The coda is like a coda to RVW's whole symphonic work. A last pulsating remembering of every hill he climbed until the music ebbs away, enters another world - and disappears. Beautiful.
Such a brilliant orchestration (I expecially love the way saxophones are used!), I'd say cinematic scores owe practically everything to these XX-Century British composers (Vaughan-Williams, Holst, Walton...).
No, I wouldn't say that, and neither would Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Alex North or a score of others. I doubt even Miklos Rozsa would say it, and he worked in the British film industry.
Whatever I seem to be listening to, when I come back to this work, I always think of it as one of the most underrated symphonies of all time, VW always seems all encompassing of any age & speaks to everyone at once, a massive talent indeed, a musical everyman
Tess of the d'Urbervilles brought me here. What a magnificent piece of music. This has been my introduction to Vaughan Williams's music, and I'm glad for that.
Amazing how many people say they have trouble getting to grips with this symphony. I've loved it since I first heard it as a 16 year old. It makes perfect sense to me, and the conclusion must surely rank as one of the most moving farewells any composer has ever uttered; it's as if VW is waving to us as he crosses the River Styx and slowly disappears into the mist. To write a movement like that he must surely have intuited his death.
Never had any problem with this symphony. The one that eludes me is the popular 3rd. To be honest I find it quite boring though that would be heresy to many RVW aficionados :-)
@@paullewis2413 That's a fair response. Didn't a critic once describe it as like a cow mooing over a fence? It's an elegy really, from VW's experiences in the 1st World War. I don't find it gripping overall, but I do love the 3rd movement, especially in Previn's version.
"To write a movement like that he must surely have intuited his death." Not necessarily. Immediately after completing it he started work on a three-act opera.
While listening to this glorious piece, In my mind's eye I envision Maestro Vaughan Williams ascending to the heavens, transforming into an indescribably brilliant galaxy.
My favourite composer along with Thomas hardys novels, this symphony is complicated, but full of wonderful passages and the finale a gem of orchestral writing .
Just wonderful. The music RVW was writing towards the end of his life was magnificent; very sad he couldn't have lived longer but also marvellous that he was producing inspirational, evocative and highly creative masterpieces at the age of 85. A true giant amongst composers. Thank you. Amazing visualisations to go with this fabulous work too!
Fascinante 9ème symphonie de Vaughan-Williams ! Je l'ai découverte, voici quelques années, grâce à l'enregistrement de Sir Adrian Boult (avec la 3ème de Malcolm Arnold en complément). J'aime beaucoup cette version dirigée par Vernon Handley ! Merci Colin !
Amazing scoring - three saxophones! R-VW took them straight out of the dance band - (this was mid-1950s after all) - and placed them in the front row of the woodwind. They feature clearly early in the first movement from 0:38. Dreamy, sleazy, out of place yet strangely appropriate. And then they run riot in the Scherzo. Enjoy!
Though I think the last movement of the 5th to be the most beautiful, the final movement of the 9th is certainly the most powerful - IMO Vaughan Williams really came of age as a great symphonist with the 8th and 9th. His style may have been way out of fashion by 1958 but now we can forget all about that and appreciate his special gifts as one of the great 20th c. composers. Thanks for the upload of this wonderful performance.
+cameronpaul Yes, and we can also forget (as nearly everyone does) about most of the music that was 'fashionable' in 1958. RVW's music will be listened to for as long as there are humans with minds and hearts.
+cameronpaul I certainly have a lot of time for RVW 8 and when I'm in certain moods listening to certain performances I think it is his best symphony - 5, 6, 3 and 2 notwithstanding :-) !!!. The 9th is something I'm still trying to get to grips with - but given time I'm sure I'll get there ;-)
+Denian Arcoleo Well said indeed - though I would hope that people would also give Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio etc a fair hearing. There is I think much to like there too...
Laurence Skelding Well each to his own of course but I can't honestly say I find anything to like in Stockhausen or Boulez. Yes I agree that the 8th is overall RVW's best symphony, the Barbirolli recording from the late 50's (I think) is the definitive IMO.
+Laurence Skelding I gave them a fair hearing. I don't want to go where they are trying to take people, even to visit. No it's not even mostly subjective. Such sound has an effect on body, heart, and mind. It's distonic, even disruptive. In Vaughan-Williams, here, mostly, it has a point, within a larger, if bleak, over-all message, and I can stand visiting; (I had heard he died an atheist: one would be bleak, coming to the end so.) The others named? Couldn't tie Part's shoelaces.
Outstanding visualization of VW's monumental last symphony. I hope the imagery will help others come to understand this magnificent but challenging music. Thanks Colin.
Surely one of the most unusual and poignant moments in the symphonic repertoire is at 0:37 when a saxophone trio steps straight out of the dance band and into this work of great depth and modal darkness. An astonishing piece of orchestration.
