Ralph Vaughan — Williams
(Born at Down Ampney on the Borders of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, England, on October 12, 1872)
A London Symphony
I. Lento; Allegro risoluto II. Lento III. Scherzo (Nocturne): Allegro vivace IV. Andante con moto; Maestoso alla marcia Epilogue: Andante sostenuto
It is doubtful whether without the title and descriptive programme a hearer, as the music was playing, would say, “Aha! London—I hear the Thames, the roar and bustle of the streets. Now we are in foggy, dismal Bloomsbury. Let’s go to the Thames Embankment. And now we see the march of the unemployed.” No. The austere, remote Delius wrote a symphonic poem Paris, which is anything but the Paris of Louise, and might be Rouen, Belfast, or Terre Haute.
A critic in London reproached Williams for introducing in this symphony a theme too much like the notes of “Have a banana!” from a song. “We’ll All Go Down the Strand,” a popular music-hall ditty in the London of 1897. Perhaps Williams did this deliberately for the sake of “local color.”
The symphony contains pages of great worth. The first two movements are the richest in musical thought and in powerful expression. The idea of sleeping London is admirably brought out, and the contrast with London awake is symphonically, not merely theatrically, dramatic. The second movement is an excellent example of tonal painting. It seems to us that the succeeding movements lack varied and contrasting coloring. The “Hunger March” of the unemployed is disappointing. The subject called for a Hector Berlioz. The epilogue is of a higher flight of imagination. On the whole, the symphony is an important contribution to orchestral literature, one of the most important—and they have not been many—in a dozen years.
This symphony was composed in 1912-13. The first performance was at one of F. B. Ellis’s concerts in Queen’s Hall, London, on March 27, 1914. Geoffrey Toye was the conductor. On May 4, 1920, the revised version of the symphony was brought out at Queen’s Hall, London, at a concert of the British Music Society. Albert Coates conducted. This performance was said to be the fourth. It was also said that the symphony had been “shortened a good deal, particularly at the closes of the movements, on the way.”
The following description by Mr. Coates of the symphony was published in the bulletin of the society:
“The first movement opens at daybreak by the river. Old Father Thames flows calm and silent under the heavy gray dawn, deep and thoughtful, shrouded in mystery. London sleeps, and in the hushed stillness of early morning one hears Big Ben (the Westminster chimes) solemnly strike the half-hour.
“Suddenly the scene changes (allegro); one is on the Strand in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of morning traffic. This is London street life of the early hours—a steady stream of foot passengers hurrying, newspaper boys shouting, messengers whistling, and that most typical sight of London streets, the costermonger (Coster ’Arry), resplendent in pearl buttons, and shouting some coster song refrain at the top of a raucous voice, returning from Covent Garden Market, seated on his vegetable barrow drawn by the inevitable little donkey.
“Then for a few moments one turns off the Strand into one of the quiet little streets that lead down to the river and suddenly the noise ceases, shut off as though by magic. We are in the part of London known as the Adelphi. Formerly the haunt of fashionable bucks and dandies about town, now merely old-fashioned houses and shabby old streets, haunted principally by beggars and ragged street urchins.
“We return to the Strand and are once again caught up by the bustle and life of London—gay, careless, noisy, with every now and then a touch of something fiercer, something inexorable—as though one felt for a moment the iron hand of the great city—yet, nevertheless, full of that mixture of good-humor, animal spirits, and sentimentality that is so characteristic of London.
“Second Movement
“In the second movement the composer paints us a picture of that region of London which lies between Holborn and the Euston Road, known as Bloomsbury. Dusk is falling. It is the damp and foggy twilight of a late November day. Those who know their London know this region of melancholy streets over which seems to brood an air of shabby gentility—a sad dignity of having seen better days. In the gathering gloom there is something ghostlike. A silence hangs over the neighborhood broken only by the policeman on his beat.
“There is tragedy, too, in Bloomsbury, for among the many streets between Holborn and Euston there are alleys of acute poverty and worse.
