0:00:28 > 0:00:30Hello. Music written during the First World War
0:00:30 > 0:00:34and works inspired by the events of 100 years ago
0:00:34 > 0:00:36are featuring throughout the Proms this year
0:00:36 > 0:00:38but above all others tonight's concert
0:00:38 > 0:00:41feels like something of a Requiem to those who died -
0:00:41 > 0:00:44the millions who formed the massed ranks of all sides -
0:00:44 > 0:00:49and the individuals whose creative talent was brutally extinguished.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52Conductor Andrew Manze and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have won
0:00:52 > 0:00:57high praise for their performances of Vaughan Williams' symphonies.
0:00:57 > 0:01:00The composer finished his third - the Pastoral -
0:01:00 > 0:01:02four years after the war had ended.
0:01:02 > 0:01:05He never wanted it seen as an explicitly anti-war work
0:01:05 > 0:01:09but ever since its first performances it's been interpreted as
0:01:09 > 0:01:13an elegy for the dead and a meditation on peace.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16Vaughan Williams served in the war but survived to reflect upon
0:01:16 > 0:01:18the trauma through his art.
0:01:18 > 0:01:21He lived to the ripe old age of 85.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24The other three composers featured tonight -
0:01:24 > 0:01:26FS Kelly, George Butterworth and Rudi Stephan -
0:01:26 > 0:01:28were a decade or so younger than Vaughan Williams,
0:01:28 > 0:01:31all in their 20s and early 30s
0:01:31 > 0:01:34when they signed up to fight on different sides of the battle lines.
0:01:34 > 0:01:35None came home.
0:01:35 > 0:01:40It is impossible to imagine what might have been,
0:01:40 > 0:01:42the big what-if-they-had-survived question,
0:01:42 > 0:01:45creatively what they might have produced.
0:01:45 > 0:01:47I suppose we think that because we know that
0:01:47 > 0:01:51a lot of composers mature their styles...
0:01:51 > 0:01:54It's interesting. Rudi Stephan, whose music we're going to hear,
0:01:54 > 0:01:56died as a young man in the war.
0:01:56 > 0:01:59His contemporary, fellow German composer Paul Hindemith,
0:01:59 > 0:02:04also served in the army during the First World War but lived.
0:02:04 > 0:02:06He'd been a romantic composer before the war.
0:02:06 > 0:02:08He went on to become an expressionist composer
0:02:08 > 0:02:10in the style of Schoenberg
0:02:10 > 0:02:13before changing his style again and going to the States
0:02:13 > 0:02:15and writing neo-classical music.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18He had a chance to develop fully over the natural span of a life.
0:02:18 > 0:02:20And, of course, Vaughan Williams himself
0:02:20 > 0:02:23didn't achieve major public recognition
0:02:23 > 0:02:25until in his late 30s.
0:02:25 > 0:02:29He wrote the Fantasia Theme on Thomas Tallis in 1910 when he was 37.
0:02:29 > 0:02:31I suppose it is striking that by the time
0:02:31 > 0:02:36he had established a singular, public voice for himself,
0:02:36 > 0:02:40he was older than all the men that we're talking about here,
0:02:40 > 0:02:41Kelly, Stephan and Butterworth.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45For me, Butterworth is the composer above all others who
0:02:45 > 0:02:48epitomises the waste
0:02:48 > 0:02:49of the First World War.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53A talented musician only just into his 30s when he was killed
0:02:53 > 0:02:56by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59It's endlessly fascinating to wonder what he would have achieved
0:02:59 > 0:03:01had he lived a little longer.
0:03:01 > 0:03:04His settings of AE Housman's Shropshire Lad poems
0:03:04 > 0:03:06are achingly beautiful.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09They reflect a simple, pastoral existence
0:03:09 > 0:03:11about to be swept away forever.
0:03:11 > 0:03:14Hearing them is something I'm looking forward to this evening.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17Me too. We're starting, though, with two composers
0:03:17 > 0:03:20who came to be listed amongst the war dead.
0:03:20 > 0:03:22FS - Frederick Septimus - Kelly,
0:03:22 > 0:03:25writing an elegy for his friend, Rupert Brooke.
0:03:25 > 0:03:29But first of all, a composer from across the battle lines,
0:03:29 > 0:03:42German Rudi Stephan, 28 when he was killed on the Galician front in 1915.