Much as I love RVW's symphonies, this last one has somehow kept its secret from me. This excellent recording has changed all that. Thank you, Colin, for making it available to us. Ken
Colin: My comment on this wonderful performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 9 comes in gratitude for your many excellent and high quality postings of RVM compositions. To my uninformed attention was recently drawn the fact that my favorite RVW symphony, the No. 2 London Symphony, was originally somewhat lengthier than the versions to which I had been listening for decades. I now have a recording of the original and it is just fantastic. I had the privilege of being a member of the bass section of the University of Illinois Oratorio Society in a performance some 44 years ago of "Hodie." Symphonies No. 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9 are personal favorites. Thank you for spotlighting this brilliant composer's music. I hope people for centuries to come will appreciate the music of RVW as much as I have.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. It's good to know that RVW's music reaches others in the way it reaches me. I love music by Sibelius, Nielsen, Rachmaninov and many others, but Vaughan Williams holds a very special place in my heart. I often wish I could have met this wonderful man, who - as well as being a great musician - was also a very great human being. Thanks again.
Great work by RVW, I had the honour of meeting Ursula in 1988; when I was awarded first prize in the Commandant's Quick March Competition at Kneller Hall. I was a member of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Class as a student bandmaster there.
I love Vaughan Williams' symphonies and there's no question that the three in the middle (4, 5, 6) make the greatest initial impression. All 3 are masterpieces. And yet, the two Vaughan Williams symphonies I find myself returning to most often are nos. 3 & 9, two of his least played. The 9th is elusive at first but really grows on you with repeated hearings. And it has so many memorable moments: the solo violin playing the 2nd theme in the first movement, the chamber arrangement of the subordinate theme at the end of movement 2, the diabolical saxophones in the scherzo - and that mystical, timeless finale. Unbelievable that an 86-year-old man wrote such a piece.
There is a wonderful book , Sarum (also titled Sarum: The Novel of England) is a work of historical fiction by Edward Rutherfurd, first published in 1987. It tells the story of England through the tales of several families in and around the English city of Salisbury, the writer's hometown, from prehistoric times to 1985. This book should be made into a movie, its so good.
I totally agree with Peter Clamp's comment. It is a joy to listen to RVW's works combined with your thoughtful sequence of images. Looking at the videos on your channel I detect a kindred spirit. I too am uplifted, inspired, transported by the composers you have chosen. I much appreciate your channel.
Thanks Charles. Peter and I have a Facebook page "Ralph Vaughan Williams Discussion" - you'd be most welcome to friend it. About 20 people from all over the world regularly contribute. You don't need to be an expert, just have a real interest in RVW and music of his period. :)
Colin,has the BBC contacted you yet regarding your sublime talent in the audio-visual arts? I mean, seriously, this is a stunner! Congratulations...and thanks.
Hi Robert. You might want to check out the second and especially third movements of VW's Symphony No. 6. Also a LOT of Shostakovich if you haven't already. Symphonies 4,5,7,8,11 and 15 come to mind especially.
Thank you Colin and Paul. This movingly, defiant and valedictory work is one of my all time favourites; a great way for the old man to 'sign off'. This is a wonderful performance and features the clearest recording of those wonderful harps at the end.
I very much appreciate all your RVW uploads. I have learned so much more about Vaughan Williams by listening to the music you have uploaded and watching the beautiful videos you have so skillfully given us. This 9th symphony is really powerful, dark, disturbing and thrilling. As someone who originates from Dorset, I can connect to the images very powerfully. Thank you so much for what you do.
Glad thi brought back good memories. Most of the landscapes featured in the video are of moors in Devonshire (Dart, Ex and Bodmin). I used them because, to be honest, Salisbury Plain is very bare and featureless and not very photogenic!
Colin, what a fine achievement to match this extraordinarily enigmatic and brooding symphony with such creative use of imagery which is difficult to do in a work with such variation in mood. I like the way you literally draw the viewer into the music at the very start and thereafter we are continually confronted by striking images associated with Thomas Hardy's novel which the composer seem to love so much.The allusions to Tess in the slow movement I thought were beautifully done. I like how you conveyed the quirky yet sometimes nightmarish quality of the music in the Scherzo. And in the last movement you convey the bitter-sweet quality of the music so clearly and indeed throughout the whole symphony. You've done a great service to what Robin Barber rightly described as magnificent music.
You evoke, with your images, the mysterious, mystical qualities of the ninth. I would love to attend a performance where your images appear on an IMAX screen. Great job, Colin, and thank you.
this is lovely, thanks so much , hearing the piece at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on tuesday so this is great way to familiarise myself with the music .Very evocative and well chosen images thanks
I first heard this symphony more than 45 years ago, and I still vividly remember the flugelhorn solo and the very end. It's only recently that I've been, shall we say, brooding over the connection with "Tess." The more I brood, the less I think of the symphony as programmatic and more as a kinship between VW and Hardy. Like some other composers of his time, VW pushed the modernist envelope forward and backward. His agnosticism was less an exclusion of western Judeo-Christian tradition than an inclusion of awe for "unredeemed nature," something not centered around human civilization. Plus he was a survivor of inhuman war traumas that most Americans are only beginning to comprehend. As for an aside, what makes me enjoy the scherzo more these days is how much it reminds me of "Pink Elephants on Parade"--in Walt Disney's animation a singular cocktail of the silly and the sinister.
