Vaughan Williams: Nationalism and Folk Song

Ars Nova ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
G. King
Keyword(s):  
Folk Song ◽  
Vaughan Williams

scholarly journals Carl Nielsen and the Idea of English National Music

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fjeldsøe ◽  
Jens Boeg
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Ralph Vaughan Williams ◽  
English Music ◽  
A Value ◽  
Good Music ◽  
National Music ◽  
English Composers ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Vaughan Williams

Why did Carl Nielsen achieve such a favourable reception in England from the 1950s on, compared to the rather reluctant recognition in continental Europe? We would suggest that one reason could be an affi nity of features in his music with the concept of English national music. This attempt to discuss the British reception of Nielsen does, of course, not imply that Nielsen’s music is English. From a constructivist position, national musics are based on cultural common-views in a population of people identifying themselves with a certain concept of a nation which they regard their own. The concept of English national music had Ralph Vaughan Williams as chief engineer and champion. Based on Cecil J. Sharp’s scientific investigation of the English folk song, Vaughan Williams developed a theoretical background on which English composers could (and later would) create their compositions, and his thoughts became prevalent through the English musical establishment. Such ideas of English music did not by accident or as some kind of revelation find their way to the hearts and minds of English listeners and critics. The success was due to a deliberate effort by a national movement, and a most crucial feature was the introduction of folk song singing in elementary schools, instilling these particular views into following generations of listeners. Though mainly concerned with the music of England, Vaughan Williams’ ideas were not limited by nationality as such, but were general guidelines for every composer in every nation of the world. In many ways Nielsen’s music can be seen to fi t Vaughan Williams’ characteristics for good music. When fi rst established, ideas of national music are embedded in a value system that considers such music of high quality and thus music – like Nielsen’s – which has affi nities with the image of English national music, is more likely to be recognized and appreciated as ‘good’.

Polite Patriotism: The Edwardian Gentleman in English Music, 1904 to 1914

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-416
Author(s):  
Paul Hopwood
Keyword(s):  
High Tide ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
National Character ◽  
Upper Lip ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
English Music ◽  
Musical Activity ◽  
Musical Rhetoric ◽  
Nationalist Sentiment ◽  
Vaughan Williams

In Edwardian England many of the most widely acknowledged qualities of the national character coalesced around the figure of the English gentleman. One of his defining features was his emotional restraint, his ‘stiff upper-lip’. But these were also years during which patriotic and even nationalist sentiment rose to a high tide, and there was considerable tension between the whole-hearted expression of nationalism and the restrain demanded by gentlemanly manners. This article explores this tension as it was staged and negotiated in the folk-song rhapsodies and nature portraits by Vaughan Williams, Holst, Delius and others during the years from 1904 to 1914. As a methodological basis the article adopts the notion of musical subjectivity – that is, the idea that music can offer a virtual persona with which the listener is invited to identify, and as whom he or she may participate in the musical activity. In this context it is possible to identify aspects of musical rhetoric, namely, the manners which regulate the interaction between the virtual subjectivity and the listener. Ultimately the article suggests that it is the embodiment of gentlemanly manners, every bit as much as the use of folk-song or the representation of English landscape, that accounts for the particularly English quality commonly identified in this music.

DON KAY (b. 1934)Four Bird Songs from Shaw Neilson (2005)

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-122
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Bird Songs ◽  
Close Affinity ◽  
Standard Notation ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Vaughan Williams

This chapter describes Tasmanian composer Dan Kay’s Four Bird Songs from Shaw Neilson (2005). The texts for this pleasing, fluent cycle are by the farmworker-poet Shaw Neilson, and reflect his close affinity with the natural world, especially the life of waterbirds. Kay’s palpable empathy with these unsophisticated but burningly sincere poems draws music of clarity and refinement. The frequent modal melodies and minor harmonies cannot help but call to mind Vaughan Williams and the English folk-song tradition, but Kay manages to inject an individual flavour by means of chromatic shifts and varied rhythms, especially in the last two, slightly longer, songs. A light young baritone with a safe high register would be ideal here. The piano writing is clear and uncluttered, with simple, repeated figurations, and there is no need to force the voice. Standard notation is used throughout.

Alan Rawsthorne and the Baroque

Tempo ◽  
1946 ◽  
pp. 252-255
Author(s):  
Wilfrid Mellers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
Musical Tradition ◽  
Musical History ◽  
Musical Evolution ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Vaughan Williams

When, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the English musical tradition gradually declined, fundamentally for social and economic reasons, one of the symptoms of decay was our failure to absorb the significant trends of contemporary musical evolution. It is for instance pertinent that although Haydn and Mozart were frequently played in London in the first half of the nineteenth century they exerted virtually no influence on our contemporary composers, who were unable to assimilate the implications of their sonata idiom. The great social-dramatic phase of instrumental evolution we simply by-passed, so that it's hardly surprising that when Holst and Vaughan Williams should have come to work towards the renaissance of our musical culture they should have returned to the great days—to Tudor polyphony and, behind that, folk-song and hence to a fundamentally vocal conception of their art. (The unique case of Elgar, whose magnificently ripe symphonics are as it were the culmination of a symphonic tradition that had never happened, we may legitimately regard as a ‘sport’ in our musical history.)

Patterns Of Repetition In Folk Song Driven By Phonology And Morphology

2020 ◽  
pp. 498
Author(s):  
باسل محمد المشاقبة ◽  
عبدالله تيسير عبدالله الشديفات ◽  
نسرين ناجى الخوالدة ◽  
براءة الذنيبات ◽  
أنس ابراهيم الحنيطى
Keyword(s):  
Folk Song

Latvju dainu atbalsis Veltas Sniķeres lirikā

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-134
Author(s):  
Sintija Kampāne-Štelmahere
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
First Language ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Exile Literature ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
Research Objects ◽  
Literary Methods ◽  
Prehistoric Time

The research “Echoes of Latvian Dainas in the Lyrics of Velta Sniķere” examines motifs and fragments of Latvian folk songs in the poetry by Sniķere. Several poems that directly reveal the montage of folk songs are selected as research objects. Linguistic, semantic, hermeneutical and historical as well as literary methods were used in poetry analysis. The research emphasizes the importance of Latvian folklore in the process of Latvian exile literature, the genesis of modern lyrics, and the philosophical conception of the poet. Latvian folk songs in the lyrics of Sniķere are mainly perceived as a source of ancient knowledge and as a path to the Indo-European first language, prehistoric time, which is understood only in a poetic state. Often, the montage of Latvian folk songs or their fragments in the lyrics of Sniķere is revealed as a reflexive reverence that creates a semantic fracture and opposition between profane and sacred view. The insertion of a song in the poem alters the rhythmic and phonetic sound: a free and sometimes dissonant article is replaced by a harmonic trochee, while an internationalism saturated language is replaced by a simple, phonetically effective language composed of alliterations and assonances. The montage of folk songs in a poem is justified by the necessity to restore the Latvian identity in exile, to restore the memory of ancient, mythical knowledge, to represent the understanding of beauty and other moral-ethical values and to show the thought activity. Common mythical images in the lyrics of Sniķere are snake, wind, gold, silver, stone etc. The Latvian folk song symbolism and lifestyle of the poet are organically synthesized with the insights of Indian philosophy.

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