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Of British composers on violin

© Yen Loong Teoh

Speaking of British composers, the earliest that we can call 'great' would be Henry Purcell. After him, another great composer would be George Frederick Handel. Yet strictly speaking, although he dwells in London during his most productive years, Handel was essentially a German. After the end of Baroque period, where other countries seemed to have their own composers representing their own nations, there was a dead silence for Britain. Hence when the Romantic peroid in Europe was flourishing with composers of great wonder like Beethoven and Mozart, nothing came from Britain. Until the Romantic era was coming to an end, only then two prominent British composers emerged, representing full-bloodedly their own country. They were Edward Elgar and Vaughan Williams. These two composers, brought out the perpetual beauty of British voices, especially Elgar who composed pieces that often glance back to the aching emotional depth of the great Romantic era, as in his last masterpiece, the Cello Concerto in E minor. Vaughan Williams built his reputation somewhat later, but his compositions are no less dramatic and emotional than Elgar's, although both their works are distinctly different in style and mood.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on October 12th, 1872 at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire. Then in 1890, he entered the Royal College of Music, which then enabled him to enrol to Trinity College, Cambridge to finish his degree. Since then, he began to study under many composers, ranging from Max Bruch in Berlin, Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford (both composers that were influenced by Brahms) to Ravel in Paris. Vaughan Williams was under many influences, yet fortunately he managed to force out his original voice in most of his works, although in his earlier works, he displayed obvious influences from Ravel.

Perhaps the most important factor why Vaughan Williams could compose such beautiful and original works is that he was a very keen folk song collector. We could justifyingly say that he brought English folk songs to the world audience, for he orchestrated many of them to be performed by orchestra. Many of his works are directly or indirectly shadowed by English folk songs, and if not, those pieces were inspired by folk songs. The Lark Ascending is just such a piece. Besides this, there are many works bearing tunes of folk songs of England, such as the Norfolk Rhapsody no. 1, English Folk Songs Suite, Fantasia on Greensleeves, and many more.

Vaughan Williams wrote works of wide range, listing all the way from large-scale symphonies to smaller intimate orchestral works. Altogether he composed 9 symphonies, which literally all of them contain his innermost feelings for every occasion. His ambitious choral work, A Sea Symphony, remained one of the grandest manipulation of human voices ever in music history. Besides choral works, he wrote concertos, string quartet, but mostly his works are orchestral works. Before his death in London in 26th August 1958, he left us a lot of memorable works that are clearly distinct with British sounds. Though most of his works are worth discussing and hearing, here we will just look at his 'romance for violin and small orchestra', The Lark Ascending.

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