0:03:42 > 0:03:46hence the generic title of this work,
0:03:46 > 0:03:51It was written two years before the war in 1912
0:03:51 > 0:04:02from the events that lay ahead.
0:04:02 > 0:04:14It really is an elegy for young and wasted lives.
0:04:16 > 0:04:19Here is Andrew Manze with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
0:04:19 > 0:04:22with Rudi Stephan's Music for Orchestra,
0:04:22 > 0:04:25its performance the first time Stephan's music
0:04:25 > 0:04:28has ever been heard at the Proms.
0:21:33 > 0:21:36APPLAUSE
0:21:41 > 0:21:44Wonderful to hear Rudi Stephan's Music for Orchestra
0:21:44 > 0:21:47in this the centenary of World War I.
0:21:47 > 0:21:49The work established his reputation
0:21:49 > 0:21:53and secured him a publishing contract in 1913,
0:21:53 > 0:21:57catapulting him to the forefront of promising young German composers.
0:21:57 > 0:22:00Two years later, though, he was killed in Galicia.
0:22:06 > 0:22:09In our next work, two victims of war are represented -
0:22:09 > 0:22:11the poet Rupert Brooke
0:22:11 > 0:22:14and the composer FS - Frederick Septimus - Kelly.
0:22:14 > 0:22:17Australian born but Eton and Oxford educated,
0:22:17 > 0:22:20Kelly seemed every inch the English gentleman.
0:22:20 > 0:22:23He was an Edwardian sporting legend of private means,
0:22:23 > 0:22:27winning a gold medal in rowing at the London Olympics of 1908.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30In 1914, Kelly signed up for the Royal Naval Division
0:22:30 > 0:22:33with a group of scholar-soldiers who became known as
0:22:33 > 0:22:34The Latin Club,
0:22:34 > 0:22:37composer Denis Browne and Rupert Brooke among them.
0:22:37 > 0:22:41It's difficult to underestimate how important Brooke was.
0:22:41 > 0:22:45His poetry captured the optimism of those opening months,
0:22:45 > 0:22:47his works expressing an idealism
0:22:47 > 0:22:49that contrasts with the bitter poetry
0:22:49 > 0:23:01that came later in the conflict.
0:23:01 > 0:23:03They seem to represent the good war death,
0:23:03 > 0:23:04if such a thing is possible.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07His personal glamour rather suited that mood.
0:23:07 > 0:23:11WB Yeats called him, "The handsomest young man in England."
0:23:11 > 0:23:13Here he is photographed in 1913.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16That whole poem, The Soldier, would end up
0:23:16 > 0:23:19etched on Brooke's own tomb.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22When he and Kelly were on their way in February 1915
0:23:22 > 0:23:25to fight at Gallipoli, Brooke was bitten by a mosquito
0:23:25 > 0:23:27and went on to develop sepsis.
0:23:27 > 0:23:31It's said that Kelly began writing his work In Memoriam
0:23:31 > 0:23:34as his friend lay dying near him on board ship.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37Kelly was there at Brooke's initial burial
0:23:37 > 0:23:39on the Greek island of Skyros.
0:23:39 > 0:23:42In the elegy, the harp and shimmering strings
0:23:42 > 0:23:46evoke the rustling of an olive tree above the poet's grave.
0:23:46 > 0:23:50There's a real sense of tragedy, pain, anger about this piece
0:23:50 > 0:23:52but also redemption and beauty.
0:23:52 > 0:23:54APPLAUSE
0:23:54 > 0:24:01The work was first heard at Brooke's memorial concert in 1916.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04shot while running through German machine-gun fire.
0:33:46 > 0:33:49APPLAUSE
0:33:49 > 0:33:52APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
0:33:56 > 0:34:05FS Kelly's Elegy for Strings: "In Memoriam Rupert Brooke",
0:34:15 > 0:34:19Kelly's elegy was written very much in the thick of war,
0:34:19 > 0:34:23whereas the next work was written in the peace of pre-war rural England.
0:34:23 > 0:34:26But it is almost impossible to hear George Butterworth's
0:34:26 > 0:34:311911 setting of poems from AE Housman's A Shropshire Lad
0:34:31 > 0:34:34except through the tragic prism of what was to follow
0:34:34 > 0:34:37and specifically in the context of the composer's fate -
0:34:37 > 0:34:39Butterworth would be killed by sniper fire
0:34:39 > 0:34:42in the Battle of the Somme in August 1916.
