Choose a piece of music, which is in some way related to one or more other pieces. After a brief introduction, contextualizing the piece, present an analysis of the music, outlining its main features, tracing their relationship to these other pieces and offering a more detailed discussion of those features of the music, which you find particularly interesting. You may find it useful to include music examples and diagrammatic representations of the music’s structure. It is recommended that you discuss your choice of music with one of the modules tutors. Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872, and had a fairly typically upper-middle-class background. He was educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge, but also spent two years at the Royal College of Music, where he studied under Parry and became friends with Gustav Holst. The pair shared many enthusiasms, including collecting folksongs. He became passionate about folksongs and grew to believe they were under-rated and should be regarded as part of the English heritage. Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis was first performed in Gloucester Cathedral at the Three-Choirs festival in 1910. “[The] masterpiece made comparatively little stir at its first performance and was not immediately seized upon by orchestras. A few people . . . . realized the beauty of the new work, . . . . its gravity and strength reflecting the same qualities in the black-haired, handsome giant who was conducting his own music. The Musical Times critic complained that the Fantasia, in which he curiously found the quality of ‘charm’, was ‘over-long for the subject-matter” (Kennedy, 1992, p.92). In the 21st Century, the work has been heeded as “a national treasure.” “It seems to stand for something very particular in this country’s national consciousness” (BBC, Discovering Music). What will be discussed is why Vaughan Williams wanted to use Tallis’s hymn, “Why fum’th in fight the Gentiles Spite”, as his theme and what contextual meanings it created at the time. The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes argues that the role of the artist in the 20th Century changed to have more of a collective voice an individual one. Vaughan Williams understood this at the beginning of the Century, “‘Why should music be “original”? . . . . It does not matter if this word has been said a thousand times before as long as it is the right thing to say at that moment” (Music in the Western World, p.450). Vaughan Williams’s use of Tallis’s material shows that it holds a lot of value to him as a composer. Tallis was, along with Byrd, the most well paid composer of his time in 16th Century England, as he worked directly for Kings and Queens. Having this theme as the main focus of the Tallis Fantasia was Vaughan Williams trying to show that the English were not educated in their heritage of their music. “He [Vaughan Williams] was painfully conscious of the illiteracy of much of English musical life” (Kennedy, 1992, p. 37). A critic of the Gloucester Journal having seen the first performance of the Fantasia stated, “‘We confess,’ . . . . ‘that the “theme” on which the Fantasia is founded is not familiar to us,” (Kennedy, 1992, p.94). This lack of knowledge frustrated Vaughan Williams no end. Vaughan Williams said himself, “The new generations just did not take the trouble to learn the tunes [folksongs]. . . . Already by 1907 many of the folk singers who had provided Sharp [folksong collector] with his songs were dead.” (Kennedy, 1992, p.25) Vaughan Williams’s frustration may have had something to do with the fact that Germany had wiped out all English Classical composers ever since Handel moved over from Germany to compose in England (Artists, writers, and musicians, Brothers, 2001, p.83). Vaughan Williams wanted English composers to give England musical value that would add to its heritage, “‘Art, like charity, should begin at home. If it is to be of any value it must grow out of the very life of himself, [the artist] the community in which he lives, the nation to which he belongs.’” (Who wants the English composer?, 1912, p.11-14). Even though the theme of the piece is by a composer who lived and worked for the established church all of his life during the Roman-Catholic and Protestant years of Henry the VIII, Edward VI, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, it is not wholly inspired by church music, for Vaughan Williams’s specialty was English folksong. His English Folk Song Suite, his Six English Folk Songs all take their source material from old English folksongs that he had set about collecting in 1903 (Kennedy, 1992, p.29) since he was afraid that the folk songs would be forgotten forever, “Every day some old village singer dies, and with him there probably die hold a dozen beautiful melodies which are lost to the world for ever” (Kennedy, 1992, p.36). Vaughan Williamss uses strings alone to in this piece to communicate a natural, forest like timbre. This is because Thomas Tallis grew up in a far more rural Britain, compared to the one in which Vaughan Williams lived in that had been through the industrial revolution. The G major chord that begins the piece reverberates within the instruments’ strings because every instrument in the orchestra has a string that is tuned to either G, or D. It is only worth two beats, but it helps set the scene for the subtle entrances of the theme that come in bar four in pizzicato. Bar three begins