The third in this series of albums that influenced me.
My local library – so prosaic, yet such a glittering palace of knowledge and experience when I was growing up – facilitated my introduction proper to classical music. Just as with jazz, I started fairly randomly, sifting through the stacks of records available to hire for a week (or was it two weeks?) and picking out some names I recognised or covers that intrigued me. On repeated visits I would concentrate on composers I had enjoyed, or had simply been intrigued by in liner notes.
In this way I listened more closely to music that I had heard at school, such standard pieces as Holst’s The Planets or Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and more often than not found that they no longer felt like grand statements, remote and inaccessible, but magnificent yet highly personal stories that touched the heart.
One of the composers I discovered through this haphazard approach was Ralph Vaughan Williams. I’d heard the name from somewhere, so borrowed a big box set of his complete symphonies, conducted by Andre Previn (or as those of my generation remember him, Andrew Preview). I can still remember the hairs on the back of my head (yes, when I had hair) standing on end at the glorious opening to Symphony No 1 – the fanfare sound of that opening statement where the choir declare: “Behold! The Sea!”
I immediately felt at home with RVW’s music. The composer’s name had always seemed to imply a rather stuffy, safe music, whereas the truth was entrely different: it had a boldness and humanity which could be overwhelming. The symphony which most spoke to me, and which still today can move me to tears, is his 5th Symphony. Its lush orchestration and heartbreaking melodies are utterly sublime, yet there is an underlying ambiguity to the whole piece, a yearning for resolution. The music was inspired by Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (a lifelong agnostic, RVW was nevertheless steeped in sacred music and religious themes) and the symphony is harmonically unsettled and ambiguous, right from the opening chords. There is a constant search for harmonic resolution throughout, and it only finally settles on it’s home key towards the very end, and does not finds total resolution until its last chord.
I see that in 2012 I posted a short blog about this piece called “The melancholy beauty of Vaughan Williams’ 5th symphony…” The closing paragraph still sums up my feelings for this music:
“This tonal ambiguity, as well as the unsettling urgency of some of the passages, and the underlying melancholy of the music, give this symphony a richness of experience which never fails to affect me. Above all, though, its the moments of sublime luscious beauty, with their overwhelming sense of yearning, which I find so deeply and profoundly moving.”
when curiosity threatens 