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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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