0:34:42 > 0:34:45soon after receiving the Military Cross.
0:34:45 > 0:34:46He was 31.
0:34:46 > 0:34:51Housman's collection of 63 poems was first published in 1896.
0:34:51 > 0:34:57It's rather like Rupert Brooke,
0:34:57 > 0:34:59According to one literary historian,
0:34:59 > 0:35:02just before the war a copy was to be found
0:35:02 > 0:35:04in every pocket in Britain.
0:35:04 > 0:35:06After hostilities broke out, the Times
0:35:06 > 0:35:09published a special lightweight edition for troops.
0:35:09 > 0:35:11This book of poetry really did go to war.
0:35:11 > 0:35:15It's not surprising that it had that resonance
0:35:15 > 0:35:17because those young men who went to war
0:35:17 > 0:35:19recognised themselves in that poetry.
0:35:19 > 0:35:22They were farm hands and blacksmiths
0:35:22 > 0:35:24and manual workers,
0:35:24 > 0:35:26"the lads in their hundreds", going off to Ludlow Fair
0:35:26 > 0:35:28and eyeing up the girls and drinking beer
0:35:28 > 0:35:32and just full of optimism of their own youth.
0:35:32 > 0:35:34I think also this sense of
0:35:34 > 0:35:38blissful unawareness of what lay around the corner.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47The poems drew a musical response unparalleled in English song.
0:35:47 > 0:35:50Enormous following amongst composers of the English revival,
0:35:50 > 0:35:53fascinated by folk song and the landscape.
0:35:53 > 0:35:56Arthur Somervell did the first known setting in 1904,
0:35:56 > 0:35:59followed by Vaughan Williams, Lennox Berkeley, Ivor Gurney,
0:35:59 > 0:36:02the American composer Samuel Barber and many others.
0:36:02 > 0:36:05But for all those composers, it's Butterworth's setting
0:36:05 > 0:36:07that is the most famous.
0:36:07 > 0:36:08I wonder why that is.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11Is it because of the folk rhythms of the poetry,
0:36:11 > 0:36:16the lyrical notion of the piano accompaniment that he had?
0:36:16 > 0:36:18I think that has something to do with it but above all,
0:36:18 > 0:36:20it's because Butterworth was himself.
0:36:20 > 0:36:23another of those "lads in their hundreds"
0:36:23 > 0:36:24as in Housman's poem.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28Roderick Williams is going to sing the Shropshire Lad poems for us,
0:36:28 > 0:36:31joining the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra,
0:36:31 > 0:36:35Andrew Manze conducting, George Butterworth at the Proms.
0:36:54 > 0:36:58# Loveliest of trees
0:36:58 > 0:37:03# The cherry now
0:37:03 > 0:37:12# Is hung with bloom along the bough
0:37:12 > 0:37:24# And stands about the woodland ride
0:37:26 > 0:37:40# Wearing white for Eastertide
0:37:55 > 0:38:02# Now, of my threescore years and ten
0:38:02 > 0:38:08# Twenty will not come again
0:38:08 > 0:38:14# And take from seventy springs a score
0:38:14 > 0:38:24# It only leaves me fifty more
0:38:25 > 0:38:33# And since to look at things in bloom
0:38:33 > 0:38:39# Fifty springs are little room
0:38:39 > 0:38:46# About the woodlands I will go
0:38:46 > 0:38:56# To see the cherry hung with snow... #
0:39:30 > 0:39:37# When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say
0:39:37 > 0:39:40# Give crowns and pounds and guineas
0:39:40 > 0:39:43# But not your heart away
0:39:43 > 0:39:46# Give pearls away and rubies
0:39:46 > 0:39:49# But keep your fancy free
0:39:49 > 0:39:53# But I was one-and-twenty
0:39:53 > 0:39:58# No use to talk to me
0:39:58 > 0:40:02# When I was one-and-twenty
0:40:02 > 0:40:05# I heard him say again
0:40:05 > 0:40:09# The heart out of the bosom
0:40:09 > 0:40:12# Was never given in vain
0:40:12 > 0:40:16# 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
0:40:16 > 0:40:22# And sold for endless rue
0:40:22 > 0:40:26# And I am two-and-twenty
0:40:26 > 0:40:36# And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true
0:40:42 > 0:40:50# 'Tis true... #
0:41:03 > 0:41:09# Look not in my eyes, for fear
0:41:09 > 0:41:14# Thy mirror true the sight I see
0:41:14 > 0:41:19# And there you find your face too clear
0:41:19 > 0:41:25# And love it and be lost like me
0:41:25 > 0:41:30# One the long nights through must lie
0:41:30 > 0:41:36# Spent in star-defeated sighs
0:41:36 > 0:41:44# But why should you as well as I perish?
