Page 254 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

252

AND EVER WINGING

UP AND UP, OUR VALLEY

IS HIS GOLDEN CUP

THE LARK ASCENDING (1914–1920),
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

he German domination of and William Byrd, whose artistic
IN CONTEXT English music in the late purity seemed to suggest a way
T 19th century persuaded forward. This, in turn, led Vaughan
FOCUS two young English composers— Williams and Holst to develop an
Folk songs and a national Vaughan Williams and his fellow interest in folk music, which was
music revival
student Gustav Holst—that English as much to do with social history
BEFORE music needed a fresh start, free as music. The realization that
1860 American scholar and from the influences of Beethoven, Britain’s Industrial Revolution had
folklorist Francis James Child Wagner, and Brahms. Vaughan
publishes his collection of Williams’s work as a church The song of the skylark, a mere
English and Scottish Ballads. musician led him to explore the speck in the sky in this work by David
unaccompanied choral works of Cox (1783–1859), delighted Vaughan
1878 Dvorˇák’s first set of the 16th- and early 17th-century Williams. The soaring violin mimics
Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, English composers Thomas Tallis the bird’s ascent in the sky.
include motifs and rhythms
from folk songs and dances.
1908 Bartók and Kodály visit
remote villages in Hungary
to collect Magyar folk songs;
Bartók writes For Children,
which includes 80 folk tunes.
AFTER
1926 Percy Grainger arranges
his Danish Folksongs Suite for
piano and orchestra.
1938–1939 Michael Tippett
writes his Concerto for Double
String Orchestra, which
includes some references to
British folk music.

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