White Gates

Kate Molleson explores Vaughan Williams’s time living at 'White Gates' in Surrey, where he moved in the late 1920s.

“I’ve always loved carols” Vaughan Williams wrote to Cecil Sharp in 1911. Despite being called a “most determined atheist” by Bertrand Russell at University, and in later life “a cheerful agnostic”, the composer never lost his love for Christmas. It dated back to childhood memories of singing carols from Stainer and Bramley’s Christmas Carols New and Old at his home at Leith Hill Place, Surrey. As an adult, his lifelong passion for the Christmas period was demonstrated in his music - the Fantasia on Christmas Carols, On Christmas Night based on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the cantata Hodie and the nativity play The First Nowell. His passion for collecting folk tunes in various counties of England – armed with a trusty pencil and paper, or at times a phonograph - also led to a plethora of carol settings using these folk tunes, as Vaughan Williams himself said “Every day some old village singer dies, and with him there probably die half-a-dozen beautiful melodies, which are lost to the world forever: if we would preserve what still remains we must set about it at once.” In this special week of programmes, Kate Molleson explores Vaughan Williams’s experiences of Christmas across his life alongside some of his best loved pieces, and the music he wrote to celebrate the festive period.

Today, Kate explores Vaughan Williams’s time living at 'White Gates' in Dorking, where he moved in the late 1920s. He would stay there for 25 years and survive the bombing raids of the second World War in the house. The leafy surrounds of Surrey made for quieter Christmases on the whole, and Ralph’s wife Adeline was growing old and frail, but a new flame was kindled in Vaughan Williams's heart when he met a young poet named Ursula Wood. Kate also explores the origins of a famous carol’s tune – the melody of which Vaughan Williams notated as being sung by Mr Garman of Forest Green, Surrey, on a folk song collecting trip in 1903.

Vaughan Williams
Hodie (This Day): The Oxen
Stephen Gadd, baritone
Royal Philharmonic Onrchestra
Hilary Davan Wetton, conductor

Vaughan Williams
On Christmas Night (extract)
Sarah Fox, soprano
Roderick Williams, baritone
The Joyful Company of Singers & City of London Sinfonia
Richard Hickox, conductor

Vaughan Williams
Dona Nobis Pacem – III. Reconciliation
Christina Pier, soprano
Matthew Brook, baritone
Bach Choir
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
David Hill, conductor

Trad
Ploughboy’s Dream
Coope, Boyes & Simpson, vocals

Vaughan Williams (arr.)
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Tom Etheridge, organ
Stephen Cleobury, director

Vaughan Williams
Prelude: 49th parallel
Northern Sinfonia
Richard Hickox, conductor

Vaughan Williams
Symphony no. 5 in D Major - III. Romanza
BBC SO
Andrew Davis, conductor

Vaughan Williams (arr.)
God rest you merry, gentlemen
Angus McPhee, baritone
Timothy Murphy, bass
Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea
William Vann, director

Produced by Sam Phillips for BBC Audio Wales and West