0:41:44 > 0:41:54# Gaze not in my eyes
0:41:57 > 0:42:04# A Grecian lad, as I hear tell
0:42:04 > 0:42:09# One that many loved in vain
0:42:09 > 0:42:15# Looked into a forest well
0:42:15 > 0:42:21# And never looked away again
0:42:21 > 0:42:33# There, when the turf in springtime flowers
0:42:33 > 0:42:55# Stands amid the glancing showers
0:43:13 > 0:43:16# Think no more, lad Laugh, be jolly
0:43:16 > 0:43:19# Why should men make haste to die?
0:43:19 > 0:43:21# Empty heads and tongues a-talking
0:43:21 > 0:43:24# Make the rough road easy walking
0:43:24 > 0:43:27# And the feather pate of folly
0:43:27 > 0:43:32# Bears the falling sky
0:43:37 > 0:43:39# Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking
0:43:39 > 0:43:43# Spins the heavy world around
0:43:43 > 0:43:45# If young hearts were not so clever
0:43:45 > 0:43:54# Oh, they would be young for ever
0:43:54 > 0:44:03# Lays lads underground
0:44:03 > 0:44:05# Why should men make haste to die?
0:44:05 > 0:44:07# Empty heads and tongues a-talking
0:44:07 > 0:44:10# Make the rough road easy walking
0:44:10 > 0:44:13# And the feather pate of folly
0:44:13 > 0:44:24# Bears the falling sky... #
0:44:33 > 0:44:39# The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair
0:44:39 > 0:44:45# There's men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold
0:44:45 > 0:44:52# The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there
0:44:52 > 0:45:02# And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old
0:45:04 > 0:45:10# There's chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart
0:45:10 > 0:45:16# And many to count are the stalwart and many the brave
0:45:16 > 0:45:22# And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart
0:45:22 > 0:45:31# And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave
0:45:35 > 0:45:41# I wish one could know them I wish there were tokens to tell
0:45:41 > 0:45:46# The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern
0:45:46 > 0:45:53# And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell
0:45:53 > 0:46:03# And watch them depart on the way that they will not return
0:46:06 > 0:46:12# But now you may stare as you like and there's nothing to scan
0:46:12 > 0:46:20# And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told
0:46:20 > 0:46:26# They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man
0:46:26 > 0:46:38# The lads that will die in their glory and never be old... #
0:47:12 > 0:47:17# Is my team ploughing
0:47:17 > 0:47:22# That I was used to drive
0:47:22 > 0:47:28# And hear the harness jingle
0:47:28 > 0:47:36# When I was man alive?
0:47:38 > 0:47:41# Ay, the horses trample
0:47:41 > 0:47:45# The harness jingles now
0:47:45 > 0:47:50# No change though you lie under
0:47:50 > 0:47:56# The land you used to plough
0:47:59 > 0:48:03# Is football playing
0:48:03 > 0:48:08# Along the river shore
0:48:08 > 0:48:14# With lads to chase the leather
0:48:14 > 0:48:22# Now I stand up no more?
0:48:23 > 0:48:27# Ay, the ball is flying
0:48:27 > 0:48:30# The lads play heart and soul
0:48:30 > 0:48:35# The goal stands up, the keeper
0:48:35 > 0:48:42# Stands up to keep the goal
0:48:49 > 0:48:55# Is my girl happy
0:48:55 > 0:49:00# That I thought hard to leave
0:49:00 > 0:49:06# And has she tired of weeping
0:49:06 > 0:49:15# As she lies down at eve?