Colin, thank you very much for uploading this fantastic video. The music, with which I wasn’t familiar with, is very beautiful and the accompanying visuals as one listens to this symphony are truly spectacular.
Thanks for your kind comment Juan. I have made similar videos of RVW's 'London' and 'Pastoral' symphonies (numbers 2 & 3), the Fifth and Eighth Symphonies. Do check them out! (Some have been spoiled by RUclips's advertisements but you can get rid of these by downloading a free adblock programme. I recommend Adbloc-plus.)
No mention in the comments about what I consider one of the most incredible symphonies of all time - RVW's lst symphony. Given a great performance in a suitable venue (BBC Proms/RAH on YT) and it's a knock out!
Too often overlooked, this is a forward looking symphony which is apparently hard to play. Composed when the composer was deaf and used ungainly hearing aids made by several manufacturers "so I can be useful them" he said. This massive work of perfect proportions is close to late Shostakovich in some ways and hints at post-Sibelius Nordic music to come after both composers died within a year of each other. Vaughan Williams looks back a little to his other E minor symphony but also late Holst. Block structures linked by counterpoint fading in and out was really something new. One 'gets' it or doesn't. Boult, Handley and Manze are probably the best.
I'm still puzzling over that theme at the beginning of the second movement. I mean, he's used it in The Solent and the Sea Symphony, so it could be something like a "sea theme". On the other hand Whitman used the sea as a symbol for life, didn't he? This tune must have been very important to RVW to use it at the beginning of his musical life and then at the very end. Astonishing... and yet I can't really figure out why. Must have been something of a "life theme" for him.
Surely one of the most remarkable moments in the 'classical' symphonic repertoire is at 0:38 when the three saxophones enter. Strangers escaped from the dance band to lull but also to chill us with their unnervingly smooth and melodious phrase.
Yes, when I was putting this sequence together, I considered putting 'Niente' at the end, then decided against it. I can't remember now why I decided that way!
Wonderful music-- I love the pictures of stonehenge and other places of worship, but somehow its not quite what I associate with this music. But then, I haven't read Hardy's Tess..
Thank you, Colin. I enjoyed it very much. I sometimes wish it were possible to identify the images easily, but I guess there is no simple way to make that possible.
The landscapes are mostly Dartmoor (which VW did not have in mind when writing the symphony!). There are quite a few of Salisbury, which he certainly did have in mind. The painting of the pretty girl was intended to evoke Tess and the gallows represent her Fate.
Colin Thanks, Colin, but that isn't quite what I was asking. I was wondering whether there is some way of identifying each image (while making such a video) so that a person watching could know what it is if he wishes. I doubt that would be easy/possible - just wondering.
No, at least not with the program I use (Windows Movie Maker). I could easily put captions on the screen but they would distract from the music, I think, Michael.
Hello. I'm listening to RVW's music recently..Trying to listen to all he wrote ( short tunes too )..It will take time.I like his symphonies. So far I only listen to the complete " Antartica "and I'm now on this 9th. To my ears and my heart they sounds more shymphonic poems," visual trips " then real symphonies..I always feel than up to a certain period ( Bruckner been the "gate" of separation )of time You'll be listening to notes, chords progressions and so on..After that ( from Mahler on.. ) You just pass that and You go mainly to feelings and "visual" fantasy/places..Hope it make sense. I'm trying to explain it better : Bruckner and Brahms were in the same age but Brahms was still a real " classic", Bruckner ( at least for me ) was the first "visionary"..Anton Bruckner is my favourite composer, his adagio ( mainly ) just put me on a "trip" :) :)..I'm a music eater, from Byrd to Bach to Opera to Mozart..You name it..I'm in love with all has been wrote on the wonderful music world.
Sinfonia Antartica is certainly like a tone-poem, I agree but I hope you’ll find as you explore RVW’s symphonies, that most of them are genuinely symphonic, if not necessarily in the Austro-German tradition of Brahms and Bruckner. Vaughan Williams was striving to create a distinctively English approach to symphonic music, breaking with the 19th century conventions at the same time. Thus, you will search in vain for a classic sonata movement in his symphonies. No 1 (A Sea Symphony) is really a huge cantata; No 2 (A London Symphony) is a romantic-nationalist work. I hope you enjoy exploring RVW’s music.
You can pay a small annual fee for RUclips Premium which is ad free. If you are a regular daily user of RUclips and listener to classical music on it, it's well worth it.
