names, | 0:32:36 | 0:32:38 | |
a bit like meeting Beethoven! | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
# Di-i-ing Ding-dong bell | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell | 0:32:51 | 0:32:54 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell | 0:32:54 | 0:32:57 | |
# Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell | 0:32:57 | 0:33:01 | |
# Di-i-ing...do-o-ong...be-e-ell... # | 0:33:01 | 0:33:07 | |
It was while teaching students in London in the mid-1920s | 0:33:10 | 0:33:15 | |
that Vaughan Williams produced a work which demonstrates how much he depended on the young, | 0:33:15 | 0:33:21 | |
particularly women, to motivate him. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:24 | |
Flos Campi, or Flower Of The Field, | 0:33:27 | 0:33:29 | |
was inspired by the ecstatic love poetry of the Biblical Song of Songs, | 0:33:29 | 0:33:35 | |
verses of which head every movement. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
Flos Campi absolutely got me. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
DRAMATIC, STRIDENT MUSIC | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
REACHES CRESCENDO | 0:33:52 | 0:33:54 | |
I think anyone that doesn't know Vaughan Williams well, | 0:33:57 | 0:34:02 | |
I would defy them to identify that as Vaughan Williams. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
The origins of Flos Campi intrigued Michael Kennedy | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
while he was working on his definitive study of the composer. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
Vaughan Williams gave a clue. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
"Those pimps at the BBC," he said, "think it's religious. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
"In fact, it's the most passionate piece I ever wrote." | 0:34:21 | 0:34:26 | |
It's almost an erotic work and the reason for it was he was very taken | 0:34:26 | 0:34:31 | |
with a young girl at the Royal College of Music. | 0:34:31 | 0:34:34 | |
When Ursula and I did our books together, we exchanged letters and she wrote to me about this. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:41 | |
She said, "I think Flos is not much mystical, but about Ralph's most sensual-sensuous work. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:48 | |
"He behaved rather badly to a woman who was obviously in love with him as he used to go and see her a lot | 0:34:48 | 0:34:55 | |
"to work himself up into the terrific state he needed to be in to write it, but never got involved. | 0:34:55 | 0:35:01 | |
"Rather a fine tightrope performance. | 0:35:01 | 0:35:04 | |
"He was much surprised when I said I thought it was immoral to go so far and no further." | 0:35:04 | 0:35:10 | |
There was another young woman in Surrey who was burnt by the Vaughan Williams flame. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:17 | |
For years he had been harvesting the efforts of village choral societies and amateur orchestras | 0:35:17 | 0:35:23 | |
for the Leith Hill Musical Festival. | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
Its secretary was Frances Farrer or Fanny as she was known. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:30 | |
She was more than 20 years Ralph's junior, but they became close. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:35 | |
It was probably the most important relationship of her life. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:40 | |
He was obviously very fond of her. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
I think Adeline was considerably an invalid at that time, | 0:35:43 | 0:35:47 | |
so he needed somebody to keep him company. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:51 | |
He liked her being so dashing. They went for drives in her car and went very fast round corners probably! | 0:35:51 | 0:35:57 | |
The family treasures the manuscripts he gave Fanny and his jokingly affectionate letters. | 0:35:57 | 0:36:04 | |
-He says, "My darling sec," and "Your conductor." -"Your loving conductor." -"Your loving conductor," indeed. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:11 | |
Making arrangements to meet, "it was so lovely to see you." | 0:36:11 | 0:36:16 | |
-"Longing to see you again." -Yes. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
Aunt Fan, say her family, was an energetic, get-up-and-go character. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:23 | |
She ran the festival and sometimes wrote lyrics for Ralph to set to music, but she wasn't a musician. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:30 | |
So when Ralph was asked to write a piece for amateurs to play at the opening of a village hall in 1925, | 0:36:34 | 0:36:42 | |
he arranged a folk dance with a simple percussion part for Fanny. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:47 | |
CHEERFUL MELODIC MUSIC | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
Fanny never talked of her friendship with him and wanted his letters burned after her death, | 0:37:06 | 0:37:13 | |
tell-tale signs, in her family's view, of a broken heart. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:17 | |
When I was about 12 or something, I wanted a pair of binoculars. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:29 | |
Aunt Fan had two, so she gave me one. They were lovely binoculars. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:34 | |
Obviously war surplus and in a lovely leather case, so I thought they were great. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:40 | |
A week later, she said, "I'll give you a new case for those binoculars. I'll have the other one back." | 0:37:40 | 0:37:47 | |
