Reading aloud may be unpopular these days, but Vaughan Williams enjoyed it. His mother had read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Shakespeare to him at Leith Hill Place and, over seventy years later, he and his second wife Ursula re-read aloud all Shakespeare's plays after seeing Henry IV with Anthony Quayle. In his youth, such close reading of poetry and plays awakened Vaughan Williams' imagination and deepened his understanding of the meaning and symbolism of literature. His wide reading was aided by the historian's curiosity and by a shrewd intelligence. He discovered Whitman in the 1880s and immediately responded to the metrical freedom and sense of ecstasy of this great poet who saw "God in every blade of grass".

Vaughan Williams loved the Elizabeth poets, including Robert Herrick. He enjoyed reading Coleridge although he was less attracted to Wordsworth. Ursula Vaughan Williams had introduced him to Edward Lear and he was thrilled by The Owl and the Pussycat. Thomas Hardy and A E Housman were also major influences at different points in his life. In his eighties he re-read Hardy's Tess and the spirit of Stonehenge and the "President of the Immortals" is felt in his Ninth Symphony. Above all, there was Shakespeare. As Ursula put it to me, "Shakespeare was a very good friend to him, the best friend he had".

Vaughan Williams was obsessed with finding "settable" poems. He sought from his first songs to discover the essential meaning of the text and to forge a close partnership between words and music - a preoccupation sharpened by his discovery of folk-song. He composed over 100 songs in total, and would often turn to song to express deep emotions. The poignant First World War Housman cycle Along the field is deeply moving in its restraint whilst the Four Last Songs, to words by Ursula, are tender and evocative.

The twenty songs on this CD were composed over 30 years and demonstrate in the early songs of 1895 and 1896 a remarkable assurance. They show that Vaughan Williams was aware of the beauty and musical quality of lyric poetry in his early twenties and had the technical ability to successfully match words to music.

Considering Vaughan Williams' journey captured in these songs, from the innocence of the early Rondel to the experience of the three Whitman songs, we might respond, after Verlaine, "Ah God! What life is here!"

© Stephen Connock
Vice President - Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
Chairman - Albion Records

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