Symphony No. 9 (Vaughan Williams)
Encyclopedia
The Symphony No. 9 in E minor was the last symphony written by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
. He composed it from 1956 to 1957 and it was given its premiere performance in London by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent
on 2 April 1958, in the composer's eighty-sixth year. It was subsequently performed on 5 August 1958 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Malcolm Sargent at a Promenade Concert
. Vaughan Williams died three weeks later, on 26 August, the very day on which the symphony was due to be recorded for the first time, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
.
Vaughan Williams’s original idea was to create a programmatic symphony based on Thomas Hardy
's book Tess of the d'Urbervilles
, even though the programmatic elements eventually disappeared as work on the composition progressed. Existing sketches clearly indicate that, in the early stages of composition, certain passages related to specific people and events in the novel: in some of the manuscripts, the first movement is headed "Wessex Prelude", and the heading "Tess" appears above sketches for the second movement.
The work is in four movements
It is worth noting that the opening theme of the slow movement comes from music Vaughan Williams had composed more than fifty years earlier: A Sea Symphony
and an even earlier, unpublished tone poem from 1904 called The Solent
. The composer himself called the drumbeat music that immediately follows this theme, “the ghostly drummer
of Salisbury Plain
.”
, two flute
s, two oboe
s, cor anglais
, two clarinet
s, bass clarinet
, two bassoon
s, contrabassoon
, two alto saxophone
s, tenor saxophone
, four horns, two trumpet
s, flugelhorn
, three trombone
s, tuba
, timpani
, side drum, tenor drum
, bass drum
, cymbals, triangle, large gong
, tam-tam, deep bells
, glockenspiel
, xylophone
, celesta
, two harp
s, and strings
.
Vaughan Williams's program note accompanying the premiere performance remarked thus:
"The usual symphony orchestra is used with the addition of three saxophones and flugelhorn. This beautiful and neglected instrument is not usually allowed in the select circles of the orchestra and has been banished to the brass band, where it is allowed to indulge in the bad habit of vibrato to its heart's content. While in the orchestra it will be obliged to sit up and play straight. The saxophones, also, are not expected, except possibly in one place in the scherzo, to behave like demented cats, but are allowed to be their own romantic selves. Otherwise the orchestra is normal, and is, the composer hopes, sound in wind and strings."
Very early on in the first movement the three saxophones play a chorale-like passage in chordal harmony, perhaps to emphasize that this will not be the sort of dance band music which the saxophone produces in the scherzo of the Sixth Symphony.
, at its first performances "there was no denying the coolness of the critics' reception of the music. Its enigmatic mood puzzled them, and more attention was therefore paid to the use of the flugel horn and to the flippant programme note." Critic Murray Shafer remarked that the work is notable only "because of [Vaughan Williams's] reputation as a symphonist, and because the composition of the 9th shortly before his death prolongs a certain well-known legend
" and "[found] it difficult...to discover much more than a numerical value in the work." He went on to complain about the saxophones and flugelhorn that "all this extra color seems to be employed simply in thickening the middle-orchestra texture, the one area of the orchestra which does not need extra support." Unenthusiastic early reaction, along with the unusual instrumental requirements, may have kept the symphony from having the kind of sustained performance history that most of the others have enjoyed. The flugelhorn player at the premiere was David Mason, who remarked that all the press coverage was about the flugelhorn, to the detriment of serious discussion of the symphony as a work.
The critical reception given to the US Premiere of the work under Leopold Stokowski
in Carnegie Hall on 25 September 1958 was more favourable. In the New York Times, Harold C. Schoenberg wrote that "the symphony is packed with strong personal melody from beginning to end ... A mellow glow suffuses the work, as it does the work of many veteran composers who seem to gaze retrospectively over their careers ... In any case, the Ninth Symphony is a masterpiece." In the Musical Courier, G. Waldrop described it as "a work of beauty ... lyricism, sheer tonal beauty and thorough craftsmanship were in evidence throughout."
