Filmed Interviews & Discussions

The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society joined forces with the Wildlife Sound Recording Society and the British Library to develop an archive of recordings of Skylark song in the British countryside. In part, this links the project to one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s more famous and popular works, but it is also intended to draw attention to the dramatic decline in Skylark numbers over the last half-century and more.

Dozens of quality sound recordings of Skylark song from around Britain and even from Sweden are now archived at the British Library, where they will be available to anyone and everyone, not least to bio-scientists and ornithologists.

The Society has collaborated with the Royal College of Music in setting up a competition, with prize money amounting to £5,000 in total, offering composition students the chance to create works which make imaginative use of these new Skylark recordings. Students were invited to create works based around the recordings – and they did so in a wide variety of imaginative ways, some making use of electronics and even lighting. About twenty entries were whittled down to a shortlist of five, which we heard on Wednesday. The final five were all born between 2001 and 2007.

The adjudication panel comprised Malcolm Riley, a trustee of the Society, and Nicola LeFanu, a distinguished composer and academic.

The third prize went to Hanna Horobynska, for her piece To Get Through the Winter. Second prize was won by Robert Baird for In Memoriam Alauda Arvensis (the Latin name for the Eurasian Skylark).

The winner was the youngest finalist, Alec Imamovic with We Will Return – in which the players wore masks which disguised them as birds.

The concert was recorded, and we intend to release it on CD in due course. So our great project is not over yet. meanwhile this video offers brief clips from the three winning pieces and interviews with the composers.

In continuation of our monthly series, Andrew Green has interviewed the three prize-winners detailed above, and the video begins with a discussion between John Francis, the Chairman of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society and Andrew Green. The result is a video that’s a bit longer than usual – it’s 42 minutes; we urge you to set aside a little time to listen to what these young composers have to say.