About the Book
A new biography of which paints the most well-rounded and factually accurate portrait of the composer to date Ralph Vaughan Williams ranks among the most versatile, influential, and enduringly popular British musicians of his era. Throughout his wide-ranging career-as composer, conductor, editor, scholar, folksong collector, teacher, author, administrator, and philanthropist-Vaughan Williams worked tirelessly to improve the
standards and quality of British musical life. His dedicated work ethic and fastidious attention to musical detail helped him forge a compelling and original expressive idiom grounded in a profound understanding of
musical history and tradition, popularized in concert staples like the Tallis Fantasia, The Lark Ascending, A London Symphony, the Songs of Travel, and the Serenade to Music. Drawing upon both recent scholarship and newly accessible scores and correspondence, author Eric Saylor interweaves in Vaughan Williams an exploration of the composer's life - including new insights about his early career, military service in the
Great War, and relationships with the women he loved and married - with chapters surveying his enormous body of music, spanning hymn tunes to operas, keyboard etudes to solo concerti, wind band music for amateurs to perhaps the finest symphonic cycle of
the twentieth century. The resulting portrait reveals Vaughan Williams's complex artistry and dynamic personality, a portrayal often at odds with the avuncular persona of "Uncle Ralph" familiar to the public. This contemporary reassessment of the composer's life and works provides a concise and engaging overview of both, positioning Vaughan Williams as an artist of rare skill, sensitivity, and human insight.
Table of Contents:
Guide to Abbreviations and Editorial Methods
Preface
1 "This desperate attempt to get a living" (1872-1901)
2 Early Works (1890-1901)
3 "I think I am improving" (1902-1908)
4 The Music of 1902-1908
5 "The best thing I have done" (1909-1914)
6 The Music of 1909-1914
7 "Beyond powers of expression" (1914-1922)
8 The Music of 1914-1922
9 "New heights and depths and mysteries" (1923-1929)
10 The Music of 1923-1929
11 "An awful responsibility" (1930-1936)
12 The Music of 1930-1936
13 "One has to write as one feels" (1937-1943)
14 The Music of 1937-1943
15 "I live a very quiet life now" (1943-1951)
16 The Music of 1943-1951
17 "Worthy of the cause which he serves" (1951-1958)
18 The Music of 1951-1958
Appendices
Index
About the Author :
Eric Saylor is Professor of Music History at Drake University. He is the author of English Pastoral Music: From Arcadia to Utopia, 1900-1955 (2017), co-editor of Blackness in Opera (with Naomi André and Karen M. Bryan, 2015) and The Sea in the British Musical Imagination (with Christopher Scheer, 2012), and former President of the North American British Music Studies Association.
Review :
Saylor's writing style is eminently readable; it flows like a stream, but is carefully documented, chock-a-block full of details and info in rapid succession, dense though it is. He is good at piecing together a life of details and tidbits; like Sherlock Holmes, he teases out snippets everywhere.
I had long believed that RVW was a highly under-appreciated composer, as well as somewhat misunderstood, & those concepts were hugely confirmed by this book; I had never imagined the breadth, depth, diversity, and extent of his works and his activities.
the great value of the book is Saylor's intelligent view of the music, notably his analyses and interpretations of the symphonies and other major works
Vaughan Williams enthusiasts of all hues will want this; but prepare to be renedered breathless at the great man's astonishing energy
... a ground-breaking biography... [Saylor] approaches his subject with fresh ears and a host of thoroughly researched and well-rounded insights that look set to change the discourse surrounding the composer... Saylor's measured contribution to our understanding of Vaughan Williams is welcome, and can only add to our understanding...
... a valuable study of Vaughan Williams's long life and multifarious work, one that will serve both the novice listener and the scholar. It is fair-minded and wide-ranging, both easy to read and unusually weighty for such a short book... recommended to anybody in search of information about this admirable man and creator.
This new study demands the attention of admirers of the composer; it will come as a salutary correction to those who continue to deny the composer's genius
Few great twentieth-century composers are both as popular and as misunderstood as Ralph Vaughan Williams: a national icon whose broader significance for the music of his time, and ours, is only just beginning to be fully appreciated. And few artists pose as many challenges to the biographer and critic: an exceptionally long and rich life, a huge and varied body of work, and a reputation often based as much on mythology as fact. Eric Saylor's landmark new study is therefore especially impressive, as it elegantly weaves together a scrupulously researched yet always engaging account of Vaughan Williams's life and art, makes accessible the latest scholarship (including the revelatory rediscovery of the composer's early works), and offers along the way myriad new insights into a complicated personal life and iconic creations such as The Lark Ascending
Eric Saylor's new biography of Vaughan Williams, one of Britain's greatest composers, is the first to take full account of research published in the last twenty years, of the hitherto unfamiliar early works of the composer published for the first time in the last 25 years, and of the online corpus of some 5000 letters written by him only recently made accessible. Saylor pulls all this together to give us a far more complete picture of the man and his works than we have had before. His book is a fitting tribute to Vaughan Williams for the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Saylor is generous and meticulous in his estimates of Vaughan Williams's writing,...Saylor shows us how Vaughan Williams wrote in almost every musical genre...Vaughan Williams's music speaks to Americans and to many others out of a particular national culture.
A must resource for scholarship on Vaughan Williams. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
A must-have resource for scholarship on Vaughan Williams.
Saylor's biography is scrupulously researched yet thoroughly engaging, offering a fitting tribute on the 150th anniversary of his birth.
An impressively rich and satisfying picture of Vaughan Williams's overall achievement as man and musician.
Saylor has new things to say on a much-studied figure. Fresh angles and intelligent use of primary material mean there is value here for the expert, and his ability to throw information at the reader while telling an engaging story makes it admirably accessible for the novice.
Eric Saylor's Vaughan Williams will be at the centre of the ongo-ing debate and discussion.
While much of this book particularly the even-numbered chapters - would appeal primarily to those of a musicological bent, the odd chapters provide real insight into the man and his music, the sheer range of which provided "some of the most significant and influential contributions to English pastoral music in the twentieth century, and powerfully affected the tastes and aesthetics of British musicians and audiences for many years to come".