0:49:17 > 0:49:21# Ay, she lies down lightly
0:49:21 > 0:49:24# She lies not down to weep
0:49:24 > 0:49:30# Your girl is well contented
0:49:30 > 0:49:39# Be still, my lad, and sleep
0:49:46 > 0:49:52# Is my friend hearty
0:49:52 > 0:49:57# Now I am thin and pine
0:49:57 > 0:50:04# And has he found to sleep in
0:50:04 > 0:50:14# A better bed than mine?
0:50:16 > 0:50:19# Yes, lad, I lie easy
0:50:19 > 0:50:24# I lie as lads would choose
0:50:24 > 0:50:31# I cheer a dead man's sweetheart
0:50:35 > 0:50:46# Never ask me whose... #
0:51:31 > 0:51:34APPLAUSE
0:51:42 > 0:51:47Six Songs From A Shropshire Lad by George Butterworth,
0:51:47 > 0:51:50orchestrated by Phillip Brookes,
0:51:50 > 0:51:53sung by Roderick Williams,
0:51:53 > 0:51:55with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
0:52:00 > 0:52:04Roderick Williams' ability to just stand on the stage
0:52:04 > 0:52:09and deliver these songs as if he was having a conversation
0:52:09 > 0:52:14is extraordinary, and immediately conveying the heartbreaking
0:52:14 > 0:52:17waste and pain of the war years.
0:52:17 > 0:52:19That was so beautiful.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22I really felt that that brought something new
0:52:22 > 0:52:26to the poems that I know, such a central part of English culture.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31So many writers refer to Housman, but to hear this setting,
0:52:31 > 0:52:34in this year, sung by this man - wonderful.
0:52:34 > 0:52:37CHEERING
0:52:47 > 0:52:51George Butterworth's output over his short life was small
0:52:51 > 0:52:55but influential. There's no doubt he was one of the great losses to music
0:52:55 > 0:52:58caused by the war. Most of his manuscripts
0:52:58 > 0:53:00were left to his close friend Vaughan Williams,
0:53:00 > 0:53:03but Butterworth had already destroyed many works
0:53:03 > 0:53:06that he was dissatisfied with in case he was killed
0:53:06 > 0:53:13and didn't have the chance to revise them.
0:53:13 > 0:53:15of young men, weren't they, Petroc,
0:53:15 > 0:53:23who went to war, and in Britain they included
0:53:23 > 0:53:26Yes. I'm very interested in Cecil Coles.
0:53:26 > 0:53:29We hear very little of his music today - a Scottish composer
0:53:29 > 0:53:36who served with Queen Victoria's Rifles, became their bandmaster.
0:53:36 > 0:53:45called Behind The Lines. He sent the manuscripts
0:53:45 > 0:53:49was stained with the mud of the field and with bloodstains.
0:53:49 > 0:53:59Coles was killed near the Somme in 1918
0:53:59 > 0:54:03and in a terrible irony, one of them is a poignant funeral march.
0:54:03 > 0:54:05So many young musicians were lost.
0:54:05 > 0:54:09Across the road from where we are now, at the Royal College of Music,
0:54:09 > 0:54:13there's a memorial plaque in the
0:54:13 > 0:54:16and never got the chance to return to their studies,
0:54:16 > 0:54:1840 from the RCM killed in the First World War alone,
0:54:18 > 0:54:21Butterworth amongst them. Ivor Gurney, unusually,
0:54:21 > 0:54:23both a war poet and a composer,
0:54:23 > 0:54:26his wartime experience expressed through both art forms.
0:54:26 > 0:54:30He would write songs by candlelight while he was in a trench.
0:54:30 > 0:54:32He served 15 months on the front
0:54:32 > 0:54:36and then returned. He'd been shot, gassed.
0:54:36 > 0:54:39He was already in a pretty delicate mental state before the war,
0:54:39 > 0:54:42but he suffered afterwards from the most terrible shellshock.
0:54:42 > 0:54:44A few years later,
0:54:44 > 0:54:46he summed up his feelings in a piece called War Elegy,
0:54:46 > 0:54:49written in 1920, an incredibly personal response to the war
0:54:49 > 0:54:52that we heard here at the Proms earlier in the season.
0:54:52 > 0:54:55It's interesting - like poets, composers reacted to
0:54:55 > 0:54:59and processed that huge experience of war
0:54:59 > 0:55:02in all sorts of different ways and different voices,
0:55:02 > 0:55:04combatants as well as civilians.