This symphony is filled with fleeting and ambiguous harmonies as if RVW is attempting to be free of any attachment to a particular tonal center for more than a few seconds at a time. Only at the 9th's conclusion does he arrive at a tonal center to dwell on for an extended period of time and which happens to be a nod to European tradition going back to the Renaissance: A symphony in E Minor ending on an E Major chord in the manner of the 'tierce de picardie' or Picardy Third (a raised third scale degree in the final chord). Was recording producer George Martin thinking of RVW's 9th when he utilized that same elongated E Major chord coming out of an extended orchestral dissonance at the conclusion of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life" (Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) approximately ten years later? Both endings fade away into the distance.
Quizás esta 9ª, y última sinfonía, sea la más lograda del ciclo sinfónico del maestro, aunque yo siga prefiriendo la dimensión, grandiosidad y ambición que destila su 1ª. Sin olvidarme de Walt Whitman, por supuesto.
Thanks Toni (Translation: Perhaps the Ninth, and last symphony, is the most successful of the master's symphonic cycle, although I continue to prefer the scale, grandeur and ambition that characterises his First - A Sea Symphony. Not forgetting Walt Whitman, of course. )
Wonderful visuals. The composer in an essay, I think, wrote about linking visual images with music. I'm sure that he would have approved of your wonderfully selected ones - far more appropriate than the images of war and famine used in the TV film about Vaughan Williams. Which recording is it please?
jmd555555 Thank you, I'm delighted that you enjoyed it. I forget details of the performers but would have noted them on the written intro. to the film.
V-W was an ambulance driver on the war frontline in the 1st world war saw horrific scenes which stayed with him, then witnessed no doubt more death and destruction in the 2nd world war on a civilian population.
Did Vaughan Williams now the music by Viktor Ullman? The thematic material does have comparison with the finale of the variation and Fugue of his last Piano Sonata, later orchestrated as his second Symphony.
I think it might be more accurate to say that a great deal of film music sounds like RVW, since he has been widely imitated by some film composers. Vaughan Williams wrote some of the finest film music ever composed, of course, and thought that composing music for the movies was an excellent discipline for a composer. Most of the great composers of the 20th century (Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Copland and many others) wrote film music. But the big difference between a symphony and a soundtrack is that the former is a long, carefully argued piece, sustained over a period of 30 or 40 minutes, or longer, while a movie score usually consists of very short, fragmentary episodes.
Aaron Copland must have been listening to another work before he said this: "Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes" This is contemplative but far from boring.
...bidding farewell ? What a majestic way to do it...
The coda is like a coda to RVW's whole symphonic work. A last pulsating remembering of every hill he climbed until the music ebbs away, enters another world - and disappears. Beautiful.
Such a brilliant orchestration (I expecially love the way saxophones are used!), I'd say cinematic scores owe practically everything to these XX-Century British composers (Vaughan-Williams, Holst, Walton...).
I was going to say that some of this reminded me of movie scores - but you beat me to it! Good call.
No, I wouldn't say that, and neither would Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Alex North or a score of others. I doubt even Miklos Rozsa would say it, and he worked in the British film industry.
Malcolm Arnold should not be forgotten about
This wonderful symphony is a breath of fresh air in our life of less than 100 years in this transient world of so much hassle and annoyances
Whatever I seem to be listening to, when I come back to this work, I always think of it as one of the most underrated symphonies of all time, VW always seems all encompassing of any age & speaks to everyone at once, a massive talent indeed, a musical everyman
Tess of the d'Urbervilles brought me here. What a magnificent piece of music. This has been my introduction to Vaughan Williams's music, and I'm glad for that.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Joshua. I hope you'll explore more of RVW's music in the months to come!
Wow,… wasn’t expecting this. Quite exciting!!
Amazing how many people say they have trouble getting to grips with this symphony. I've loved it since I first heard it as a 16 year old. It makes perfect sense to me, and the conclusion must surely rank as one of the most moving farewells any composer has ever uttered; it's as if VW is waving to us as he crosses the River Styx and slowly disappears into the mist. To write a movement like that he must surely have intuited his death.
Yes, I'm sure you're right.
Never had any problem with this symphony. The one that eludes me is the popular 3rd. To be honest I find it quite boring though that would be heresy to many RVW aficionados :-)
@@paullewis2413 That's a fair response. Didn't a critic once describe it as like a cow mooing over a fence? It's an elegy really, from VW's experiences in the 1st World War. I don't find it gripping overall, but I do love the 3rd movement, especially in Previn's version.
"To write a movement like that he must surely have intuited his death."
Not necessarily. Immediately after completing it he started work on a three-act opera.
@@terrygrimley9650 Intuiting your death doesn't have to mean that you sit on your hands. :)
While listening to this glorious piece, In my mind's eye I envision Maestro Vaughan Williams ascending to the heavens, transforming into an indescribably brilliant galaxy.