I looked at the case and there, very worn on it, was "RV Williams". | 0:37:47 | 0:37:51 | |
She didn't want me to know they'd been his binoculars. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:56 | |
HARMONISED SINGING | 0:38:02 | 0:38:04 | |
SENSUAL, ENERGETIC MUSIC | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
MUSIC REACHES CRESCENDO | 0:38:41 | 0:38:44 | |
GENTLE VIOLA MUSIC | 0:39:25 | 0:39:27 | |
After 18 years, Fanny Farrer gave up running the festival | 0:39:44 | 0:39:49 | |
and moved away. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:51 | |
She couldn't feel interest in other men. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:59 | |
She was friendly with lots of them, but wasn't able to go further. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:04 | |
-She never married? -No. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:06 | |
He was always there. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:09 | |
The 4th Symphony in 1934 bewildered his friends. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
There was nothing romantic, nothing pastoral here. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:28 | |
It came at the time of growing frustration in his home life and the rise of Hitler. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:35 | |
Vaughan Williams had found a new language, but it was still indisputably his. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:41 | |
You see, this is a well of passion building up. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:49 | |
Because this was the way whatever was inside could get out. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:57 | |
OMINOUS, DRAMATIC MUSIC | 0:41:01 | 0:41:04 | |
It's an incredibly angry work. It really stirs you up. He was a real human being. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:17 | |
That's a genuinely modernistic work, shatteringly dissonant. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:22 | |
I was doing the ironing and I always had the radio on when I was ironing. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:29 | |
And I suddenly heard this extraordinary music. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:33 | |
Like nothing that I had ever heard before. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:38 | |
And yes, in some strange way, it made all the rest of music fall into place. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:50 | |
MUSIC REACHES CRESCENDO | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
This is the way he erupts. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
This is why he had to write music. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:04 | |
VW always hated his music being given meanings. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
He did discuss this F Minor Symphony with a friend, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:15 | |
but was cagey about what had been in his mind. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:19 | |
"I agree with you that all music must have beauty, | 0:42:19 | 0:42:23 | |
"the problem being what is beauty? | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
"So when you say you do not think my F Minor Symphony is beautiful, | 0:42:26 | 0:42:31 | |
"my answer must be that I do think it beautiful, | 0:42:31 | 0:42:35 | |
"not that I did not mean it to be beautiful because it reflects unbeautiful times. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:41 | |
"We know that beauty can come from unbeautiful things. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
"As a matter of fact, I'm not at all sure I like it myself now. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:51 | |
"All I know is that it is what I wanted to do at the time. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:56 | |
"I wrote it not as a definite picture of anything external, eg, the state of Europe, | 0:42:56 | 0:43:02 | |
"but simply because it occurred to me like this. I can't explain why." | 0:43:02 | 0:43:07 | |
He may have been thinking about what was going on in Germany and in his own life, | 0:43:07 | 0:43:12 | |
but he was thinking about how he could write this symphony. He was interested in music. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:19 | |
He was a big man. He had a big voice. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
And he used it, bless his heart! | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
If things went wrong, he got very cross. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:31 | |
He could be frightening, obviously. He had the rage of Zeus. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:36 | |
He couldn't bear being late. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
He was going somewhere and the train was late coming in. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
When he got into the train, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
he had screwed his gloves up so much that he'd torn them in the middle! | 0:43:46 | 0:43:51 | |
The famous picture of him haranguing an orchestra! I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of VW in a rage. | 0:43:51 | 0:43:58 | |
And you hear that in the music. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:00 | |
ENERGETIC, STRIDENT MUSIC | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
One of the soloists didn't arrive for a rehearsal. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
But he left word with a secretary, "Don't worry, I know it backwards." | 0:44:12 | 0:44:18 | |
And Vaughan Williams immediately was very, very angry. He was very, very angry. | 0:44:18 | 0:44:25 | |
He said, "Well, I don't want him to sing it backwards!" | 0:44:25 | 0:44:29 | |