The differences in the initial critical reactions to the music may have been partly due to the performances. In his 1987 biography of Sir Adrian Boult, Michael Kennedy referred to Sargent's as having been "an unsatisfactory first performance." Percy Grainger
, however, who was in Carnegie Hall for the U.S. Premiere, told Ursula Vaughan Williams
that Stokowski's performance "seemed a perfect one in every way and the exquisite beauty and cosmic quality of this immortal work struck me as being ideally realised." (Oliver Daniel: Stokowski - A Counterpoint of View - 1982). (Both performances have been issued on CD: Sargent's by Pristine Audio and Stokowski's by Cala Records.)
Many critics and writers now consider Vaughan Williams's last symphony to be one of his greatest works. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians calls this symphony "the most impressive achievement" of Vaughan Williams's final decade and remarks that "both outer movements employ highly original structures – the carefully graded and layered engineering of rhythmic momentum in the first movement is especially striking – and the work offers one of Vaughan Williams's most impressive essays in finely balanced tonal and modal ambiguities."
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
. He composed it from 1956 to 1957 and it was given its premiere performance in London by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
on 2 April 1958, in the composer's eighty-sixth year. It was subsequently performed on 5 August 1958 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Malcolm Sargent at a Promenade Concert
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
. Vaughan Williams died three weeks later, on 26 August, the very day on which the symphony was due to be recorded for the first time, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
.
Vaughan Williams’s original idea was to create a programmatic symphony based on Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
's book Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British...
, even though the programmatic elements eventually disappeared as work on the composition progressed. Existing sketches clearly indicate that, in the early stages of composition, certain passages related to specific people and events in the novel: in some of the manuscripts, the first movement is headed "Wessex Prelude", and the heading "Tess" appears above sketches for the second movement.
The work is in four movements
- Moderato maestoso
- Andante sostenuto
- Scherzo: Allegro pesante
- Finale: Andante tranquillo
It is worth noting that the opening theme of the slow movement comes from music Vaughan Williams had composed more than fifty years earlier: A Sea Symphony
A Sea Symphony (Vaughan Williams)
A Sea Symphony is a choral symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams, written between 1903 and 1909. Vaughan Williams's first and longest symphony, it was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1910, with the composer conducting. The symphony's maturity belies the composer's relative youth when it was...
and an even earlier, unpublished tone poem from 1904 called The Solent
Solent
The Solent is a strait separating the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England.The Solent is a major shipping route for passengers, freight and military vessels. It is an important recreational area for water sports, particularly yachting, hosting the Cowes Week sailing event annually...
. The composer himself called the drumbeat music that immediately follows this theme, “the ghostly drummer
The Ingoldsby Legends
The Ingoldsby Legends is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham....
of Salisbury Plain
Salisbury Plain
Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in central southern England covering . It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, with a little in Hampshire. The plain is famous for its rich archaeology, including Stonehenge, one of England's best known...
.”
Instrumentation
The orchestra includes piccoloPiccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, two flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
s, two oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s, cor anglais
Cor anglais
The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
, two clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s, bass clarinet
Bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
, two bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
s, contrabassoon
Contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
, two alto saxophone
Alto saxophone
The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
s, tenor saxophone
Tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
, four horns, two trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, flugelhorn
Flugelhorn
The flugelhorn is a brass instrument resembling a trumpet but with a wider, conical bore. Some consider it to be a member of the saxhorn family developed by Adolphe Sax ; however, other historians assert that it derives from the valve bugle designed by Michael Saurle , Munich 1832 , thus...
, three trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
, timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, side drum, tenor drum
Tenor drum
A tenor drum is a cylindrical drum that is higher pitched than a bass drum.In a symphony orchestra's percussion section, a tenor drum is a low-pitched drum, similar in size to a field snare, but without snares and played with soft mallets or hard sticks. Under various names, the drum has been used...
, bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
, cymbals, triangle, large gong
Gong
A gong is an East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat metal disc which is hit with a mallet....
, tam-tam, deep bells
Bell (instrument)
A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...
, glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, xylophone
Xylophone
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
, celesta
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, two harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
s, and strings
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
.
Vaughan Williams's program note accompanying the premiere performance remarked thus:
"The usual symphony orchestra is used with the addition of three saxophones and flugelhorn. This beautiful and neglected instrument is not usually allowed in the select circles of the orchestra and has been banished to the brass band, where it is allowed to indulge in the bad habit of vibrato to its heart's content. While in the orchestra it will be obliged to sit up and play straight. The saxophones, also, are not expected, except possibly in one place in the scherzo, to behave like demented cats, but are allowed to be their own romantic selves. Otherwise the orchestra is normal, and is, the composer hopes, sound in wind and strings."
Very early on in the first movement the three saxophones play a chorale-like passage in chordal harmony, perhaps to emphasize that this will not be the sort of dance band music which the saxophone produces in the scherzo of the Sixth Symphony.
Critical reception
According to Vaughan Williams biographer Michael KennedyMichael Kennedy (music critic)
Dr. George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE is an English biographer, journalist and writer on classical music. He joined the Daily Telegraph at the age of 15 in 1941, and began writing music criticism for it in 1948...
, at its first performances "there was no denying the coolness of the critics' reception of the music. Its enigmatic mood puzzled them, and more attention was therefore paid to the use of the flugel horn and to the flippant programme note." Critic Murray Shafer remarked that the work is notable only "because of [Vaughan Williams's] reputation as a symphonist, and because the composition of the 9th shortly before his death prolongs a certain well-known legend
Curse of the ninth
The curse of the ninth is a superstition connected with the history of classical music. In essence, it is the belief that a "ninth symphony" is destined to be a composer's last; i.e. that he or she will be "fated" to die after writing it, or before completing a "tenth"...
" and "[found] it difficult...to discover much more than a numerical value in the work." He went on to complain about the saxophones and flugelhorn that "all this extra color seems to be employed simply in thickening the middle-orchestra texture, the one area of the orchestra which does not need extra support." Unenthusiastic early reaction, along with the unusual instrumental requirements, may have kept the symphony from having the kind of sustained performance history that most of the others have enjoyed. The flugelhorn player at the premiere was David Mason, who remarked that all the press coverage was about the flugelhorn, to the detriment of serious discussion of the symphony as a work.
The critical reception given to the US Premiere of the work under Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
in Carnegie Hall on 25 September 1958 was more favourable. In the New York Times, Harold C. Schoenberg wrote that "the symphony is packed with strong personal melody from beginning to end ... A mellow glow suffuses the work, as it does the work of many veteran composers who seem to gaze retrospectively over their careers ... In any case, the Ninth Symphony is a masterpiece." In the Musical Courier, G. Waldrop described it as "a work of beauty ... lyricism, sheer tonal beauty and thorough craftsmanship were in evidence throughout."
The differences in the initial critical reactions to the music may have been partly due to the performances. In his 1987 biography of Sir Adrian Boult, Michael Kennedy referred to Sargent's as having been "an unsatisfactory first performance." Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
, however, who was in Carnegie Hall for the U.S. Premiere, told Ursula Vaughan Williams
Ursula Vaughan Williams
Ursula Vaughan Williams, née Joan Ursula Penton Lock was an English poet and author, and biographer of her second husband, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.-Biography:...
that Stokowski's performance "seemed a perfect one in every way and the exquisite beauty and cosmic quality of this immortal work struck me as being ideally realised." (Oliver Daniel: Stokowski - A Counterpoint of View - 1982). (Both performances have been issued on CD: Sargent's by Pristine Audio and Stokowski's by Cala Records.)
Many critics and writers now consider Vaughan Williams's last symphony to be one of his greatest works. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians calls this symphony "the most impressive achievement" of Vaughan Williams's final decade and remarks that "both outer movements employ highly original structures – the carefully graded and layered engineering of rhythmic momentum in the first movement is especially striking – and the work offers one of Vaughan Williams's most impressive essays in finely balanced tonal and modal ambiguities."
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