My favourite composer along with Thomas hardys novels, this symphony is complicated, but full of wonderful passages and the finale a gem of orchestral writing .
Still a brilliant star in his eighties!
Just wonderful. The music RVW was writing towards the end of his life was magnificent; very sad he couldn't have lived longer but also marvellous that he was producing inspirational, evocative and highly creative masterpieces at the age of 85. A true giant amongst composers. Thank you.
Amazing visualisations to go with this fabulous work too!
Fascinante 9ème symphonie de Vaughan-Williams ! Je l'ai découverte, voici quelques années, grâce à l'enregistrement de Sir Adrian Boult (avec la 3ème de Malcolm Arnold en complément). J'aime beaucoup cette version dirigée par Vernon Handley ! Merci Colin !
Amazing scoring - three saxophones! R-VW took them straight out of the dance band - (this was mid-1950s after all) - and placed them in the front row of the woodwind. They feature clearly early in the first movement from 0:38. Dreamy, sleazy, out of place yet strangely appropriate. And then they run riot in the Scherzo. Enjoy!
A great symphony expressive of the British soul. Vaughan Williams is the Winston Churchill of music.
Though I think the last movement of the 5th to be the most beautiful, the final movement of the 9th is certainly the most powerful - IMO Vaughan Williams really came of age as a great symphonist with the 8th and 9th. His style may have been way out of fashion by 1958 but now we can forget all about that and appreciate his special gifts as one of the great 20th c. composers. Thanks for the upload of this wonderful performance.
+cameronpaul Yes, and we can also forget (as nearly everyone does) about most of the music that was 'fashionable' in 1958. RVW's music will be listened to for as long as there are humans with minds and hearts.
+cameronpaul I certainly have a lot of time for RVW 8 and when I'm in certain moods listening to certain performances I think it is his best symphony - 5, 6, 3 and 2 notwithstanding :-) !!!. The 9th is something I'm still trying to get to grips with - but given time I'm sure I'll get there ;-)
+Denian Arcoleo Well said indeed - though I would hope that people would also give Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio etc a fair hearing. There is I think much to like there too...
Laurence Skelding
Well each to his own of course but I can't honestly say I find anything to like in Stockhausen or Boulez. Yes I agree that the 8th is overall RVW's best symphony, the Barbirolli recording from the late 50's (I think) is the definitive IMO.
+Laurence Skelding I gave them a fair hearing. I don't want to go where they are trying to take people, even to visit. No it's not even mostly subjective. Such sound has an effect on body, heart, and mind. It's distonic, even disruptive. In Vaughan-Williams, here, mostly, it has a point, within a larger, if bleak, over-all message, and I can stand visiting; (I had heard he died an atheist: one would be bleak, coming to the end so.) The others named? Couldn't tie Part's shoelaces.
thanks from Buenos Aires
Outstanding visualization of VW's monumental last symphony. I hope the imagery will help others come to understand this magnificent but challenging music. Thanks Colin.
Surely one of the most unusual and poignant moments in the symphonic repertoire is at 0:37 when a saxophone trio steps straight out of the dance band and into this work of great depth and modal darkness. An astonishing piece of orchestration.
Much as I love RVW's symphonies, this last one has somehow kept its secret from me. This excellent recording has changed all that. Thank you, Colin, for making it available to us.
Ken
Thanks for taking the time to respond Robert. Glad you like it.
Colin: My comment on this wonderful performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 9 comes in gratitude for your many excellent and high quality postings of RVM compositions. To my uninformed attention was recently drawn the fact that my favorite RVW symphony, the No. 2 London Symphony, was originally somewhat lengthier than the versions to which I had been listening for decades. I now have a recording of the original and it is just fantastic. I had the privilege of being a member of the bass section of the University of Illinois Oratorio Society in a performance some 44 years ago of "Hodie." Symphonies No. 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9 are personal favorites. Thank you for spotlighting this brilliant composer's music. I hope people for centuries to come will appreciate the music of RVW as much as I have.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. It's good to know that RVW's music reaches others in the way it reaches me. I love music by Sibelius, Nielsen, Rachmaninov and many others, but Vaughan Williams holds a very special place in my heart. I often wish I could have met this wonderful man, who - as well as being a great musician - was also a very great human being. Thanks again.
Nice one Ralph.
Great work by RVW, I had the honour of meeting Ursula in 1988; when I was awarded first prize in the Commandant's Quick March Competition at Kneller Hall. I was a member of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Class as a student bandmaster there.
I love Vaughan Williams' symphonies and there's no question that the three in the middle (4, 5, 6) make the greatest initial impression. All 3 are masterpieces. And yet, the two Vaughan Williams symphonies I find myself returning to most often are nos. 3 & 9, two of his least played. The 9th is elusive at first but really grows on you with repeated hearings. And it has so many memorable moments: the solo violin playing the 2nd theme in the first movement, the chamber arrangement of the subordinate theme at the end of movement 2, the diabolical saxophones in the scherzo - and that mystical, timeless finale.
