Reclaiming migration: voices from Europe's ‘migrant crisis’

Please note that the name of one of the authors of the book under review was misspelled; it should be Nick Vaughan-Williams, not Mick Vaughn Williams.

“A Sea Symphony” by R. Vaughan Williams and its literary source

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the artistic concept of “A Sea Symphony” by R. Vaughan Williams and the key role in its formation of the literary source of the work. The methodology of the work is based on the application of analytical, structural, comparative and intertextual methods, which makes it possible to expand the horizons of cognitive search and identify intertextual semantic connections within the studied phenomenon. The scientific novelty is that for the first time in Ukrainian musicology the literary source of “A Sea Symphony” by R. Vaughan Williams receives analytical coverage as an important component of the holistic artistic concept of the work. Conclusions. As a result of the work carried out, it was established that the poetic texts by W. Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” became the literary source of the symphony. They are both separate poems of the poet and fragments from his poems. Combining them, the composer builds his own compositional and dramatic logic, subordinate to the idea of revealing the significance of the mythological image of the sea, which appears in the symphony as a polysemantic archetypal complex. Features of the composer's work with a poetic text, the validity of certain notes, replications, transpositions while maintaining and accentuating its key role in building the musical and artistic whole are revealed. The specificity and principles of the distribution of poetic texts between parts of the work, as well as vocal parties, solo and choral, are determined.

The ethnical factor in european literature for the organ in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries based on works by british, italian and Jewish Composers

The article presents examples of the emphasised ethnical factor in works belonging to the European organ literature of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, found in pieces written by British, Italian and Jewish composers. In case of British composers, significant were the proposals of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who primarily saw folk songs as the tool for expressing a national style. Among the composers who wrote music inspired by traditional songs or quoting them directly (which was an important novelty in the British organ literature) were: Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Percy Whitlock, Cyril Bradley Rootham, Geoffrey Turton Shaw, Harold Carpenter Lumb Stocks, and more. The influence of national elements on Italian organ literature is not as strong but it seems justified to assume that some composers might have been influenced by the romanità myth which identified the features of the Italian nation with the ideas allegedly drawn from the traditions of ancient Rome. These composers were Giuseppe Corsi and Alfredo Casella. It is worth paying attention to the phenomenon of writing organ masses which preceded the popularisation of that myth. In this context, composers of Jewish organ music attempted to emphasise the ethnical factor in their works in the clearest, most consequent and most comprehensive ways possible. Abraham Zevi Idelsohn summed up their ideological programme, indicating that music meant for being performed in synagogues, including Jewish organ music, should be based on traditional melodies and scales, at the same time using tonal harmonic systems, which was supposed to allow for introducing prayerful atmosphere and concentration of the audience as well as understanding it properly. This group of composers included Louis Lewandowski, David Nowakowski, Arno Nadel, and others.

Whitman and Stevenson: Singing the Nation from Scotland to Sāmoa via Ohio and Hawai‘i

This chapter explores the role of song in the intermingled reception of Whitman’s and Robert Louis Stevenson’s work. The first section introduces Stevenson’s part in disseminating Whitman’s work in Polynesia, discussing Stevenson’s writings on Polynesian song and his friendships with Hawai’ian musicians King David Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani with whom he shared an interest in Whitman. It suggests the importance of song to their understandings of cultural authority and challenges to colonial influence. The second section considers several composers – including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ernst Bacon – who set work by both Whitman and Stevenson, focusing particularly on James H. Rogers’ song cycle In Memoriam (1919). It considers the ways in which relationship between the two writers was constructed by these composers and their critics and explores the role of anthologising – whether in poetry anthologies or song cycles – in constructions of national identity and exoticism.

Book Reviews

Kevin Johnson (2004). The “Huddled Masses” Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (x + 254 pp., ISBN: 978-1-59213-206-5). Reviewed by Stephanie Pedron, Georgia Southern University, United States Vicky Squire, Nina Perkowski, Dallal Stevens and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2021). Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe’s ‘Migrant Crisis’. Manchester University Press. (224pp. ISBN-13: 978-1526144836). Reviewed by Reviewed by Helene Syed Zwick, British University in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt

JEREMY DALE ROBERTS (1934–2017)Spoken to a Bronze Head (2008)

This chapter describes British composer Jeremy Dale Roberts’s Spoken to a Bronze Head (2008). This moving song is commissioned for a special celebratory album of settings of poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams. It is an object lesson in skill and economy, and subtly captures the rarefied atmosphere of ancient culture implicit in the text, while demonstrating an assured expressive range. The flexible musical idiom is an attractive mix of the old and the new. Carefully moulded vocal phrases, glowing with natural colours, mirror the stresses of the words and are complemented and supported by a resonant piano part, with slow, full chords redolent of ritual. Meticulous attention to balance and the tiniest nuances of accent and dynamic ensure verbal clarity throughout. The piece will suit a warm-toned singer, possessing a secure low B flat, yet able to pare down vibrato to achieve some clean-edged parlando.

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

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.