Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
’Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
Thus George Meredith’s poem, The Lark Ascending, which inspired Ralph Vaughan Williams’ piece of the same name and appears at the front of the composer’s score. And indeed, how could the poem have failed to inspire the composer? Its mellifluous language so vividly sets this most English of scenes, and this most English of composers responds with music of equal immediacy and gorgeousness.
For Vaughan Williams was the most English of composers. Son of a prosperous clergyman, great-nephew of Charles Darwin, family friend of Lord Bernard Russell, Vaughan Williams possessed in full the British love of nature and propensity for long rambles from village to village. He spent years collecting English folksong that way, ambling from hamlet to hamlet with music paper and a pencil in hand, standing rounds at the local pubs and taking dictation of any local who could sing a song he didn’t already know.
The rhythms and cadences of British folksong infused Vaughan Williams’ music, and they appear in the orchestral accompaniment to this, his most beloved work. Britain – its people and its countryside – are depicted by the orchestra, while the solo violin’s “silver chain of sound” exquisitely captures the lark.
The Lark Ascending was sketched out in 1914, before the composer began his military service, and was finally completed in 1920. While the composer was actually arrested during its composition (he’d taken his pencil and music notebook to the cliffs near Margate by the English Channel to gaze at the skylarks there and was briefly mistaken for a German spy), the British public and authorities have since softened their judgement: in 25 annual polls of BBC “Classic FM” subscribers, The Lark Ascending has proved Britain’s favorite piece of classical music no less than 10 times.
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Chris Vaneman is the Director of the Petrie School of Music and Associate Professor of Flute at Converse College. Chris frequently leads the Spartanburg Philharmonic pre-concert lecture series “Classical Conversations,” and occasionally performs as a substitute flutist in the orchestra.