Vaughan Williams was now well into middle age. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:33 | |
One of his stage works at the time exemplified the tensions in his personal life. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:40 | |
The virtuous patience of Job is tested through many tribulations at the hands of God and Satan. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:47 | |
After 30 years of Ralph's high-minded marriage, Job was to become the catalyst for change. | 0:44:56 | 0:45:03 | |
It's so glamorous | 0:45:04 | 0:45:07 | |
in its wonderful satanic manner. It's really beautiful. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:11 | |
This 1930 ballet is based on drawings by William Blake. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:27 | |
Rather like Milton in Paradise Lost, Blake portrayed Satan as an attractive, handsome figure. | 0:45:28 | 0:45:35 | |
Gosh, it's masculine stuff, that! | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
-You feel Vaughan Williams has sympathy for Satan! -Oh, yes! But everybody likes Satan really. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:52 | |
He certainly does, as far as I can tell. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:56 | |
The sheer power of this music first drew the young and beautiful Ursula to Vaughan Williams. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:11 | |
It was at the Old Vic, where I was a drama student and we were allowed to go on Mondays free | 0:46:19 | 0:46:26 | |
so I went to the ballet every Monday | 0:46:26 | 0:46:29 | |
and was rewarded with Job, which knocked me sideways. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:32 | |
I knew the Blake drawings and I had heard very little music in my life. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:43 | |
So it was a surprise, a revelation and, in a way, a shock. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:48 | |
Directly because of Job, Ursula eventually contacted Vaughan Williams with a new ballet scenario. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:03 | |
He turned it down with a "Dear Madam" letter. She was now married. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
But she persisted until she met him. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
I think she wrote him a fan letter, didn't she? | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
And managed to get him to take her out to lunch. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
The date was fixed for March 31st, 1938, in a letter from Ralph. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:26 | |
But, ironically, the way things turned out, the handwriting was not Ralph's, but Adeline's. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:33 | |
Ursula anticipated the encounter by writing a poem that was strangely prophetic. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:43 | |
"Fleshed at this meeting moves her aware and sensual | 0:47:44 | 0:47:49 | |
"Threading between casual moments and things, to loves | 0:47:49 | 0:47:54 | |
"Destined by some choice | 0:47:54 | 0:47:57 | |
"Made with both mind and voice | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
"but blindly. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:02 | |
"Minds like a bird in air | 0:48:04 | 0:48:06 | |
"A comet which scars in flight | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
"The distance and delight to find such freedom there | 0:48:09 | 0:48:14 | |
"But will not stare behind to trace the path we find blindly. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:21 | |
"I am two fools, I know For loving and for saying so." | 0:48:21 | 0:48:27 | |
March 31st dawned. | 0:48:29 | 0:48:32 | |
A day that would complicate both their lives for many years and change them forever. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:38 | |
Events unfolded in London, which was still the place where Ralph's heart beat fastest. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:44 | |
He'd arranged to collect Ursula from her parents' flat. She was impressed that he kept the taxi waiting | 0:48:44 | 0:48:50 | |
and by his green pork pie hat. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:53 | |
He was very tall and he was very beautiful | 0:48:54 | 0:48:58 | |
and he was perfect. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
Some 60 years later, Ursula spoke for the only time about what happened on that momentous day. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:09 | |
It was in a research interview for a book, never heard before. | 0:49:10 | 0:49:15 | |
She later told friends that in the taxi "voice, eyes, hands were somehow familiar, | 0:49:37 | 0:49:43 | |
"so that I felt I was meeting again someone I'd known before and this recognition was the same for him." | 0:49:43 | 0:49:49 | |
After the lunch, the taxi stopped short, | 0:49:50 | 0:49:55 | |
they touched hands and, at that point, there was a romantic embrace | 0:49:55 | 0:50:02 | |
and a passionate kiss. | 0:50:02 | 0:50:04 | |
Now I'm unclear as to whether he initiated the passionate kiss | 0:50:19 | 0:50:25 | |
or she initiated it, | 0:50:25 | 0:50:27 | |
but, whatever the situation, she certainly enjoyed it | 0:50:27 | 0:50:33 | |
and told me he was a terrific kisser. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
He was, you know, like that. | 0:50:56 | 0:50:58 | |
It was instantaneous. I'm sure it was. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:02 | |
Ambushed by love is the word. You never know when it'll hit you. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:07 | |
He was loving. He was really loving. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:30 | |