Unbelievable that an 86-year-old man wrote such a piece.
I fully agree John. Thanks for your response.
There is a wonderful book , Sarum (also titled Sarum: The Novel of England) is a work of historical fiction by Edward Rutherfurd, first published in 1987. It tells the story of England through the tales of several families in and around the English city of Salisbury, the writer's hometown, from prehistoric times to 1985. This book should be made into a movie, its so good.
First RVW symphony I had ever heard. Still love it just as much.
I totally agree with Peter Clamp's comment. It is a joy to listen to RVW's works combined with your thoughtful sequence of images. Looking at the videos on your channel I detect a kindred spirit. I too am uplifted, inspired, transported by the composers you have chosen. I much appreciate your channel.
Thanks Charles. Peter and I have a Facebook page "Ralph Vaughan Williams Discussion" - you'd be most welcome to friend it. About 20 people from all over the world regularly contribute. You don't need to be an expert, just have a real interest in RVW and music of his period. :)
I love how Colin considers our inconvenience of the ads inserted by RUclips and gives a good suggestion to enjoy the music uninterrupted!
I listened to this piece from my favorite composer while watching a baseball game ( Angels vs, Toronto )....what a nice change of pace !
I never see ads interrupting on my laptop. Whatever blocker I have is fantastic. Thank you for providing this work.
Colin,has the BBC contacted you yet regarding your sublime talent in the audio-visual arts? I mean, seriously, this is a stunner! Congratulations...and thanks.
David Egan Thanks so much David. Much appreciated.
Gosh, that opening reminded me of late Bruckner. What a stalwart musical statement! Thanks, Colin.
True....echoes of Bruckner and I think even Shostakovich in spots. Huuuuge!
Allways a pleasure to return to VW's Ninth. Thanks, Colin.
Grandioso R V W .Gran sinfonía .Se nota que es su última sinfonía..Gracias From Argentina
I love listening to this kind of stuff. I’m a metal head so when I listen to this it has all the inspiration for just a powerhouse of a song.
Hi Robert. You might want to check out the second and especially third movements of VW's Symphony No. 6. Also a LOT of Shostakovich if you haven't already. Symphonies 4,5,7,8,11 and 15 come to mind especially.
@@bencobley4234 Shostakovich 10 is also not one that should be missed!
The shear power of the 2nd movement .At 86 years ,he"s it all.
Thank you so much. Brilliantly chosen images to accompany a relatively neglected symphony.
E.D. LIKES 2.4.6.7.th..9th. OF. V.W.SYMPH..CYCLE ROUND MUSIC🤗🤗🤗
Thank you Colin and Paul. This movingly, defiant and valedictory work is one of my all time favourites; a great way for the old man to 'sign off'. This is a wonderful performance and features the clearest recording of those wonderful harps at the end.
So glad you like it and thanks for going to the trouble of commenting. Just as a matter of interest, who's Paul? :)
thanks for posting this up for us
RVW would be touched by your visualizations.
Wishes for continued good works.
Andrea R. Thanks so much Andrea - I'm glad you like what I've done.
Thanks, as always, Colin!
I very much appreciate all your RVW uploads. I have learned so much more about Vaughan Williams by listening to the music you have uploaded and watching the beautiful videos you have so skillfully given us. This 9th symphony is really powerful, dark, disturbing and thrilling. As someone who originates from Dorset, I can connect to the images very powerfully. Thank you so much for what you do.
Very kind and encouraging comments Trevor. Many thanks.
Great video! Hardy is one of my favorite authors, and Tess and Jude are at the top of my list. I cycled around the Salisbury area in the summer 1981.
Glad thi brought back good memories. Most of the landscapes featured in the video are of moors in Devonshire (Dart, Ex and Bodmin). I used them because, to be honest, Salisbury Plain is very bare and featureless and not very photogenic!
Colin, what a fine achievement to match this extraordinarily enigmatic and brooding symphony with such creative use of imagery which is difficult to do in a work with such variation in mood. I like the way you literally draw the viewer into the music at the very start and thereafter we are continually confronted by striking images associated with Thomas Hardy's novel which the composer seem to love so much.The allusions to Tess in the slow movement I thought were beautifully done. I like how you conveyed the quirky yet sometimes nightmarish quality of the music in the Scherzo. And in the last movement you convey the bitter-sweet quality of the music so clearly and indeed throughout the whole symphony. You've done a great service to what Robin Barber rightly described as magnificent music.
Peter Clamp Very kind and interesting thoughts Peter! Thanks very much.
Another great upload Colin- thank you for your efforts.
Tom Nutts Kind comment Tom. Thanks so much.