“In front of a ‘pub’ whose lights flare through the murky twilight stands an old musician playing the fiddle. His tune is played in the orchestra by the viola. In the distance the ‘lavender cry’ is heard: ‘Sweet lavender; who’ll buy sweet lavender?’ Up and down the street the cry goes, now nearer, now farther away.
“The gloom deepens and the movement ends with the old musician still playing his pathetic little tune.
“Third Movement
“In this movement one must imagine one’s self sitting late on a Saturday night on one of the benches of the Temple Embankment (that part of the Thames Embankment lying between the Houses of Parliament and Waterloo Bridge). On our side of the river all is quiet, and in the silence one hears from a distance coming from the other side of the river all the noises of Saturday night in the slums. (The ‘other’ side, the south side of the river Thames, is a vast network of very poor quarters and slums.) On a Saturday night these slums resemble a fair; the streets are lined with barrows, lit up by flaming torches, selling cheap fruit, vegetables, produce of all kinds; the streets and alleys are crowded with people. At street corners coster girls in large feather hats dance their beloved ‘double-shuffle jig’ to the accompaniment of a mouth organ. We seem to hear distant laughter; also every now and then what sounds like cries of suffering. Suddenly a concertina breaks out above the rest; then we hear a few bars on a hurdy-gurdy organ. All this softened by distance, melted into one vast hum, floats across the river to us as we sit meditating on the Temple Embankment.
“The music changes suddenly, and one feels the Thames flowing silent, mysterious, with a touch of tragedy. One of London’s sudden fogs comes down, making Slumland and its noises seem remote. Again, for a few bars, we feel the Thames flowing through the night, and the picture fades into fog and silence.
“Fourth Movement
“The last movement deals almost entirely with the cruder aspect of London, the London of the unemployed and unfortunate. After the opening bars we hear the ‘Hunger March’—a ghostly march past of those whom the city grinds and crushes, the great army of those who are cold and hungry and unable to get work.
“We hear again the noise and bustle of the streets (reminiscences of the first movement), but these now also take on the cruder aspect. There are sharp discords in the music. This is London as seen by the man who is ‘out and under.’ The man ‘out of a job’ who watches the other man go whistling to his work, the man who is starving, watching the other man eat—and the cheerful, bustling picture of gay street life becomes distorted, a nightmare seen by the eyes of suffering.
“The music ends abruptly, and in the short silence that follows one again hears Big Ben chiming from Westminster Tower.
“There follows the epilogue, in which we seem to feel the great, deep soul of London—London as a whole, vast and unfathomable—and the symphony ends as it began, with the river, old Father Thames flowing calm and silent, as he has flowed through the ages, the keeper of many secrets, shrouded in mystery.”
And yet the composer has been quoted as saying:
“The title might run A Symphony by a Londoner—that is to say, various sights and sounds of London may have influenced the composer, but it would not be helpful to describe these. The work must succeed or fail as music, and in no other way. Therefore, if the hearers recognize a few suggestions of such things as the Westminster chimes, or the lavender cry, these must be treated as accidents and not essentials of the music.”
The symphony is dedicated “to the memory of George Butterworth,” a young composer of great promise, Lieutenant of the Durham Light Infantry, who was killed on August 5, 1916, “after successfully taking an enemy trench at the head of a bombing party.” It is scored for these instruments: three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets-à-pistons, three trombones, bass tuba, a set of three kettledrums, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, jingles (the little cymbals, or plates, fixed in the wooden hoop of a tambourine), tam-tam, glockenspiel, two harps, and strings.
Footnotes
1Translation into English by Charles Sanford Terry: Bach: A Biography, London, 1928.
2C. H. H. Parry: Johann Sebastian Bach, 1909.
3Hector Berlioz: À travers champs, 1862.
4Michel Brenet (Marie Bobillier): Histoire de la Symphonie à l’orchestre.
5Alexander von Ulibichev: Beethoven, ses critiques, et ses glossateurs, 1857.
6Heinrich Reimann: Musikalische Rückblicke.
7English translation by Ignatz Moscheles, 1841.
8Paul Bekker: Beethoven, translated by M. M. Bozman, 1925.
9Vincent d’Indy: Beethoven, a Critical Biography, 1911; translated by Dr. Theodore Baker, 1913.