0:55:04 > 0:55:07You could trace a sort of long journey from the Boy's Own adventure
0:55:07 > 0:55:11to the recognition of the desolation and the loss that was felt.
0:55:11 > 0:55:14There were wartime poets on both sides of the divide,
0:55:14 > 0:55:19both British and German, and they ranged from both being jingoistic
0:55:19 > 0:55:21as well as being anti-Establishment.
0:55:21 > 0:55:26Here, in Britain, there was Jessie Pope's kind of nationalistic view
0:55:26 > 0:55:30of all of this, that in fact you could see war
0:55:30 > 0:55:32as fun, dare we even say.
0:55:32 > 0:55:35She asked, "Who would much rather come back with a crutch
0:55:35 > 0:55:38"than lie low and be out of the fun?"
0:55:38 > 0:55:40Wilfred Owen castigated her for selling, as he put it,
0:55:40 > 0:55:44the old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori -
0:55:44 > 0:55:47it is sweet and proper to die for your country,
0:55:47 > 0:55:49as it translates,
0:55:49 > 0:55:52but I think there was this major change around the war
0:55:52 > 0:55:54in all the art forms,
0:55:54 > 0:55:56going from a sort of sense of grandeur
0:55:56 > 0:56:00to something much more internalised and much more reflective,
0:56:00 > 0:56:03and that feeling, I suppose, that war was changing everything,
0:56:03 > 0:56:05that the first doubts were coming in
0:56:05 > 0:56:08about the future of the British Empire, for example.
0:56:08 > 0:56:10You think about Elgar writing
0:56:10 > 0:56:13the patriotism of his Pomp And Circumstance Marches,
0:56:13 > 0:56:16and then, after the war, writing his Cello Concerto,
0:56:16 > 0:56:18which is so elegiac
0:56:18 > 0:56:20and really just sends out this message
0:56:20 > 0:56:23that everything has changed.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26Vaughan Williams always wrote out of a strong identification
0:56:26 > 0:56:29and empathy with the common man.
0:56:29 > 0:56:32The effect of the war on him and his music was profound.
0:56:32 > 0:56:36He poured his experiences into works such as his 3rd Symphony,
0:56:36 > 0:56:40the Pastoral, that we'll hear in the second half of tonight's concert.
0:56:40 > 0:56:43It's an understated, beautiful monument to loss.
0:56:43 > 0:56:47In 1916, Vaughan Williams wrote to his friend Gustav Holst
0:56:47 > 0:56:51about the lost and shattered generation.
0:56:53 > 0:56:58"I sometimes dread coming back to normal life with so many gaps,
0:56:58 > 0:57:01"especially, of course, George Butterworth.
0:57:01 > 0:57:05"Out of those seven who joined up together in August 1914,
0:57:05 > 0:57:07"only three are left.
0:57:07 > 0:57:09"I sometimes think that it's wrong
0:57:09 > 0:57:12"to have made friends with people much younger than oneself,
0:57:12 > 0:57:16"because soon there will be only the middle-aged left."
0:57:17 > 0:57:20Vaughan Williams was 42 when he enlisted
0:57:20 > 0:57:23and he went on to join the Royal Army Medical Corps
0:57:23 > 0:57:27on the Western Front, tending to the sick, the dying and the dead.
0:57:27 > 0:57:30By 1914, he already had a considerable body of work
0:57:30 > 0:57:34including two symphonies and the Fantasia,
0:57:34 > 0:57:39and, Petroc, just before the outbreak of war, he wrote the original violin
0:57:39 > 0:57:42and piano version of that enduringly popular The Lark Ascending.
0:57:42 > 0:57:46Yes, the piece associated with him more than any other.
0:57:46 > 0:57:49His wartime experiences had profound effect on him.
0:57:49 > 0:57:52He was discharged in 1919, returned to his alma mater,
0:57:52 > 0:57:57the RCM, as a teacher, and although there were no startling changes
0:57:57 > 0:58:01in style of his musical compositions and musical output,
0:58:01 > 0:58:06I think most people detected a new sense of sadness and austerity,
0:58:06 > 0:58:08an intensity about his music.
0:58:08 > 0:58:12And that's certainly been underlined by the idea of the Pastoral
0:58:12 > 0:58:16having a kind of darkness to it, a restlessness.