with the first and second violins playing two Ds an octave apart, high in their tessitura, and very quietly to give the fragments of the hymn, that are played in the violas, ‘celli and double basses, a bleak and suspenseful quality. The motif that is played pizzicato is the first phrase of the hymn, “Why fum’th fight the gentiles spite”, is changed in this new orchestral context. Originally, in the 16th Century, its austerity broadcasted to audiences and singers a protection in the form of Protestant Queen Elizabeth the first from an imminent threat, Catholic Spain. In The Tallis Fantasia, the minor tune, and later becoming the a Phrygian tune due to the addition of the minor second in the scale, heavily differentiates itself from the original’s vigorous homophonic bellowing religious texture. The next segment of the original hymn comes two bars after rehearsal mark A in the first violins and second violins. This is from the hymn where the lyrics are “The Kings Arise”. Vaughan Williams has thus already stated two sections of the hymn before it has even come into full existence, which it promptly does a bar and a half after the Largarmente. The theme quietly enters in the violas, celli and basses. Vaughan Williams’s instrumentation is key here. The pastel and harmonically open tremolo violins above it give the theme a calm and refreshing, yet sorrowful essence. There is also no grounding bass line to give the theme any security, except the occasional pizzicato. This gives the simple yet sad tune a searching quality, a quality that the original hymn certainly has not. One similarity between the two works is that all of the parts play together in homophony, albeit the first violins in the Tallis Fantasia. This supplies both pieces with a sound of musical unity. Vaughan Williams knew how to compose for strings and how the versatility of stringed instruments allows different colours to be composed. For example, he instructs the basses to play pizzicato. This furnishes the celli and the viola’s notes with a staccato attack on top of their flowing legato phrasing. This rhythm of staccatos is not identically matched to that of the theme. One could be subjective and say that the pizzicato notes are rhythmically similar to that of a heartbeat, especially in the first four bars that they are heard. This heartbeat sound should have a calming effect its because the rhythm in the double basses is very natural and slow. Subconsciously, this would cause the human to sync their heartbeat to it. Whether Vaughan Williams knew about this is unknown. The first violins build on their shimmering and delicate timbre throughout the statement of the theme, but seven bars before rehearsal mark C, they prepare the audience’s ears with a sentimental legato rise of “The Kings arise” that lasts just one bar before they descend back into the background and return to play tremolo. They take the foreground three bars later and four bars before rehearsal mark C with the descending form of the “The Kings arise”, which is “Against the Lord”. This is the first time this part of the hymn is heard in the Tallis Fantasia, and since the first violins played the pitch-retrograde form of it, that is “The Kings Arise”, it seems very appropriate for Vaughan Williams to orchestrate it for the first violins. Vaughan Williams ends the phrase by ending on G major at rehearsal mark C. Here, the first violins start to transcend upwards searching for, what looks to be (in the score), the initial resonant G major chord from the first bar. Both violin sections rise up, but land on a B flat instead of a B natural. This prevents the music’s from achieving the same awe that shone at the beginning. But it also has increased the energy of the timbre and the theme is restated with more impetuous, and, one could say, even more desolation than before because of this. The second violins drive the piece steadily with their ascending and descending semi-quavers of G minor and other minor arpeggios a fifth apart. The theme is now played in the high register, and thus, in a different voice than that the viola, celli and basses had created. Vaughan Williams brings in a new voice by having the theme played by the first and second violins. This gives the sense that the feeling of despair is a collective despair, rather than a typically romantic and individual despair that a Romantic composer would have written. It also reflects that Vaughan Williams was a modern composer, in the fact that he did not want his music to sound individual, unlike many other romantics before him. At rehearsal mark E, the music procrastinates its resolution by modulating to increasingly unrelated keys until it finally settles in F sharp major. The ‘a tempo’ mark four bars before rehearsal mark F sees the first account of the splitting of the double string orchestra in tutti and soli sections. The soli play fragments of the Tallis theme homophonically, starkly contrasting itself from the next section, section J. Section J sees the first and strongest influence of folksong in Tallis Fantasia. Vaughan Williams prepares it with a folksong like tune from a solo viola that respires with the orchestra so that it feels less alien to the orchestral texture. The next instrument that breathes the air of the folksong is a solo first violin. It is then joined by the solo viola and then later a string quartet. Both solo viola and violin play a recognized and developed version of the original Tallis hymn, but