And I adored him. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:32 | |
She responded to their first meeting by sending him some of her poetry. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:37 | |
He told her, "I loved having your poems. The one about your hair particularly." | 0:51:37 | 0:51:43 | |
'When I unplait my hair at night I touch it as a stranger might.' | 0:51:43 | 0:51:48 | |
It was now some five years since Ursula's marriage to an army officer, Michael Wood. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:06 | |
He was often away on duty and she rented a small flat in London. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:12 | |
Living in the same block was her friend Jean Stewart: | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
The Serenade to Music later that year was ostensibly VW's tribute to the conductor Henry Wood. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:55 | |
But those sounds of music had a settled romantic glow that spoke of personal experience. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:09 | |
I think the occasion of that work was his meeting and love of Ursula. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:21 | |
I think that this brought about an extraordinary release of feeling, of sustained feeling. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:36 | |
It's not to say that Vaughan Williams had not been incredibly vigorous | 0:53:39 | 0:53:46 | |
and passionate previously. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:48 | |
But it's the specific expression of that work which I think is new. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:55 | |
Ralph and Ursula were now involved in an intense secret affair that was to last 15 years. | 0:53:56 | 0:54:03 | |
Valentine poems she lavished on him each February have come to light. | 0:54:04 | 0:54:09 | |
Although he remained based at home in Dorking, and she was in London, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:14 | |
there were no half measures in their relationship. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:18 | |
That remains, for some, a delicate subject, even 50 years after his death. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:24 | |
In his nature there was an earthiness | 0:54:24 | 0:54:29 | |
and a passionate quality, | 0:54:29 | 0:54:32 | |
which was not nourished | 0:54:33 | 0:54:37 | |
as it could have been. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:40 | |
And when Ursula came upon the scene, maybe she was able to give him some of this. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:48 | |
And while it didn't disturb his devotion to Adeline, | 0:54:49 | 0:54:54 | |
it provided another dimension in his life. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:59 | |
Opened new doors? | 0:54:59 | 0:55:01 | |
Opened new doors. | 0:55:01 | 0:55:04 | |
I should think the question was that there was very little sex | 0:55:04 | 0:55:08 | |
in the marriage with Adeline, | 0:55:08 | 0:55:11 | |
whereas Ursula sort of transformed his life completely | 0:55:11 | 0:55:16 | |
I think when he met Ursula he'd never had a love affair like that before. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:20 | |
My understanding from Ursula was that they consummated their relationship physically | 0:55:20 | 0:55:27 | |
very shortly after they met. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:30 | |
-Within a few dates, let's say. -And how long did that last? | 0:55:31 | 0:55:36 | |
Until the day he died. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:39 | |
She was extraordinarily beautiful. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:44 | |
Very, very pronounced and definite, | 0:55:44 | 0:55:49 | |
whereas Adeline was the other thing, very sort of wispy. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:53 | |
So I understand how it all worked and it was lovely for Ralph. He really was lucky. | 0:55:56 | 0:56:02 | |
The correspondence between Ralph and Ursula was affectionate, but mostly discreet. | 0:56:02 | 0:56:08 | |
A year into the affair, Ursula encountered his wife in London. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:14 | |
Indeed, they all met up at a performance of Vaughan Williams' romantic opera Hugh the Drover. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:21 | |
# I bring you toil and strife... # | 0:56:22 | 0:56:26 | |
Present were Ralph and Adeline Vaughan Williams and Michael and Ursula Wood. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:36 | |
Hugh the Drover rides into town | 0:56:36 | 0:56:39 | |
and romances the town beauty. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
It's early Vaughan Williams. It's so romantic and windblown. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:51 | |
It's just as erotic as Puccini. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:03 | |
It must have been an extraordinarily uncomfortable evening. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:12 | |
Some months later, Ursula was invited down to Dorking for tea at The White Gates. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:30 | |
She was clearly nervous about meeting Adeline on her home ground. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:35 | |
She reported that Adeline was "alarming" in her high-backed wheelchair. | 0:57:47 | 0:57:52 | |
"She seemed infinitely older than Ralph," she said, and her fragility, her crooked hands | 0:57:52 | 0:57:58 | |
her grey hair and pallor seemed to remove her from life's ordinariness. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:04 | |
It was a relief when the other guests arrived. | 0:58:04 | 0:58:09 | |
One of VW's associates told Byron Adams he had a similar reaction after visiting The White Gates. | 0:58:14 | 0:58:20 | |
