Orpheus with his lute - Vaughan Williams

Orpheus with his lute

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1952)

A beautiful song by Vaughan Williams, written relatively early in his career, with some strangely Baroque-sounding musical language - enjoy!


Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.




Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

(William Shakespeare, 1564--1616)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ralph
• vaughan
• williams
• song
• orpheus
• with
• his
• lute
• alto
• piano
• baroque

[serenaluce]

Wow, beautiful! A bit too much of vibrato to my liking but overall it sounds wonderful! Can you give some more information on the singer and composer? Never heard of him before. Thanks for posting.

[thelightisahead]

@serenaluce

Hey! I'm afraid I don't have any information on the singer at hand at the moment. But Ralph Vaughan Williams is probably the most famous English composer of latter days other than Edward Elgar. He worked with folksong a lot (an interest I share) and composed a lot of music of various types, with an obvious influence of French Impressionism (he studied with Ravel) and a deep interest in Tudor music which also shows obvious influence! Wikipedia is a good place to start :)

[fozziebear2009]

Hey! Hope you're well? This is a gem which I'd not heard before so thanks! Thumbs up from me :)

[thelightisahead]

@fozziebear2009

I'm very well thanks, studying music at university now :) ! Yes it's beautiful, it's from the Vaughan Williams collector's boxset, 30 CDs! What've you been up to recently? Are you still in that string ensemble?

[whiterabbit127]

@serenaluce David Daniels is probably the foremost counter tenor of this era.

[sbmocnodnarb]

It's worth mentioning that this is the 1902 setting Vaughan Williams did of this poem, NOT the 1925 version.

[fozziebear2009]

@thelightisahead Hey!!! Oh my god I'm sorry I've only just spotted your response after all this time!!! lol I'm really glad you are at uni now! What are you studying? Are you doing violin at that level? Yes I still play in the string quartet/quintet every couple of weeks or so and hoping to take grade 8 violin later this year. I've started writing a stage show which I'm hoping to get produced at some point! Also, I'm moving to London in January 2012.

P.S. you and your boxsets!! lol

[bahoonies]

I love Vaughan Williams' music but this song was completely new to me when I found a copy of it in a secondhand shop the other day. Now I can't stop playing and singing it at my piano. Thanks for posting it. It's absolutely gorgeous.

[RobertCEvans]

Thanks for posting!