10J. G. Prod’homme Les Symphonies de Beethoven, 1906.
11A. W. Thayer: “Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leben,” 1866-79; revision in English by H. E. Krehbiel.
12William Foster Apthorp.
13Adolf Boschot: La jeunesse d’un romantique, 1906.
14Julien Tiersot: Hector Berlioz et la société de son temps, 1904.
15Ernest Legouvé: Soixante Ans de Souvenirs, 1886.
16The year 1834 has been generally accepted as the year of Borodin’s birth. M. D. Calvocoressi (in the London Musical Times, June, 1934) reported that Serge Dianin had examined the church registers in Leningrad, and other documents which proved the date to have been October 31 (November 12), 1833, not 1834. “Borodin himself knew this quite well until October 31, 1873, when he wrote to his wife: ‘Today is my fortieth birthday.’ But on that very day an old servant of his mother, Catherine Beltzman by name, assured him that he was thirty-nine years old, not forty. Borodin was delighted, and never troubled to verify the information.”—EDITOR.
17Walter Niemann: Brahms, 1920; translated by C. A. Phillips, 1929.
18Richard Specht: Johannes Brahms, translated by Eric Blom, 1930.
19See Kalbeck’s Brahms, Vol. III, Part II, pp. 384-85, Berlin, 1912.
20Heinrich Reimann: Johannes Brahms, 1930.
21Dr. Hermann Dieters: Johannes Brahms, a biographical sketch, translated by Rosa Newmarch, 1888.
22Programme Book of the Symphony Concert of the Royal Orchestra of Dresden, December 13, 1907.
23Louis Laloy: Claude Debussy, 1909.
24Lettres de Claude Debussy à son éditeur; published by Jacques Durand, 1927.
25Robert J. Buckley: Sir Edward Elgar, 1904.
26D. G. Mason: Contemporary Composers, 1918.
27Ernest Newman: Elgar, 1906.
28Vincent d’Indy: César Franck, 1906; translated by Rosa Newmarch, 1929.
29John F. Runciman: Old Scores and New Readings, 1899.
30Romain Rolland: Handel, 1910; translated by A. E. Hull, 1916.
31Victor Schoelcher: The Life of Handel, 1857.
32C. F. Pohl: Josef Haydn, 1875, 1882.
33Michel Brenet (Marie Bobillier): Haydn, 1909; English translation, 1926.
34This year was given by the composer. The Catalogue of the Paris Conservatory gives 1851, the year also given by Adolphe Jullien.—P. H.
35Le Guide musical, May, 1904.
36Lina Ramann: Franz Liszt als Künstler und Mensch, 1880; translated by E. Cowdrey, 1882.
37Ernest Newman: “Faust in Music,” in Musical Studies.
38Wilhelm Adolf Lampadius: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 1848; translated by W. L. Gage, 1866.
39Michael Kelly: Reminiscences, 1826; written by Theodore Hook, from material furnished by Kelly.
40Lorenzo da Ponte: Memoirs, translated by Elizabeth Abbott, 1929.
41Felix Borowski, Chicago Orchestra Programme.
42 “Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Rope-dancer, conjuror, fiddler, and physician,
All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts;
And bid him mount the sky—the sky he mounts!”
Gifford’s Translation.
Compare Dr. Johnson’s lines:
All sciences the hungry Monsieur knows,
And bid him go to hell—to hell he goes!
43See Johann Herbeck, by L. Herbeck, Vienna, 1885, page 165.
44The Unfinished symphony has the same orchestration.—EDITOR.
45Paul Rosenfeld: Musical Portraits, 1920.
46Philip H. Goepp.
47Sibelius, by Cecil Gray, London, 1931.
48Lawrence Gilman, Philadelphia Orchestra Programme Notes.
49Quotations from the novel itself are here taken from the translation into English by Thos. Shelton (1612-20.)
50M. Montagu-Nathan: Contemporary Russian Composers, 1917.
51John F. Runciman: Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas, 1913.
52William J. Henderson: Richard Wagner, His Life and His Works, 1901.