Vaughan Williams by Eric Saylor

Author:Eric Saylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Example 14.2 Symphony (No. 5) in D Major, mvt. 1, mm. 1–8

Neither is quite correct. Instead, just as the Mass in G Minor technically wasn’t, this Symphony in D Major is “about” D major, in the sense of “approximately.” The first eight measures feature a D Mixolydian collection, shifting to D Dorian when the clarinets lower the F♯ to F♮ in m. 9. But while the mode remains the same, its central pitch shifts—first exquisitely to F in m. 40, then five measures later to C—which means “the continuing pedal note becomes the fifth degree and finally the tonic,” resolving the tension established from the outset.34 But then, without warning, Vaughan Williams makes a pivot as breathtaking as the initial choral entrance in A Sea Symphony or the minor-to-major transformation preceding the trumpet cadenza in the Pastoral: the C Dorian modality is abandoned for the radiance of E major, a mediant modulation flanking and subtly positioning D as the fulcrum upon which the entire harmonic structure balances.

What is particularly remarkable about this design is its economy of means. The Fourth Symphony may have been an acrimonious homage to Beethoven, but it is the Fifth that, in the first movement’s rigorous exploration of a very limited amount of motivic material, is a more fitting tribute. But Vaughan Williams acknowledged a different composer in his dedication: Jean Sibelius, whose influence may be gleaned in the string writing of the Preludio’s central section (one hesitates to call it a development), or in the deeply moving English horn solo at the beginning of the Romanza. This same passage sounds in The Pilgrim’s Progress when Pilgrim arrives at the House Beautiful, one of the many concordances that commentators have seized upon to interpret this work, but this effort seems unnecessary. As we have seen many times, Vaughan Williams insisted upon splitting inspiration from interpretation. “It matters, of course, enormously to the composer what he was thinking about when he was writing a particular work,” he said in 1919, “but to no one else in the world does it matter one jot.”35 He returned to this theme in a later tribute to Elgar. “The best composer is surely he who has the most beautiful melodies, the finest harmony, the most vital rhythm, and the surest sense of form,” he wrote. “I lose patience with those people who try to put up Berlioz as a great composer . . . because he could give literary reasons for his beliefs, and do not see that a composer like Dvorˇák, a reed shaken by the wind, is far the greater man of the two because the wind was the divine afflatus.”36

Divinely inspired or otherwise, Vaughan Williams’s mastery of his craft is apparent throughout this symphony, whether in the finely wrought harmonic design of the Preludio, the Scherzo’s Mendelssohnian sprightliness, the Romanza’s intensely passionate lyricism, or the imaginatively flexible treatment of form in the closing Passacaglia, which brilliantly reprises the Preludio’s opening material to launch a coda that ranks among the most delicately beautiful passages of music Vaughan Williams ever wrote.

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