Herbert Howells, the English composer most noted for his choral works, and friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams once described him as an ‘original who liked to think of himself a kleptomaniac’, due to his use of melodies and themes from the renaissance and folk tunes from around the country (Sadie, 1998: 98). It is perhaps not surprising to know that Vaughan Williams was obsessed with folk tunes, as he is well known amongst churchgoers for being the music editor for the 1906 ‘English Hymnal’, which amongst Lutheran and Roman hymns, included folk tunes which he had arranged as hymns for church (Latham, 2001). Such examples are the tunes Kingsfold and Monks gate, tunes taken from the villages surrounding Dorking, where Vaughan Williams lived for a while (Music, 2001: 8). Vaughan Williams even became the president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society for a short while, as he wished that the music of the folk tradition not to be lost, but rather retained. He felt this was the case due to the decline in the oral tradition, and strived to transcribe folk tunes from across the country so that they may not be lost (RVW Society Website). This essay aims to superficially assess Vaughan Williams use of folk melodies in his instrumental works, and to conclude whether or not he was original in his composition, or whether he is merely a kleptomaniac, as Howells said Vaughan Williams thought he was.
The English Folk song suite, originally published as the folk song suite, was written for wind band and performed in 1923 (Reynish, 1999: 7). As the title would suggest, Folk songs form the basis of the piece, with each movement acting almost as a fantasia on different folk tunes. The first movement, titled March: Seventeen Come Sunday, opens with the folk tune Seventeen Come Sunday in the woodwind.
This melody is the main focus of the piece, and remains largely unchanged throughout the music. The folk melody is well known across England and Scotland, and Vaughan Williams has indicated the articulation almost as if it was sung to its original words, demonstrating staccato to provide a percussive sound much like the spoken word, thus mimicking the original text. The first verse of the original text is as follows:
We can see a tenuto marking in bar 11 of the extract, and in the original folk song this would have fallen on the word ‘Maid’, which is the protagonist of the folk song, and the tenuto marking provides weight to this word, much in the way a folk singer would sing it. It must be noted that Vaughan Williams keeps the folk tunes as they are, that is to say, he does not develop the tunes by either melodic, harmonic, or tonal variation. This differs from what one would normally expect in the traditional classical suite; in this instant, Vaughan Williams is excluding variation, perhaps to preserve the nature of the folk song (Howes, 1954:233).
One tune which briefly appears in the first movement of the folk song suite is the folk song Dives and Lazarus, which may also be known as the hymn tune Kingsfold. Vaughan Williams was obviously fond of this tune, due to the number of occurrences where it is quoted, including a brief allusion in his Festival Te Deum. The tune forms the basis of Five variants on Dives and Lazarus. It must be noted that these are in fact variants, and not variations. Vaughan Williams first came across this tune in Norfolk with the name ‘The murder of Marai Marten in the Red Barn’, but also came across the tune in Ireland under the name ‘The Star of County Down’, in Scotland as ‘Gilderoy’ and in many parts of England as the carol ‘Come all ye faithful Christians’ (Howes, 1954: 234). In each instance, the tune slightly differs from the original tune, thus is a variant rather than a variation. Vaughan Williams doesn’t directly quote a variant, other than the one in A. J. Hipkins book English Country Songs, which I used as the first variant, and the fifth and final variant, which is known through the title ‘Maria Marten’, which is not too dissimilar to the Hipkins melody, acting as a reacpitulation (Howes, 1954: 234-5). The other variants aren’t necessarily variants Vaughan Williams has heard, nor ones he has devised or variated, but rather something which Vaughan Williams has recalled, with the variations between tunes having derived from modification through transmission, much like how a folk singer would sing the song, having learnt through the oral tradition. Unlike the English Folk Song Suite, Vaughan Williams does provide variations of the melody, as the third variant is in D minor, and is immediately followed by a variation of this in F minor. In a not too dissimilar way, the fourth variant is livelier in a way that seems more like a variation (Howes, 1954: 234). However, in the strictest sense, these are Variants and not variations. As Vaughan Williams was a keen proponent of Folk music, it makes sense that he, yet again, doesn’t compose his folk songs or give variations on them, but rather tries to preserve the traditional manner in which folk songs were passed down and evolved.
Vaughan Williams certainly like to think of himself as a Kleptomaniac, and perhaps in the classical sense he was; he was merely an arranger of tunes rather than an artist creating them. Vaughan Williams said “What is the classical style? It is nothing more or less than the Teutonic style. It so happened for nearly a hundred years… the great composers… were all German or Austrian” (Brocken, 2003:6) If we remove the Germanic and classical view of music, and look broader, a composer can be an original kleptomaniac worthy of the title ‘Composer’; if not then the likes of Dvorak, Grieg, Kodaly and Rimsky-Korsokov, amongst others are not composers.
Resource List
- M. Brocken, 2003, The British Folk Revival, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
- S. Cannock ,RVW Society Website, <http://www.rvwsociety.com/bio_expanded.html> (on 02 March 2015).
- F. Howes, 1954, The Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- C. James, 1911, Folk songs of Somerset, London: Simpkin.
- A. Latham, 2001, “English Hymnal.” The Oxford Companion to Music., Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e2269>. (on 02 March 2015).
- D. Music, 2001, Christian Hymnody in Twentieth-century Britain and America, California: Greenwood press.
- T. Reynish, 1999, notes for British Wind Band Classics, Chandos Records 9697,.
- S. Sadie, 1998, Vaughan Williams, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- R. Vaughan Williams, 1924, English Folk song suite, London: Boosey & Co.
Leave a Reply