One of the startling things he said was that Adeline Vaughan Williams had a tongue like a viper | 0:58:22 | 0:58:28 | |
and that he was very frightened of her. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:32 | |
Ursula did spend time with her husband Michael during his rare periods of leave. | 0:58:39 | 0:58:45 | |
She said they'd begun to feel like strangers. | 0:58:45 | 0:58:49 | |
Years later, she confided in some of her friends that she'd become pregnant. | 0:58:49 | 0:58:55 | |
Ursula told me twice, in 1994 and 1997, | 0:58:56 | 0:59:02 | |
that she had at one time had to have an abortion. | 0:59:03 | 0:59:07 | |
Now she very much wanted to believe | 0:59:07 | 0:59:11 | |
that the child was Vaughan Williams's. | 0:59:11 | 0:59:15 | |
However, we don't know whose child it was. | 0:59:15 | 0:59:20 | |
This was her decision, as she stressed to me. | 0:59:20 | 0:59:24 | |
Neither Michael Wood nor Ralph Vaughan Williams put her up to it in any way. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:30 | |
-Were they aware of it? -Oh, yes. She told them both. | 0:59:30 | 0:59:35 | |
Then, in June 1942, in the middle of WWII, | 0:59:38 | 0:59:42 | |
Ursula's husband, Michael, died suddenly of a heart attack. | 0:59:42 | 0:59:46 | |
The news reached London in a telegram that was opened by her neighbour Jean Stewart. | 0:59:46 | 0:59:52 | |
Ralph made clear to Ursula that he would never leave his invalid wife. | 1:00:29 | 1:00:34 | |
Adeline played her cards shrewdly by continually inviting her to Dorking. | 1:00:34 | 1:00:39 | |
This generosity kept a jealous Ursula on the back foot. | 1:00:39 | 1:00:43 | |
Adeline was charming. | 1:00:43 | 1:00:46 | |
She wore black, mostly. | 1:00:46 | 1:00:48 | |
But I bought her another one, a dark brown one, | 1:00:48 | 1:00:54 | |
with loose sleeves that tied up. | 1:00:54 | 1:00:57 | |
I don't think she was very pleased by that. | 1:00:57 | 1:01:01 | |
She was crippled and I know it was absolutely agony to have that. | 1:01:01 | 1:01:08 | |
She was very...miserable. | 1:01:08 | 1:01:12 | |
The war, as for so many people, served to intensify and complicate these personal relationships. | 1:01:13 | 1:01:20 | |
For Vaughan Williams, the Blitz brought back into focus his own active service 25 years earlier | 1:01:21 | 1:01:27 | |
and the principles that motivated him. This time he took on war work as a civilian. | 1:01:27 | 1:01:34 | |
He had no doubt where his moral duty lay. | 1:01:34 | 1:01:38 | |
He did respect the pacifist conviction of the young composer Michael Tippett | 1:01:38 | 1:01:44 | |
and wrote a testimonial in his support, but he told him with some vehemence he was wrong. | 1:01:44 | 1:01:51 | |
"If your house was on fire," he wrote, "you would not ignore it and go on writing | 1:01:51 | 1:01:57 | |
"until you'd helped to put it out and saved the inmates - | 1:01:57 | 1:02:01 | |
"if for no other reason because if your music paper was burnt, you'd not be able to go on composing." | 1:02:01 | 1:02:07 | |
As he reached 70, Vaughan Williams was the doyen of British music. | 1:02:14 | 1:02:18 | |
Symphony Number 5, which he'd worked on ever since he met Ursula, | 1:02:22 | 1:02:27 | |
came as unforeseen balm in the midst of battle. | 1:02:27 | 1:02:31 | |
I was simply knocked sideways by this work. | 1:02:50 | 1:02:55 | |
It was 1944 and it was the time of what we called the buzz bombs, the flying bombs, the V1s. | 1:03:00 | 1:03:09 | |
I was working in the bowels of the Overseas Department of the BBC, | 1:03:09 | 1:03:14 | |
living like a mole in appalling air. | 1:03:14 | 1:03:17 | |
Sleeping there and working there and so on. | 1:03:17 | 1:03:20 | |
And I'd been on duty and Simona Pakenham's first husband, Noel Iliffe, | 1:03:20 | 1:03:27 | |
said, "I'd like to play you this piece." | 1:03:27 | 1:03:30 | |
So we sat in a studio and he played me the 5th Symphony. | 1:03:30 | 1:03:35 | |
It's one of the most wonderful musical experiences I've ever had and I've listened to music all my life. | 1:03:44 | 1:03:51 | |
We were so tired of living underground and never knowing if we'd see the next day, you know. | 1:04:02 | 1:04:08 | |
In Surrey, the Vaughan Williamses were anxious about the doodle bugs and the cut out of their engines. | 1:04:20 | 1:04:26 | |
During one night raid, Adeline invited Ursula to join them in the bedroom. | 1:04:33 | 1:04:39 | |
Ursula lay on a mattress between Adeline's bed and Ralph's, | 1:04:39 | 1:04:43 | |
holding hands with both of them in reassurance. | 1:04:43 | 1:04:48 | |
I was very frightened. I was horrified. | 1:04:48 | 1:04:51 | |
Ralph and Adeline slept in adjoining beds and Ursula lay in between them on the floor. | 1:04:51 | 1:04:58 | |
Yes, and we all sat there and we were clenching. | 1:04:58 | 1:05:03 | |
This extraordinary image was an emblem of the balance that Ralph seemed to have found | 1:05:08 | 1:05:14 | |
between the two women in his life. | 1:05:14 | 1:05:16 | |
It's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful tune. | 1:05:30 | 1:05:35 | |
Not many composers manage serenity. | 1:06:05 | 1:06:07 | |
Bach does it and Beethoven does it, but Vaughan Williams, who saw the dark side of things, | 1:06:07 | 1:06:13 | |
nevertheless is serene. | 1:06:13 | 1:06:16 | |
He can face the world in all its nastiness and still remain serene by encompassing it. | 1:06:22 | 1:06:29 | |
Where does it come from? This is what we all want to know. | 1:06:36 | 1:06:40 | |
We can sort of understand how a painter paints and how a poet finds words, | 1:06:44 | 1:06:50 | |
but where does this... this...? | 1:06:50 | 1:06:54 | |
Much of the symphony drew on his love of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, | 1:06:57 | 1:07:02 | |
