SQUATTING on my desk is a chunky box set crammed with recordings of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s music. A 2008 EMI release, it embraces 30 CDs featuring many genres and a host of varied inspirations, but what representative image was chosen to adorn the packaging? Through the camera lens, we find ourselves standing close by a tall oak in leaf, looking over a rustic wooden fence into rolling meadowland.
That ‘England’s Pastoral Composer’ tag has been affirmed and re-affirmed in myriad sleeve designs for Vaughan Williams recordings. It’s fair enough. He wrote copious amounts of music reflective of the English countryside, of which the ubiquitous The Lark Ascending is but one example. However, says Eric Saylor, author of a forthcoming biography of the composer, ‘thinking of Vaughan Williams in this way runs the risk of ignoring the truly astonishing accomplishments across a long life that took his music far beyond The Lark Ascending and the like’.
He adds: ‘Think what happened in his lifespan of 85 years… some of the most transformational events and developments in human history. Vaughan Williams was notoriously unwilling to talk about what inspired his music, but any notion that it doesn’t reflect the times in which he lived is absurd.’
Denne historien er fra April 13, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 13, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
