VAUGHAN WILLIAMS - SINFONIA ANTARTICA. 1.

SIR JOHN BARBIROLLI
conducting the
HALLE ORCHESTRA and CHOIR
with MARGARET RITCHIE solo soprano.

Early Fifties. First recording of the piece.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• VAUGHAN
• WILLIAMS
• SINFONIA
• ANTARTICA
• HALLE
• ORCHESTRA
• JOHN
• BARBIROLLI
• MARGARET
• RITCHIE

[NonInflatable]

How do you communicate a total absence of hope, loneliness, desperation, the certainty that you will never see your home and your loved ones again, strangeness, unbridgeable distance from everything normal and familiar, the enormity of the forces you are struggling against?

Vaughan Williams did it, brilliantly.

How underrated he is - what a GIANT .

[KiwiExpat34]

Fantastic. Real evocation of the great white continent.

And that's just the 1st movement. The whole thing has 5 movements, all brilliant.

[Elitist20]

Quotation for First Movement:

'To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent...

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This...is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory'

- Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

[Psyche777able]

Wasn't this music used in a movie with Sir John mills? Great piece of music.

Thanks for posting.

[spacepatrolman]

@KrillLiberator yea me too but he strived for originality

[KrillLiberator]

@spacepatrolman Cripes! I did not know that; if it had been me, I might have taken it as a compliment.

[spacepatrolman]

@KrillLiberator alan hovhaness destroyed 2000 compositions because he didnt like being called the american sibelius and wrote 2000 more

[Strefanasha]

Terribile iste locus est.

I do not hear hopelessness in this work, but the terrible grandeur of Almighty God who decreed that some realms were off limits to presumptuous men

[budgienation]

Ralph Vaughan William's Symphony No. 7, "Sinfonia Antartica" should convince anyone of this guy's greatness. He's one of the most under appreciated composers of any era. Everybody knows 'Fantasia on a theme' but he's so much more than that!

[KrillLiberator]

Ohh ho ho, lovely! Wow, B nailed this; VW's best symphony for me, beating Sibelius at his own game, awe-inspiring in the truest sense.

Just the opening with the double build-up and that massive crescendo is enough to pin me to my seat.

And the nature-painting is superb, but I think what I like best about the 1st movement overall is it's wonderfully ironic structure. We hear Antarctica's terrifying majesty being 'trampled by naive Imperial arrogance. Oh, so optimistic and how foolish of them!

[afternoondave]

Utterly creepy, vast & cold, & breathtakingly beautiful.

[xtremegamer515]

My school's orchestra is playing this symphony. I absolutely love it!