but it's hard not to connect its inner radiance with his feelings for Ursula. | 1:07:02 | 1:07:08 | |
As she told me, "All the symphonies from Number 5 on are mine." And she's right. | 1:07:13 | 1:07:19 | |
The moral duty about which Ralph was so certain as regards war | 1:07:22 | 1:07:27 | |
was perhaps harder to work out in terms of Adeline and Ursula. | 1:07:27 | 1:07:31 | |
It must have been a fairly friendly relationship or they'd hardly sleep in one room during the Blitz. | 1:07:37 | 1:07:43 | |
So I think Adeline must have accepted Ursula. | 1:07:43 | 1:07:48 | |
I dare say a few people might have thought it a scandal, | 1:07:48 | 1:07:52 | |
but they didn't blazen it abroad. | 1:07:52 | 1:07:55 | |
Mind you, she always appeared with him at concerts. | 1:07:55 | 1:07:58 | |
But friends and family often misunderstood the way Ursula fitted in | 1:07:58 | 1:08:05 | |
and no one rushed to put them right. | 1:08:05 | 1:08:07 | |
She was there right through the war, or most of the war. | 1:08:07 | 1:08:13 | |
I think it was her phrase that her war work was looking after the VWs. | 1:08:13 | 1:08:18 | |
I think to begin with she appeared as more or less a sort of nurse or whatever to Adeline. | 1:08:18 | 1:08:25 | |
That's how we all took it, anyway. | 1:08:25 | 1:08:28 | |
Both my parents were quite shy, but it amused them enormously that Ina Boyle, the Irish composer, | 1:08:28 | 1:08:35 | |
who I think didn't ever understand the relationship, referred to Ursula as "the secretary". | 1:08:35 | 1:08:41 | |
There was not a very good reception for Ursula in the family. How unfair that was, I don't know. | 1:08:41 | 1:08:48 | |
-Why? -I think they felt that she was probably what my grandmother would call "an adventuress". | 1:08:48 | 1:08:56 | |
Any remaining doubt over whether Adeline knew about Ralph's affair | 1:08:56 | 1:09:01 | |
is dispelled by a Valentine card sent to him by Ursula two years after the war. | 1:09:01 | 1:09:07 | |
The envelope that landed on The White Gates' doormat made little attempt at concealment. | 1:09:07 | 1:09:13 | |
I think all of them were tactful | 1:09:13 | 1:09:16 | |
and behaved - I was going to say in a gentlemanly way! Whatever the word would be. | 1:09:16 | 1:09:22 | |
And were concerned not to hurt each other. They were all vulnerable. | 1:09:23 | 1:09:28 | |
Did it represent any disloyalty to Adeline? | 1:09:28 | 1:09:32 | |
I can't answer that. | 1:09:33 | 1:09:35 | |
I really don't know. She might have sanctioned it and been glad for him. Who knows? | 1:09:35 | 1:09:42 | |
Of all the great composers, the one for which Vaughan Williams had lifelong reverence | 1:09:47 | 1:09:54 | |
was JS Bach. | 1:09:54 | 1:09:56 | |
Year after year, he recreated the pain and suffering of the Bach Passion settings | 1:09:56 | 1:10:02 | |
in performances he conducted in Dorking. | 1:10:02 | 1:10:06 | |
It was the first time it meant anything to me. | 1:10:06 | 1:10:09 | |
If I listen to the recording that was made of his performance | 1:10:09 | 1:10:14 | |
of the St Matthew Passion, | 1:10:14 | 1:10:16 | |
the whole thing clicks back into place and the years fall away. | 1:10:16 | 1:10:21 | |
Vaughan Williams had his own way with Bach. He added in clarinets | 1:10:28 | 1:10:33 | |
and a piano, not a harpsichord. | 1:10:33 | 1:10:35 | |
For him, the anguish of the Passion was simply the best story ever told | 1:10:35 | 1:10:40 | |
and in the way Bach himself would have expected, everyone present had a role to play. | 1:10:40 | 1:10:47 | |
That was a passionate part of his musical philosophy. | 1:10:47 | 1:10:51 | |
His shouting of the Barabbas was louder than any choir had ever been | 1:10:51 | 1:10:56 | |
because he wanted them to make it sound as though it was really so important. | 1:10:56 | 1:11:04 | |
CHOIR CRIES OUT | 1:11:04 | 1:11:08 | |
He made everybody scream! You know? | 1:11:08 | 1:11:11 | |
They used to get quite... | 1:11:20 | 1:11:22 | |
..het up over, "Crucify! Crucify! Crucify him!" | 1:11:22 | 1:11:27 | |
We were all tingling on the edges of our... I've never known such emotion, really, | 1:11:27 | 1:11:34 | |
as when he conducted. He went through it himself and that was why. | 1:11:34 | 1:11:40 | |
It wasn't his beat, it was his...it was his heart, really, that he threw into it. | 1:11:40 | 1:11:46 | |
It was very thrilling, turning round to conduct the audience. | 1:11:46 | 1:11:51 | |
He'd make sure everybody was standing and if not he was rather like a schoolmaster. "Come on, get up!" | 1:11:51 | 1:11:58 | |
The entire audience sang the chorale. | 1:12:06 | 1:12:09 | |
It was Ralph's idea. | 1:12:11 | 1:12:15 | |
-Probably very authentic. -Yes. That's what they did in Germany, so he said, "Why not here?" | 1:12:15 | 1:12:21 | |
He told his performers, "Make the words apply to you." | 1:12:21 | 1:12:26 | |
It was a great communal musical event. | 1:12:28 | 1:12:32 | |
They all sang their hearts out. | 1:12:32 | 1:12:34 | |
-VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: -I like to think of our musical life as a great pyramid | 1:12:44 | 1:12:49 | |
at the apex of which are the great virtuosi performers and composers of international renown. | 1:12:49 | 1:12:56 | |
Then, immediately below this, come devoted musical practitioners, | 1:12:56 | 1:13:00 | |
true artists who by precept and example spread the knowledge and love of music in our schools, | 1:13:00 | 1:13:06 | |
our choral societies, our musical festivals. | 1:13:06 | 1:13:10 | |
Then comes the next layer of our musical structure, | 1:13:10 | 1:13:14 | |
that great mass of musical amateurs who make music for the love of it in their spare time | 1:13:14 | 1:13:20 | |
and play and sing for their own spiritual recreation in their homes. | 1:13:20 | 1:13:25 | |
