Ralph Vaughan Williams’s
contribution of music to the Christmas Season is extensive. The listener need
only think of the cantata Hodie, the Fantasia on Christmas Carols, the masque
On Christmas Night and the nativity
play The First Nowell. Add to these
numerous arrangements of carols and seasonal folk-songs for several hymn-books.
One Yuletide work that seems to be largely forgotten is the final section of
his Folk Songs of the Four Seasons.
RVW wrote in the programme note
for the premiere: ‘When I undertook to write a Folk Song Cantata for the
Women’s Institutes I set my mind to work to find some unifying idea which would
bind the whole together. It was not long before I discovered the necessary
link—the calendar. The subjects of our folk songs, whether they deal with
romance, tragedy, conviviality or legend, have a background of nature and its
seasons.’ For the ‘Winter Season’ RVW
wanted to express ‘the joy of Christmas…set in its true background of frost and
snow.’ (cited Kennedy, Michael, A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan
Williams 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1996).
The cantata was written during
1949 and presents 15 traditional folk songs arranged for women’s voices and
orchestra. The ‘Winter’ section contains
four well-known carols: ‘Children’s Christmas Song’, ‘Wassail Song,’ ‘In Bethlehem
City’ and ‘God bless the Master’.
Michael Kennedy has written (The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams,
OUP, 1964) that Folk Songs of the Four
Seasons is ‘a labour of love, an old and practised hand returning to his
first enthusiasm, an enchanting work, gay, touching, invigorating and timeless.’
There is a detailed essay by
Lorna Gibson on 'Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Women’s Institute’ in the Journal
of the RVW Society No. 30 (June 2004): 7–8. A major section of Frank Howes’ The Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams,
London, 1954, presents a considerable analysis of the entire work.
The work was first performed in
its entirety at the Royal Albert Hall on 15 June 1950, during the National
Singing Festival of [the] National Federation of Women’s Institutes. The London
Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. This included RVWs Fantasia on Greensleeves,
George Butterworth’s The Banks of Green
Willow, Henry Purcell’s Trumpet Tune and Air, Edward Elgar’s Introduction
and Allegro for strings and an arrangement by Arnold Foster of RVWs Prelude on
the Welsh Hymn Tune Rhosymedre. The Festival
opened with ‘Jerusalem’ and concluded with
‘Land of my Fathers’.
Ursula Vaughan Williams, in her
biography of her husband, wrote that ‘The Albert Hall was packed, and when the
choirs rose to their feet it was strange to find that the audience seemed far
fewer than the performers…’ She relates that ‘when they started to sing there
was a freshness and sweetness in their voices that matched the songs…’
The four carols selected for the ‘Winter’
section are presented in varying vocal and instrumental arrangements. ‘The
Children’s Christmas Song’ is preceded by an introduction, before the two-part
chorus sing the boisterous folk-song collected from the village of Hooton
Roberts (near Rotherham) in Yorkshire.
We’ve been a
while a-wandering
Amongst the
leaves so green,
But now we
come a-wassailing,
So plainly to
be seen.
For its Christmas
time, when we travel far and near;
May God bless
you and send you a happy new year.
The ‘Wassail Song’ is written as
a unison song with an added elaborate descant. The accompaniment is robust,
reflecting the virility of the words. The tune was collected by Vaughan
Williams in Gloucestershire. It is a drinking song to reassure the people of a
bountiful crop of corn next season. This carol was included by the composer in Five English Folk Songs, composed in
1913.
‘Wassail, wassail, all over the town,
Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown,
Our bowl it is made of the white Maple tree;
In the Wassail
bowl we’ll drink unto thee.’
The third carol, ‘In Bethlehem
City’, is a beautiful arrangement for three parts (soprano I, soprano II and
alto). Apart for a very short introduction, it is unaccompanied. This is
adapted from the carol ‘A Virgin Most Pure’.
In Bethlehem
City in Judea it was
That Joseph
and Mary together did pass,
All for to be
taxed when thither they came,
For Caesar
Augustus commanded the same.
Then let us be
merry, cast sorrow aside,
Our Saviour
Christ Jesus was born on this tide.
The final folk-song of ‘Winter’
is ‘God Bless the Master of this house’. This is part of the Sussex Mummers Carol, which was
originally collected by Lucy Broadwood.
All the voices join in unison
with an optional descant. There is a hearty accompaniment with many parallel
first inversion chords supporting this expansive ‘lento maestoso’.
God bless the
Master of this house
With happiness
beside;
Where e’er his
body rides or walks,
Lord Jesus be
his guide
The Times (16 June 1950) described how thousands of members of
women’s institutes from all the country had assembled at the Albert Hall to
give the first performance of the RVW’s new work. As to the music, the critic
noted that the 15 songs ‘are lightly strung together and arranged so as to
provide [a] variety of texture for massed unison voices and for two-and three-part
smaller choirs: a few are unaccompanied; some have descants; in a word, the
greatest ingenuity has been employed to avoid the tonal monotony of unrelieved
female voices.’
These folk songs are a perfect
fusion of ‘the English tradition and the English composer’ that results in
music of ‘immediate and penetrating appeal to the emotions, because it speaks
to us of what is in our bones.’ As to the performance itself, the ‘result was
astonishing for its accuracy, homogeneity of tone...diction, confidence of
attack and precision of ensemble.’ It is hardly surprising that after the work
concluded the composer himself conducted the final folk-song (‘God bless the
Master’) as an encore. The remainder of the concert included English orchestral
music conducted by Sir Adrian.
Frank Howes (op. cit.) well-summed
up the Folk Songs of the Four Seasons
: The effect of so many voices singing with simple sincerity melody that was
bone of their bone, composed specially for English women dwelling in the
English countryside, by a composer who more than any other has steeped himself
in our native traditions was extraordinarily moving.’
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