You evoke, with your images, the mysterious, mystical qualities of the ninth. I would love to attend a performance where your images appear on an IMAX screen. Great job, Colin, and thank you.
Many thanks, Buzz, for your kind comment!
Colin, these visuals are so stunning, and so perfect for this most mysterious music. Bravo to you.
Thank you. So glad you enjoyed it Stephen.
Thank you for the well-chosen images which complement this extraordinary music so beautifully.
It may be the greatest symphony RW ever wrote...
Dear Colin: Thanks for sharing this. Listening to this gem is most enjoyable! And the accompanying images make this an outstanding experience indeed.
Thanks very much for taking the time to comment. Very glad you enjoyed it!
this is lovely, thanks so much , hearing the piece at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on tuesday so this is great way to familiarise myself with the music .Very evocative and well chosen images thanks
I first heard this symphony more than 45 years ago, and I still vividly remember the flugelhorn solo and the very end. It's only recently that I've been, shall we say, brooding over the connection with "Tess." The more I brood, the less I think of the symphony as programmatic and more as a kinship between VW and Hardy. Like some other composers of his time, VW pushed the modernist envelope forward and backward. His agnosticism was less an exclusion of western Judeo-Christian tradition than an inclusion of awe for "unredeemed nature," something not centered around human civilization. Plus he was a survivor of inhuman war traumas that most Americans are only beginning to comprehend. As for an aside, what makes me enjoy the scherzo more these days is how much it reminds me of "Pink Elephants on Parade"--in Walt Disney's animation a singular cocktail of the silly and the sinister.
Colin, thank you very much for uploading this fantastic video. The music, with which I wasn’t familiar with, is very beautiful and the accompanying visuals as one listens to this symphony are truly spectacular.
Thanks for your kind comment Juan. I have made similar videos of RVW's 'London' and 'Pastoral' symphonies (numbers 2 & 3), the Fifth and Eighth Symphonies. Do check them out! (Some have been spoiled by RUclips's advertisements but you can get rid of these by downloading a free adblock programme. I recommend Adbloc-plus.)
thanks for all your hard work and very skilful arrangement of images
Brilliant visuals......and of course sublime VW! Thanks.
No mention in the comments about what I consider one of the most incredible symphonies of all time - RVW's lst symphony. Given a great performance in a suitable venue (BBC Proms/RAH on YT) and it's a knock out!
An inspired work, sir. Oh, and the music is good, too, LOL. Now I can not think of one without the other.
That's the danger of putting images to music! Thanks for your appreciation.
0:09 First Movement
8:56 Second Movement
16:23 Third Movement
21:49 Fourth Movement
Too often overlooked, this is a forward looking symphony which is apparently hard to play.
Composed when the composer was deaf and used ungainly hearing aids made by several manufacturers "so I can be useful them" he said.
This massive work of perfect proportions is close to late Shostakovich in some ways and hints at post-Sibelius Nordic music to come after both composers died within a year of each other.
Vaughan Williams looks back a little to his other E minor symphony but also late Holst. Block structures linked by counterpoint fading in and out was really something new.
One 'gets' it or doesn't. Boult, Handley and Manze are probably the best.
I'm still puzzling over that theme at the beginning of the second movement. I mean, he's used it in The Solent and the Sea Symphony, so it could be something like a "sea theme". On the other hand Whitman used the sea as a symbol for life, didn't he? This tune must have been very important to RVW to use it at the beginning of his musical life and then at the very end. Astonishing... and yet I can't really figure out why. Must have been something of a "life theme" for him.
Haha saxophones. Love this piece!
Surely one of the most remarkable moments in the 'classical' symphonic repertoire is at 0:38 when the three saxophones enter. Strangers escaped from the dance band to lull but also to chill us with their unnervingly smooth and melodious phrase.
I never heard this one...thank you for posting.
Splendid.
MR
Over the final bars of the symphony is written a single word - Niente, the Italian word for 'nothing'.
Yes, when I was putting this sequence together, I considered putting 'Niente' at the end, then decided against it. I can't remember now why I decided that way!
Wonderful music-- I love the pictures of stonehenge and other places of worship, but somehow its not quite what I associate with this music. But then, I haven't read Hardy's Tess..
"Like" on 29 October 2017. A very subtle symphony.
Thank you, Colin. I enjoyed it very much. I sometimes wish it were possible to identify the images easily, but I guess there is no simple way to make that possible.
The landscapes are mostly Dartmoor (which VW did not have in mind when writing the symphony!). There are quite a few of Salisbury, which he certainly did have in mind. The painting of the pretty girl was intended to evoke Tess and the gallows represent her Fate.
Colin Thanks, Colin, but that isn't quite what I was asking. I was wondering whether there is some way of identifying each image (while making such a video) so that a person watching could know what it is if he wishes. I doubt that would be easy/possible - just wondering.
No, at least not with the program I use (Windows Movie Maker). I could easily put captions on the screen but they would distract from the music, I think, Michael.