this time, it has been imbued with triplets and quavers. This puts the listener in a completely new world compared to the one that Vaughan Williams initially created. The first beat of the bar is also made very ambiguous by entrances of the instruments of the string quartet to be on other beats of the bar, rather than the first one. Each of the quartet’s roles is also very vague. This gives the listener the sense that the piece is being improvised in front of them, when it actually has been meticulously written out. This improvisational element is very typical of folksong. The solo cello at rehearsal mark K is an example of the faux-spontaneity of this section. It has a motif that ascends quickly and then descends in triplet time. This figure last four beats, but the time signature is in three/four at this point, rather than four/four. It is not unique to the cello though, as it is an imitation of a motif that the viola has two bars before rehearsal mark K. This echoing is not exclusive to newly joined instruments in this section though. When the viola comes in five bars before K, the solo violin imitates its material a third above a beat later. This free and unconstrained polyphony that Vaughan Williams produces differs so greatly from the previous music in the piece, and especially from the original Tallis hymn tune. He is laying down another culture, the rural folksong culture. “[Vaughan Williams] ‘we simply were fascinated by the tunes and wanted other people to be fascinated too.”(Kennedy, 1992, p.38) The sound of spontaneity, along with the natural sounds of strings, together with the simplicity of the musical material, and with the implied environment of a small gathering of folk musicians, conveys charming rural England. In 1910, the rural English culture was in danger of becoming extinct and forgotten by the industrialized English city people. The splitting of the orchestra into different sections was unusual at the time for composers. But without a doubt, Vaughan Williams creates a very effective sound with it. The ‘Malto Adagio’ section at rehearsal mark T starts with a texture that is almost the same as the texture at the very beginning of the piece. The chord is spread across the range of the orchestra, and the fragments of the hymn are plucked in pizzicato in the violas, celli and double basses. The harmony and dynamics though are totally different and it has become far more ominous than at the beginning with that vast G major chord. The chords shift chromatically downwards and dynamically descend as if some unknown presence looms and presents a threat. The beginnings of the hymn are slowly stated until we land on a low F minor chord where the hymn is silently plucked out. Rehearsal mark U sees the theme come back in its original form in a solo violin. The accompaniment is made up of quiet and shimmering strings with pizzicato on the first beats of most bars to keep the sense of rhythm. There is also a solo viola that initially imitates the solo violin in canon a bar later. But as the theme comes in the solo violin, it plays a folksong like backing. The folksong inspired viola makes use of triplets in and amongst quavers and semi-quavers that when paired with a sturdy hymn tune produces a taste almost as if wine and beer have been mixed together. The continuous search that Tallis Fantasia goes through finally comes to a gradual end. Ending the piece is a G major chord that resonates across the double string orchestra. But its sound is empty and full of regret. In preparation, Vaughan Williams brings the music to the home key of G major four bars after rehearsal mark X. Here, the quiet dynamics, the slow tempo, and lack of bass make a frail texture that seems to convey the end of a long journey. At rehearsal mark Z, the music turns a corner where an abrupt and dissonant chord resonates loudly on the fourth beat of the bar. We see, in the conscious of the music, what we have been searching for this whole time, but not in the alive state that we wanted. The rising solo violin is so incredibly lonely and sad, and the orchestra so cautious when trying to accompany its grief with a plagal cadence, that one can see a grieving body crying over another. The orchestra and the violin roar the G major chord, and we are left sitting motionless, listening to it die. This epic sadness in the ending could have been a reflection on Vaughan Williams who may have thought that his cherished collection of folksongs and hymns were the last in their long lineage. It is true that local, modern hymns and folksongs are few and far between in the 21st Century. You could say that he probably wrote the Tallis Fantasia with regret in the sure knowledge that the inevitable would happen, their depletion being part of the natural development of a nation. Bibliography: Artists, writers, and musicians: an encyclopedia of people who changed the world: by Thomas Brothers, 2001. Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia, BBC, Discovering Music archive, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/listeninglibrary.shtml#v Music in the Western World: a history in documents, by Piero Weiss, Richard Taruskin, 2008. R. Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Hawkes Pocket Scores, Boosey & Hawkes, Music Publishers Ltd, 1975. The Work of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 2nd Edition, Michael Kennedy, 1992. ‘Who wants the English composer?’ The R.C.M magazine, 9/1, Christmas Term, 1912.