In the Matthew, there's a chorus near the end and people sing, "Oh, where..." | 1:13:25 | 1:13:31 | |
Well, when he was conducting, the "Oh, where" went everywhere! | 1:13:31 | 1:13:37 | |
People would laugh a little bit. | 1:13:37 | 1:13:39 | |
He wasn't much help as a conductor, but as an inspirer...! | 1:13:39 | 1:13:44 | |
With him it was anything. You never knew what could happen. | 1:13:44 | 1:13:48 | |
But I trusted him. | 1:13:48 | 1:13:51 | |
In the late 1940s, Vaughan Williams could have sat on his laurels, but he kept on exploring. | 1:13:57 | 1:14:04 | |
His Sixth Symphony emerged from the shadow of the new Iron Curtain. | 1:14:04 | 1:14:09 | |
Serenity and certainty had vanished. | 1:14:13 | 1:14:16 | |
Instead, it ended with 12 minutes of undiluted pianissimo - | 1:14:16 | 1:14:20 | |
bleak, uncomfortable music that cannot settle or find rest. | 1:14:20 | 1:14:24 | |
I can remember the audience looked fairly shocked at the end of that. | 1:14:26 | 1:14:31 | |
You've been taken to somewhere very, very dark. | 1:14:31 | 1:14:35 | |
It told me about... | 1:14:35 | 1:14:38 | |
..finality. | 1:14:38 | 1:14:40 | |
It told me... | 1:14:42 | 1:14:44 | |
..about... the concept of nuclear winter. | 1:14:44 | 1:14:49 | |
It told me about nothingness. | 1:14:50 | 1:14:53 | |
Somebody else called it an agnostic's Paradiso, which I thought was a wonderful way to describe that music. | 1:14:54 | 1:15:01 | |
Adeline was now in her twilight years. She was almost 80 and had become virtually immobile. | 1:15:06 | 1:15:14 | |
She was very much a sort of ghost by that time, | 1:15:16 | 1:15:21 | |
in the background. | 1:15:21 | 1:15:23 | |
My sister, for instance, said she became a figure saying very little in a chair at the back of the room. | 1:15:24 | 1:15:32 | |
Ralph could have been forgiven for wondering, "when will this long, weary day have end?" | 1:15:32 | 1:15:38 | |
Listen to the chords. | 1:15:45 | 1:15:47 | |
Is it E flat major? | 1:15:47 | 1:15:50 | |
Is it E minor? | 1:15:53 | 1:15:55 | |
Who knows? | 1:15:59 | 1:16:01 | |
Adeline died in May, 1951. | 1:16:03 | 1:16:06 | |
Ursula wrote of her derelict body with a wrecked face lying on the iron bed, | 1:16:06 | 1:16:12 | |
an influence still to be felt as if she'd not entirely relinquished her hold. | 1:16:12 | 1:16:17 | |
Her death provoked in Ralph a torrent of rage. | 1:16:17 | 1:16:21 | |
DRAMATIC MUSIC | 1:16:21 | 1:16:24 | |
He smashed her chair, Adeline's chair, and began to rip up photographs. | 1:16:26 | 1:16:31 | |
When he got back from the funeral, it was photographs of certain of her relatives. | 1:16:33 | 1:16:39 | |
that he threw away or burnt. | 1:16:39 | 1:16:42 | |
As though to say, "There! That's all finished with." | 1:16:46 | 1:16:51 | |
TRANQUIL SINGING | 1:17:02 | 1:17:04 | |
# Silence | 1:17:04 | 1:17:11 | |
# Si-i-ilence | 1:17:11 | 1:17:20 | |
# Si-i-i... | 1:17:20 | 1:17:26 | |
# Si-i-i-lence... # | 1:17:26 | 1:17:33 | |
# I see a sleeping swan | 1:17:33 | 1:17:42 | |
# A sleeping swan Wings closed | 1:17:42 | 1:17:51 | |
# And drifting where the water... # | 1:17:51 | 1:17:58 | |
Although we all know that Ralph was not an obvious Christian, in spite of those wonderful hymns, | 1:17:58 | 1:18:04 | |
it was a spiritual quality | 1:18:04 | 1:18:07 | |
that made me think that everything would be all right. | 1:18:07 | 1:18:12 | |
# A grove where shadows dream... # | 1:18:12 | 1:18:17 | |
He was a man who had great awe. | 1:18:17 | 1:18:21 | |
He...certainly didn't regard himself as the centre of the universe. | 1:18:21 | 1:18:27 | |
# ..hollow reeds... # | 1:18:32 | 1:18:38 | |
I think he was a religious composer, yes, but he was undoubtedly an agnostic religious composer. | 1:18:38 | 1:18:45 | |
# The four winds in their litanies can tell... # | 1:18:46 | 1:18:55 | |
They don't understand what they are talking about when they say, "Did he believe this or that?" Idiotic. | 1:18:55 | 1:19:01 | |
# ..weep and cry | 1:19:01 | 1:19:04 | |
# Wee-ee-eep and cry | 1:19:04 | 1:19:10 | |
# Weep, wee-ee-eep and cry... # | 1:19:10 | 1:19:14 | |
His whole life was giving people lovely things to listen to, | 1:19:14 | 1:19:19 | |
being so nice himself and generous to the young. | 1:19:19 | 1:19:24 | |
If you could think of anyone more Christian than Ralph, I simply can't. | 1:19:25 | 1:19:31 | |
# The birds rejoice | 1:19:31 | 1:19:33 | |
# Rejoi-oi-oice... # | 1:19:33 | 1:19:36 | |
In February, 1953, Ralph and Ursula were married quietly. | 1:19:36 | 1:19:41 | |
He was 80. She was 41. | 1:19:42 | 1:19:46 | |
At last they could be open, as the card sent to their friends showed. | 1:19:46 | 1:19:51 | |
"You will we think not be surprised," they said. | 1:19:51 | 1:19:55 | |
How nice! I don't remember getting that card. Go on. | 1:19:57 | 1:20:01 | |
It's an unusual way of putting it. What... | 1:20:01 | 1:20:06 | |
Well, I suppose we all knew they'd been lovers. | 1:20:07 | 1:20:11 | |
If that's what you mean. | 1:20:11 | 1:20:13 | |
Very discreetly. | 1:20:13 | 1:20:16 | |
Now they made up for lost time. | 1:20:19 | 1:20:22 | |
Ralph had never flown before. They travelled to France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece | 1:20:22 | 1:20:27 | |
as well as all over Britain. And they crossed the Atlantic. | 1:20:27 | 1:20:32 | |
It was a perfect marriage. And they had such fun together. | 1:20:32 | 1:20:37 | |
They fitted in a trip right across the United States to go and see the Grand Canyon. | 1:20:39 | 1:20:45 | |
They never stopped travelling after that. | 1:20:45 | 1:20:49 | |
We went everywhere. We went absolutely everywhere. | 1:20:50 | 1:20:55 | |
The long exile in Dorking was over. | 1:20:56 | 1:20:59 | |
He moved back to London, to a grand house overlooking Regent's Park. | 1:20:59 | 1:21:03 | |
