Ralph Vaughan Williams - Serenade to Music (original version for 16 soloists) (1/2)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Serenade to Music (original version with 16 soloists)

Ian Partridge, Meriel Dickinson, John Noble, Bernard Dickerson, Christopher Keyte, Gloria Jennings, John Carol Case, Kenneth Bowen, Marie Hayward, Norma Burrowes, Richard Angas, Sheila Armstrong, Shirley Minty, Susan Longfield, Wynford Evans, Alfreda Hodgson
Sir Adrian Boult/London Philharmonic Orchestra

The Serenade to Music is a setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra. The composer drew the text from the discussion about music and the music of the spheres in Act V, scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. The serenade was later arranged by the composer into versions for chorus and orchestra and solo violin and orchestra.
Vaughan Williams wrote it as a tribute to the conductor Sir Henry Wood to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his first concert, and wrote the solo parts specifically for the voices of sixteen eminent British singers. In some parts of the work, the soloists sing together as a "choir," sometimes in as many as twelve parts; in others, each soloist is allotted a solo (some soloists get multiple solos). The published score places the initials of each soloist next to his or her lines.

Wood himself conducted the first performance at his jubilee concert at the Royal Albert Hall on October 5, 1938. The orchestra was the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the soloists were: Sopranos: Isobel Baillie, Lilian Stiles-Allen, Elsie Suddaby, Eva Turner Contraltos: Muriel Brunskill, Astra Desmond, Mary Jarred, Margaret Balfour Tenors: Heddle Nash, Frank Titterton, Walter Widdop, Parry Jones Baritones: Harold Williams, Roy Henderson Basses: Robert Easton, Norman Allin

Sergei Rachmaninoff also attended that concert, and when he heard the Serenade from his place in the audience, he was so overcome by the beauty of the music that he wept.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
WW Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The reason is, your spirits are attentive
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Music! hark!
It is your music of the house.
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Silence bestows that virtue on it
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion
And would not be awak'd. Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ralph
• vaughan
• williams
• serenade
• to
• music
• 16
• soloists
• shakespeare

[rlneesam]

Sorry to be a killjoy. This is not the original. Original was recorded in 1938 to celebrate Henry Woods's jubilee and had Isobel Baillie, Eva Turner, Heddle Nash, Muriel Brunskill, Walter Widdop et al. It's still available. Isobel Baillie's final notes "Of sweet harmony" will stay with you forever!

[Epogdous]

I know. Here "original version" doesn't mean "first recorded". The Serenade was arranged by the composer into versions for chorus and orchestra and solo violin and orchestra. This is the "original" one! =]

[rlneesam]

Lacks authenticity though. The sixteen soloists in the 'Jubilee version' were singers who had been closely associated with Sir Henry throughout his life and mostly have loving reason to sing for him. Come on you don't seriously think that Isobel Baillie's voice could ever be disassociated from the unique recording.

[Epogdous]

I've never heard it but I'm sure that Isobel Baillie was magnificent in the first recording. I'll keep searching. For now let's be contet with this! :)

[LazlosPlane]

Ahhh....sweet relief from the vulgarity of pop culture...

thank you. . . .

[Concert16]

I can't wait to perform this with my choir tomorrow! It is a truly beautiful piece : )

[Julian53847]

"how sweet the moonlight . . . " how amazing the music!

[mrhearse777]

Wonderful music. What could someone say that receives negative comments? I don't understand how this fails to ravish the soul , unless you haven't got one?

[marshmallowPie94]

I gotta say thanks to Blur, because from their amazing DVD I discovered this.

[musiqueange]

...and a choir I'm in just performed this the last couple of nights with violin, oboe, english horn and piano - lovely. :)

[musiqueange]

My favorite parts in the opening are definitely at 1:09 and 1:33 - LOVE.

[ThorSpirit]

This is so beautiful.

[missellarose100]

trying to learn the soprano solos for a concert... mehhh.

[TheMrpous]

Glorious! The words by Shakespeare are heavenly.

[MuseDuCafe]

@cbcdesign001 Sorry, but both a majority of this music, the Vaughan-Williams, Deliius, Finzi, Bax, Elgar, etc. is lost on me as music which is really interesting or "beautiful" and its power to evoke sentimental reaction works on me not at all - (it does not much of anything for me, really.) What I will always at the least admire is the superb modal counterpoint of Rafe,