I consider the song cycle On Wenlock Edge a fine example of word-setting by a composer who, as a folk-song collector, understood English ‘as she’s sung’, although Banfield finds some unspecified evidence of his recent tutelage by the slightly younger but then more experienced Ravel, perhaps its many imaginative harmonic progressions and recurring translucent
textures.128 One reservation is that when the string quartet is joined by a modern concert
grand piano (rather than a smaller instrument), in a few places the accompaniment can seem overdone. The poems, by A.E. Housman, are vignettes from late nineteenth century
Shropshire.129 The composer’s 1909 setting portrays variously: wild images in a wild
landscape; a man born of the twelve winds; a man’s dialogue with his sweetheart’s dead lover; an insouciant young yokel; a bridegroom already a widower; and the cycle of life below the steep scarp of Wenlock Edge, south of Shrewsbury.
In passing, it is worth remembering that English lyricism was by no means the only string to his bow, a superficial mindset one occasionally encounters: one has only to think of his motet
O Vos Omnes, or his Mass in G minor; or the desolation of the Sixth Symphony, composed when
the Cold War had begun to fester amidst the ruins of World War II.130
128 Banfield, 74. I can understand Banfield’s perception of a Ravel influence—e.g. in this song, on its
translucent texture, and its melodic freedom as in the modulation from E minor to G (A ) major), Lydian mode on F and Æolian mode on A, in the example overleaf.
95 Ralph Vaughan Williams, On Wenlock Edge. (London: Boosey & Hawkes revised edition, 1946).
130 Vaughan Williams, O Vos Omnes (London: Oxford University Press, 1911, 1946); Mass in G minor (London: Oxford University Press, 1911); Symphony no. 6 in E minor (London: Oxford University Press, 1948).
Figure 3.10: On Wenlock Edge—‘VI. Clun’, lyrics A.E. Housman, first verse vocal line.131
This song reinforces the commonsensical notion that lyrics evoking a regional and/or
temporal ambience might benefit from the use of musical patterns suggesting that ambience, irrespective of how they are developed. Certainly this notion, although certainly not Clun
itself, was in my mind when I wrote The Sun of Umbria, Prelude (Figure 4.30, 102), particularly the suggestion of Italian bell-ringing and the overlapping reference to 13th-century French
free organum that together set up that movement, and the Postlude.
The goal of perfection is elusive, but the Serenade to Music has established itself as a universal masterwork.132 The composer and the performers for whom it was written were associates of
the conductor Sir Henry J. Wood, and the occasion was the fiftieth anniversary on 5th October
1938 of his first concert.
131 Vaughan Williams, On Wenlock Edge, song cycle for tenor, piano and optional string quartet, lyrics by A.E. Housman. (London: Oxford University Press, 1911, 1946.)
132 Vaughan Williams, Serenade to Music, for sixteen solo voices and orchestra. (London: Oxford University Press, 1938, 1961, 1966, 2008.)
It is difficult to imagine a more splendid tribute to a musician of note, a frequent impetus for its programming these days. Performances are relatively rare, however, for it lasts only thirteen minutes, and yet requires sixteen excellent singers (or four excellent singers and an excellent choir) and a fine orchestra.
The musical form grows from the words of a love-scene between Lorenzo and Jessica at the rural villa ‘Belmont’, near Venice, at the beginning of Act 5 of The Merchant of Venice; the edited lyrics are set as if independent from the play; the music is the very sound of moonlight on a river.133 The word-setting is plain; the top line is simple and lyrical; the homophonic
lower parts provide straightforward harmony, with three two-note melismata introducing passing notes. The serene atmosphere is enhanced by quietly moving woodwind, horns, harp, and muted strings, with the oboe to the fore, providing a quiet tapestry underlying the sixteen solo voices.
133 ‘The historical location of Belmont in The Merchant of Venice was the Villa Foscari on the Brenta River, designed by the Italian architect, Palladio’, in Linda Theil, ‘Goldstein announces publication of Noemi Magri’s collected research’; Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. http://www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/goldstein- announces-publication-of-noemi-magris-collected-research/.
In word-setting as well as in declamation, formally laid-out Shakespearean lyrics, or other sophisticated poetry, as in Dark River or The Sun of Umbria (Chapter 4), can best be served by ignoring their typographical layout in favour of their logical and rhythmic freedom in the form of over-runs, half-lines, inversion, cæsuræ, feminine endings and elision. Sequences, internal rhymes and even hints of Stabreim might also evoke musical responses in both the vocal line and the accompaniment.
The orchestral texture in the Serenade is integral to the word-setting. This is also the case in
my The Enchanted Island—for example, from Rehearsal Number 20 (Folio Volume 2, 43).
Famously, in opera, the orchestra cannot lie, and the same is true in Vaughan Williams’s concert piece inspired by a Shakespeare play and, I like to think, in mine.