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Above:
Vaughan Williams conducting the first Leith Hill
Festival after the Great War.
Below:
A concert in the Dorking Halls in 1947.
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Ralph Vaughan Williams became conductor of the Leith
Hill Music Festival in 1905 for the first concert, and
continued in this capacity until 1953, so there are still
many people in and around Dorking who have sung under
his baton. He is remembered as having a wonderful gift
for getting the very best out of singers and players,
and possessed that ability to fly into a towering rage
when the choir displeased him in some way, and then immediately
temper it by telling a pertinent funny story. He was
even known to throw down his baton in the middle of a
concert (resulting in instant silence), saying "Ladies
and gentlemen, we can do better than this!" On other
occasions he carried his insistence on perfection to
extremes. For example, when he was awarded the OM in
1935, a party was laid on for him at Abinger Hall. As
he arrived, a garland was hung round his neck and a choir
sang a madrigal. He waited patiently for the music to
finish, removed the garland and his jacket saying "Now
let's sing that properly", and took the choir through
the piece again.
RVW of course wrote much of his music with the Festival
in mind. In 1930, to celebrate its 21st anniversary,
he composed a piece for each Division. From 1929, he
became completely immersed in the life of Dorking when
he moved from Chelsea due to Adeline's ill-health. In
1933 he bought a house called 'White Gates', on the lower
slopes of Ranmore Common (it was demolished in the 1960's).
It was a rather strange house which had a huge central
room which could take a choir of 50 with ease, making
it very useful for rehearsals. It also had an almost
circular bay of twelve windows on the southwest corner.
This RVW used as his study and worked on his compositions
here.
In 1929 Vaughan Williams joined the Leith Hill District
Preservation Society, later to become its Chairman, then
its President. The Society was founded to help preserve
areas of natural beauty around Dorking and was instrumental
in preventing the building of a new town just south of
Dorking. Crawley later suffered this fate instead.
RVW became well known in Dorking - his large shambling
figure, usually untidily dressed was often seen as he
did his shopping. One shopkeeper remembers him asking
for a parcel of goods to be wrapped and addressed to
him as he was inclined to leave his shopping in 'odd
places' and forget all about it! Also on the subject
of shopping, a friend tells of the time when she was
leaving a bakers' with a large bag of bread rolls - the
bag promptly burst and the rolls went everywhere. Dr
Vaughan Williams was passing and insisted on going down
on his hands and knees to help collect the rolls!
The work for which RVW is chiefly remembered in Dorking
is probably not one of his own compositions, but the
Bach St Matthew Passion.
This was first performed in the town by the combined
Festival choirs in 1931 at the opening of Dorking Halls.
It was a moving occasion, as the composer's sister Margaret,
the Festival's founding Secretary had died earlier that
year and the performance was dedicated to her memory.
RVW had a deep love of Bach's music and always took charge
of the St Matthew rehearsals personally. At a time when
a large number of the choir members could not read music,
he would go through the work page by page. A choir member
recalls: "His endeavours to get a collection of
gardeners, grooms, parlourmaids and the gentry (not forgetting
the odd journeyman carpenter) to sound like a howling
mob outside Pilate's Palace led him to remove his jacket,
revealing large holes in the elbows of his cardigan.
In spite of these small things the look on his face and
the magnetism of his personality seemed to succeed in
doing the impossible."
His interpretation of the St
Matthew however, was rather eccentric, and very
far from the 'authentic' performances of today. He hated
the sound of the harpsichord, so, as Sir Adrian Boult
said "he wrote most extraordinary things for the
piano to play." In spite of this some wonderful
performances of the Passion were given and even broadcast
on occasions. RVW continued to conduct the work up to
the year of his death.
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He was always very self-effacing about his contribution
to the Festival - "You will understand that while
I am not being unduly modest when I say there will be
some applause when I come in, it is not fair to ask the
audience to do this twice, so I shall appear in one half
of the programme only"! After he retired as Conductor
he still took an active interest in the reheasals and
concerts. On one occasion he came to a rehearsal of the Sea
Symphony being conducted by Dr William Cole. He
sat down amongst the basses, saying to the bass next
to him "I'd better sit next to you as I don't know
this myself"!
With his involvement with the life of Dorking, one wonders
how VW ever found time to write music. In fact he wrote
a large number of works, including three symphonies while
he lived in the town. The 4th,
written in 1935 is almost a foretaste of the coming of
war and full of turmoil, while the 5th,
written during the war is a very peaceful work, perhaps
a reaction to the destruction taking place. The 6th,
written between 1944 and 1947 seems to recall the years
of conflict. RVW insisted that it was not a 'War' symphony
("Don't they understand a man might just want to
write a piece of music?"), but it is certainly full
of the turmoil which characterised the 4th, and the use
of saxophones in the scherzo is perhaps an echo of wartime
'big-band' music. The Serenade
to Music was also written in Dorking, in 1938.
During WWII RVW's patriotism led him to throw himself
into anything he felt would help the war effort. When
there were collections of aluminium pots and pans ('for
melting down to make Spitfires' it is said), he undertook
to push a hand cart around the town collecting from houses.
He is remembered as wearing an old patched raincoat on
these occasions and more than one resident almost refused
to open the door to him, thinking he was a tramp! He
also responded enthusiastically to the 'Dig for Victory'
campaign. He dug over a 3/4 acre field next to White
Gates and planted vegetables there - he was also seen
following the milkman's horse with a bucket and shovel!
Early in the war he also helped fill sandbags for a barricade
across the main road as an obstacle to possible invasion.
He was in his late 60's by this time, and still he composed
music, including music for films such as the 49th
Parallel and Coastal
Command. This culminated in his music for Scott
of the Antarctic in 1948.
Vaughan Williams left Dorking in 1951 after his second
marriage, to Ursula Wood, and handed the Festival conductorship
to William Cole in 1953, but he still took a very active
interest in all the individual choirs. He would make
a point of visiting many of the local choirs during their
rehearsals and often conducted the choir himself. On
one of these occasions one of the basses confided to
his own conductor with a rather misguided sense of loyalty "Dr
Ralph took it rather faster than you do, but I sang it
at your tempo all the way through"!
At his new London home he composed many works, including
his last three symphonies, bringing his musical output
in this form to the 'standard' nine works. The 7th was
entitled Symphonia Antarctica and
based on the film score for 'Scott of the Antarctic'.
The 8th appeared in 1955, followed by the 9th two years
later. Sir Adrian Boult conducted the first recording
of this work. He says "It was planned for the 26th
of August 1958. I was going down to breakfast that morning
when the telephone rang. It was Ursula - 'I'm sorry',
she said 'we're not coming to the recording; Ralph died
at 3 o'clock this morning''.
The
Leith Hill Festival continues to this day.
To visit their web site click
here.
To hear Vaughan Williams conducting the
Leith Hill Choirs click
here. |
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