Plays, Radio and Film Works List :: Ralph Vaughan Williams

Plays, Radio and Film; Ralph Vaughan Williams List of Works

Stage Dramas

1909
The Wasps
Incidental music commissioned by the Greek Play Committee, Cambridge.
Aristophanic Suite (part of above)
Overture; Entr'acte; March-past of the Kitchen Utensils; Entr'acte; Ballet and Final Tableau)
Incidental music to Greek plays

1911
Bacchae
(Euripides, trans. Gilbert Murray).

1911
Iphigenia in Tauris
(Euripides, trans. Gilbert Murray)

1911
Electra
(Euripides, trans. Gilbert Murray).

1913
Incidental music to Maeterlinck's The Death of Tintagiles.

1913
Incidental music to Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird.
Piano score only.

1913
Incidental music for F. R. Benson's Shakespearean season
Stratford-upon-Avon

1911
The Merry Wives of Windsor
One page only survives, marked 'molto moderato'

1913
King Richard II
Thirty-two numbers, mostly fanfares and entrance-music.

1913
King Henry IV, Part 2
The music was almost entirely arranged from Tudor or traditional sources. There are six items.

1913
King Richard III
Four items survive, one based on the Hampshire 'Dargason'; one adapted from the music to King Richard II; and one a fanfare for Richard's defeat at Bosworth.

1913
King Henry V
Two items survive, one of them the Agincourt Song, the other for Act III, scene 7. For this season, Vaughan Williams also arranged music for Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, comprising arrangements of 'The British Grenadiers', the March from Judas Maccabaeus and a verse of 'Yankee Doodle'. Fourteen numbers of incidental music for Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, mostly arrangements of 16th or 17th century pieces, also exist. It is not known for what occasion these were composed.

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Film Music
1940-1
49th Parallel
Vaughan Williams made use of French-Canadian and German traditional melodies in the Hudson's Bay and Hutterite scenes respectively; the Prelude music was adapted for words by Harold Child in the song 'The New Commonwealth'; and 'The Lake in the Mountains' was later published as a piano solo.

1942
Coastal Command
A suite of seven movements was arranged by Muir Mathieson

1941-3
The People's Land
Based mainly on folk-songs.

1944
The Flemish Farm
A suite of eight movements.
First performed under the title 'The Story of a Flemish Farm' at a Henry Wood promenade concert on 31 July 1945. The composer conducted.

1944
The Stricken Peninsula
None of the music is known to have survived.

1946
The Loves of Joanna Godden

1948
Scott of the Antarctic
Twenty-eight items were composed, six of which were not used in the film. See also Symphonies: Sinfonia Antartica.

1949
Dim Little Island
Vaughan Williams's voice is heard on the sound-track.
The music consisted of a short prelude based on two folk-songs from RVW's own collection and 'Dives and Lazarus'.

1950
Bitter Springs
The music was arranged and scored by Ernest Irving from thematic material supplied by RVW.

1955
The England of Elizabeth
Three Portraits suite (Explorer; Poet; Queen), published by Oxford University Press in 1964.
Two Shakespeare Sketches, published in the same year, were arranged by Muir Mathieson

1957
The Vision of William Blake
The Ten Blake Songs were composed for this film; only eight were used: 'A Poison Tree' and 'The Piper' were excluded. The remainder of the music consisted of excerpts from Job.

Music for Radio

1942
Incidental Music for The Pilgrim's Progress
Bunyan's book adapted for radio by Edward Sackville-West.

1944
Incidental Music for Richard III
Thirty-four items to cover fifteen scenes. Not used.

1951
Incidental Music for The Mayor of Casterbridge
Serialised in ten weekly episodes.