0:58:16 > 0:58:20The conductor Sir Mark Elder said that, "You have this sense of
0:58:20 > 0:58:23"a feeling of never sitting, always shifting.
0:58:23 > 0:58:26"Not all the landscapes have cherished abundancy.
0:58:26 > 0:58:28"It's the landscape of death."
0:58:28 > 0:58:32Yeah. And the four movements of the 3rd Symphony
0:58:32 > 0:58:35may be depicting the shell-torn landscape of the Western Front.
0:58:35 > 0:58:38I think that's a fair interpretation.
0:58:38 > 0:58:40Another great British conductor, Sir Roger Norrington,
0:58:40 > 0:58:43describes the 3rd Symphony as being a bit like a four seasons of the war
0:58:43 > 0:58:46and of the countryside, starting in high summer,
0:58:46 > 0:58:49but not a time for celebration because so many people have died.
0:58:49 > 0:58:51Then we get to autumn, harvest,
0:58:51 > 0:58:55but this isn't a harvest of wheat, it's a harvest of men.
0:58:55 > 0:58:58The third movement, winter, Christmas at the front,
0:58:58 > 0:59:01those strange celebrations and truces and pauses.
0:59:01 > 0:59:03The fourth movement is spring.
0:59:03 > 0:59:07Again, spring normally a happy time, but here there's no renewal.
0:59:07 > 0:59:09Let's go back to the second movement,
0:59:09 > 0:59:12because that was inspired by a lone bugler, wasn't it?
0:59:12 > 0:59:15He heard this bugler playing in the desecrated landscape of the Somme
0:59:15 > 0:59:19and decided to replicate that. He replaces it not with a bugle
0:59:19 > 0:59:22but with a trumpet, and the trumpeter plays slightly flat.
0:59:22 > 0:59:24You might think, hearing this for the first time,
0:59:24 > 0:59:27there's been some terrible tuning problem. Not at all.
0:59:27 > 0:59:29It's absolutely intentional.
0:59:29 > 0:59:31APPLAUSE
0:59:33 > 0:59:37And conductor Andrew Manze has been a great champion of Vaughan Williams.
0:59:37 > 0:59:40Here he is to direct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
0:59:40 > 0:59:43in Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony No 3.
1:37:35 > 1:37:42# Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
1:37:45 > 1:37:53# Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
1:37:57 > 1:38:05# Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
1:38:07 > 1:38:16# Ah, ah, ah-ah-ah, ah, ah, ah
1:38:16 > 1:38:25# Ah, ah, ah, ah-ah, ah
1:38:29 > 1:38:37# Ah, ah, ah, ah. #
1:38:49 > 1:38:53APPLAUSE
1:39:00 > 1:39:04A wordless voice singing the music back into silence.
1:39:06 > 1:39:10Allan Clayton, former Radio Three New Generation artist.
1:39:10 > 1:39:13CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
1:39:13 > 1:39:16With Andrew Manze conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
1:39:16 > 1:39:19in Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony,
1:39:19 > 1:39:20his Third Symphony.
1:39:24 > 1:39:26What I found really moving about this concert
1:39:26 > 1:39:30was that it was bookended by a German composer who died
1:39:30 > 1:39:32in the first year of the war
1:39:32 > 1:39:35and ended with the response by a man who didn't have to go to war
1:39:35 > 1:39:38but did and then produces something as sublime
1:39:38 > 1:39:40as the Pastoral.
1:39:44 > 1:39:48That brings to an end this special In Memoriam World War I Prom.
1:39:48 > 1:39:50Music from the concert and much more
1:39:50 > 1:39:53will be discussed by Katie Derham and guests
1:39:53 > 1:39:57in Proms Extra on BBC Two tomorrow night at seven.
1:39:57 > 1:39:59I'll be back next Friday with the phenomenon
1:39:59 > 1:40:04that is Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
1:40:04 > 1:40:06Guaranteed to be an exciting evening.
1:40:06 > 1:40:11My co-host will be the organist-conductor Wayne Marshall.
1:40:11 > 1:40:12For now, good night. Good night.
1:40:59 > 1:41:00# Take my hand... #
1:41:00 > 1:41:01Flirtation...
1:41:02 > 1:41:03..becomes seduction...