Composer Of The Week: Vaughan Williams

There is a type of composer who is a biographer’s dream: a prodigy, spilling out masterpieces from the nursery, ideally triumphing in the face of an impoverished background, and all cut short by an early death. Ralph Vaughan Williams was none of those and his story is all the more fascinating for it.

All this week, Donald Macleod charts the long life and career of this most English composer – the son of a lawyer, educated at home then at Charterhouse, but who also loved watching Mickey Mouse more than anything else at the cinema. The programmes follow him from his childhood – when after six months of piano lessons “he can’t play the simplest thing decently” – through to his last years, when even in his 80s he was composing works which still define his reputation.

Listeners meet a man deeply in love with his country and its cultural traditions; a collaborator with greats like Elgar and Holst, but who also had a passion for French music and the work of Ravel, who became a trusted teacher and personal friend. The programmes follow him through two World Wars, where active service saw him permanently scarred by sights which could never leave his memory. Plus, we explore the more intimate side of the composer, who adored his first wife but then forged a new relationship, both personal and musical, after she died.

Music featured in the programme includes:

Fantasia on “Greensleeves”
Margaret Campbell and Colin Lilley (flutes)
Audrey Douglas (harp)
English String Orchestra
William Boughton (conductor)

On Wenlock Edge
Andrew Kennedy (tenor)
Dante Quartet
Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

Symphony No 4, 1st movement
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Paul Daniel (conductor)

Toward the Unknown Region - song for chorus and orchestra
Corydon Singers
Corydon Orchestra
Matthew Best (conductor)

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Hallé Orchestra
Mark Elder (conductor)

Tuesday: Williams develops a fruitful relationship with French composer Maurice Ravel, cemented over steak and kidney puddings at Waterloo Station.

Wednesday: Listeners rejoin Williams deeply immersed in the music of his home country, giving lectures on national songs from around the British Isles.

Thursday: Harrowing war-time experiences never left Williams, as Donald Macleod discovers in the composer’s later works.

Friday: Williams makes a deep impression on a woman 40 years his junior (all thanks to a fetching green pork-pie hat) which will eventually lead to marriage.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producers/Johannah Smith and Michael Surcombe for the BBC

Publicity contact: BBC Radio 3 Publicity