Colin I agree.
Give an ear at 6:44. An amazing Flugelhorn player!
Hello.
I'm listening to RVW's music recently..Trying to listen to all he wrote ( short tunes too )..It will take time.I like his symphonies.
So far I only listen to the complete " Antartica "and I'm now on this 9th.
To my ears and my heart they sounds more shymphonic poems," visual trips " then real symphonies..I always feel than up to a certain period ( Bruckner been the "gate" of separation )of time You'll be listening to notes, chords progressions and so on..After that ( from Mahler on.. ) You just pass that and You go mainly to feelings and "visual" fantasy/places..Hope it make sense.
I'm trying to explain it better : Bruckner and Brahms were in the same age but Brahms was still a real " classic", Bruckner ( at least for me ) was the first "visionary"..Anton Bruckner is my favourite composer, his adagio ( mainly ) just put me on a "trip" :) :)..I'm a music eater, from Byrd to Bach to Opera to Mozart..You name it..I'm in love with all has been wrote on the wonderful music world.
Sinfonia Antartica is certainly like a tone-poem, I agree but I hope you’ll find as you explore RVW’s symphonies, that most of them are genuinely symphonic, if not necessarily in the Austro-German tradition of Brahms and Bruckner. Vaughan Williams was striving to create a distinctively English approach to symphonic music, breaking with the 19th
century conventions at the same time. Thus, you will search in vain for a classic sonata movement in his
symphonies. No 1 (A Sea Symphony) is really a huge cantata; No 2 (A London Symphony) is a romantic-nationalist
work. I hope you enjoy exploring RVW’s music.
@@271250cl The first movement of the 5th symphony is in sonata form.
Apparently if you listen to RUclips videos on Brave, the ads don't appear. What a crime it is for YT to stick ads into the midst of videos like this.
You can pay a small annual fee for RUclips Premium which is ad free. If you are a regular daily user of RUclips and listener to classical music on it, it's well worth it.
Gave details of the performance below. Best wishes Jeffrey
Big up salisbury my home!!!
This symphony is filled with fleeting and ambiguous harmonies as if RVW is attempting to be free of any attachment to a particular tonal center for more than a few seconds at a time. Only at the 9th's conclusion does he arrive at a tonal center to dwell on for an extended period of time and which happens to be a nod to European tradition going back to the Renaissance: A symphony in E Minor ending on an E Major chord in the manner of the 'tierce de picardie' or Picardy Third (a raised third scale degree in the final chord). Was recording producer George Martin thinking of RVW's 9th when he utilized that same elongated E Major chord coming out of an extended orchestral dissonance at the conclusion of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life" (Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) approximately ten years later? Both endings fade away into the distance.
19:50 (saving this for future reference)
Quizás esta 9ª, y última sinfonía, sea la más lograda del ciclo sinfónico del maestro, aunque yo siga prefiriendo la dimensión, grandiosidad y ambición que destila su 1ª. Sin olvidarme de Walt Whitman, por supuesto.
Thanks Toni (Translation: Perhaps the Ninth, and last symphony, is the most successful of the master's symphonic cycle, although I continue to prefer the scale, grandeur and ambition that characterises his First - A Sea Symphony. Not forgetting Walt Whitman, of course. )
Wonderful visuals. The composer in an essay, I think, wrote about linking visual images with music. I'm sure that he would have approved of your wonderfully selected ones - far more appropriate than the images of war and famine used in the TV film about Vaughan Williams. Which recording is it please?
jmd555555 Thank you, I'm delighted that you enjoyed it. I forget details of the performers but would have noted them on the written intro. to the film.
Vernon Handley- Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
V-W was an ambulance driver on the war frontline in the 1st world war saw horrific scenes which stayed with him, then witnessed no doubt more death and destruction in the 2nd world war on a civilian population.
Did Vaughan Williams now the music by Viktor Ullman? The thematic material does have comparison with the finale of the variation and Fugue of his last Piano Sonata, later orchestrated as his second Symphony.
ruclips.net/video/oJy6-v_CUkk/видео.html
For some reason everything Williams writes sounds like a movie soundtrack.
I think it might be more accurate to say that a great deal of film music sounds like RVW, since he has been widely imitated by some film composers. Vaughan Williams wrote some of the finest film music ever composed, of course, and thought that composing music for the movies was an excellent discipline for a composer. Most of the great composers of the 20th century (Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Copland and many others) wrote film music. But the big difference between a symphony and a soundtrack is that the former is a long, carefully argued piece, sustained over a period of 30 or 40 minutes, or longer, while a movie score usually consists of very short, fragmentary episodes.
Sounds like film music
ace
Aaron Copland must have been listening to another work before he said this: "Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes" This is contemplative but far from boring.
But the is the Ninth Symphony, Jeffrey! :)
To my untrained ear it begins like a Shostakovich symphony
The End of the World