The exuberance of his Eighth Symphony spoke of a man in the prime of life. | 1:21:03 | 1:21:09 | |
The house was very beautiful. She filled it with beautiful things. | 1:21:09 | 1:21:14 | |
It was full of light and sunlight and laughter. | 1:21:14 | 1:21:17 | |
He suddenly came out with this ridiculous rhyme. | 1:21:20 | 1:21:24 | |
"Uncle Joe and Auntie Mabel fainted at the breakfast table. | 1:21:24 | 1:21:28 | |
"Children, let this be a warning Never do it in the morning." | 1:21:28 | 1:21:32 | |
He and Ursula used to seize upon Vogue the moment it came out! | 1:21:32 | 1:21:37 | |
And he would make a little note of all the pairs of shoes he'd like to see her wearing. | 1:21:37 | 1:21:43 | |
She was a wonderful dresser. And Ralph, so she told me - he didn't tell me - | 1:21:43 | 1:21:49 | |
he loved her in high heels. And she was rather tall. But that didn't matter. | 1:21:49 | 1:21:56 | |
They must have gone out every night to a concert or to the theatre. | 1:21:56 | 1:22:00 | |
Or had people to dinner. It must have been heaven for him. | 1:22:00 | 1:22:05 | |
He was very serious and he laughed all the time. | 1:22:05 | 1:22:10 | |
But he was now in his mid-eighties. | 1:22:10 | 1:22:13 | |
For one of his four last songs, he set a poem by Ursula, written as she watched him. | 1:22:13 | 1:22:20 | |
"Sleep and I'll be still as another sleeper | 1:22:20 | 1:22:25 | |
"Holding you in my arms Glad that you lie so near at last." | 1:22:25 | 1:22:31 | |
# Sleep | 1:22:33 | 1:22:36 | |
# And I'll be still as another sleeper | 1:22:36 | 1:22:43 | |
# Holding you in my arms | 1:22:43 | 1:22:50 | |
# Glad that you lie so near At last... # | 1:22:51 | 1:22:59 | |
"This sheltering midnight is our meeting place | 1:22:59 | 1:23:05 | |
"No passion or despair or hope divide me from your side..." | 1:23:05 | 1:23:10 | |
# This sheltering midnight is our meeting place | 1:23:13 | 1:23:22 | |
# No passion or despair | 1:23:22 | 1:23:26 | |
# Or hope divide me from your side | 1:23:26 | 1:23:33 | |
# I shall remember firelight | 1:23:35 | 1:23:41 | |
# On your sleeping face | 1:23:41 | 1:23:47 | |
# I shall remember shadows growing deeper | 1:23:48 | 1:23:57 | |
# As the fire fell to ashes | 1:23:57 | 1:24:03 | |
# And the minutes passed. # | 1:24:03 | 1:24:13 | |
"I shall remember firelight on your sleeping face | 1:24:18 | 1:24:22 | |
"I shall remember shadows growing deeper | 1:24:22 | 1:24:27 | |
"As the fire fell to ashes | 1:24:27 | 1:24:30 | |
"And the minutes passed." | 1:24:30 | 1:24:33 | |
OK? | 1:24:34 | 1:24:35 | |
When Vaughan Williams turned 85, it emerged he'd been writing yet another symphony, his ninth. | 1:24:37 | 1:24:44 | |
Despite all the activity, the creative urge never slackened, as a young composer friend overheard. | 1:24:44 | 1:24:51 | |
When the fire was up, he would come up with extraordinary new things. | 1:24:51 | 1:24:57 | |
It was about 4am. Simply out of my sleep I heard this extraordinary sound | 1:25:09 | 1:25:15 | |
trickling down through the ceiling, where there was a honky tonk piano. | 1:25:15 | 1:25:21 | |
And then stomp, stomp, stomp as he'd go back to his desk. | 1:25:21 | 1:25:25 | |
And then he'd go back to the piano. It went on and on and on. | 1:25:33 | 1:25:38 | |
He was working on, as I realised later, the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony. | 1:25:38 | 1:25:45 | |
It was very strange music, | 1:25:46 | 1:25:49 | |
music actually being called for from silence and from the night. | 1:25:49 | 1:25:54 | |
It was a magical experience, obviously, to me as a young composer, | 1:25:55 | 1:26:01 | |
to hear above this very great man searching for his own dream. | 1:26:01 | 1:26:08 | |
I think he's England's greatest composer of the 20th century. | 1:26:12 | 1:26:16 | |
I adore and know all of Elgar, one of my favourite composers, | 1:26:16 | 1:26:20 | |
but I do place him above that. | 1:26:20 | 1:26:23 | |
The older I get, I think I love it even more. | 1:26:23 | 1:26:28 | |
Having worked a lot with Britten and Tippett, it is so equal to them and just so different. | 1:26:28 | 1:26:35 | |
I find it more enriching the longer I live. | 1:26:35 | 1:26:40 | |
I can swallow it whole, even the weaker pieces. That's its significance. It doesn't change. | 1:26:40 | 1:26:48 | |
I hope I change in listening to it. | 1:26:48 | 1:26:50 | |
The brooding unease of the Ninth Symphony escaped its first audience. | 1:27:01 | 1:27:06 | |
They cheered him to the echo, but few understood it. | 1:27:06 | 1:27:10 | |
Only later did they realise his passions had taken him further on into another world. | 1:27:11 | 1:27:18 | |
I wrote to VW afterwards and said that I was very impressed, but I didn't quite get the hang of it. | 1:27:19 | 1:27:27 | |
He said, "Dear Jeremy, thank you so much for writing. | 1:27:27 | 1:27:32 | |
"I am so glad you liked it, as far as you did. | 1:27:32 | 1:27:35 | |
"As the man said about Brahms, 'It ought never to be heard for the first time.' | 1:27:35 | 1:27:41 | |
"I hope you're doing some fine composition yourself. Ursula sends her love. Yours, RVW." | 1:27:41 | 1:27:47 | |
Touche! | 1:27:49 | 1:27:51 | |
# The cloud-capp'd towers | 1:27:51 | 1:28:01 | |
# The gorgeous palaces | 1:28:03 | 1:28:12 | |
# The solemn temples | 1:28:13 | 1:28:22 | |
# The great globe itself | 1:28:23 | 1:28:33 | |
# Yea, all which it inherit | 1:28:37 | 1:28:44 | |
# Shall dissolve | 1:28:44 | 1:28:47 | |
# And like this insubstantial pageant faded | 1:28:47 | 1:28:57 | |
# Leave not | 1:28:58 | 1:29:01 | |
# A rack behind | 1:29:01 | 1:29:09 | |
# We are such stuff | 1:29:12 | 1:29:16 | |
# As dreams are made on | 1:29:16 | 1:29:26 | |
# And our little life | 1:29:26 | 1:29:35 | |
# Is rounded with a sleep. # | 1:29:35 | 1:29:45 |