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Running Head: ECOLOGY IN R.V. WILLIAMS AND A.E.

HOUSMAN: ON WENLOCK EDGE

Michael McCormick

Ecology in R.V. Williams and A.E. Housman: On Wenlock Edge

Music and Ecology

Dr. Christian Carey

Westminster Choir College

18 December 2017
ECOLOGY IN R.V. WILLIAMS AND A.E. HOUSMAN: ON WENLOCK EDGE 2

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in a small village in Gloucestershire, England, and

then moved to a small village in Surrey after his father passed away. These villages were in the

middle of the English countryside, completely surrounded by beautiful nature. Vaughan

Williams studied music at the Royal College of Music as well as at Cambridge, furthering his

appreciation for the English style of writing by studying under Hubert Parry and Charles

Stanford.

It wasn’t until 1908 that Vaughan Williams went to Paris to study with Maurice Ravel for

several months. Ravel’s influence on Vaughan Williams has been long debated; Vaughan

Williams felt as though Ravel helped to free and liberate his writing, while Ravel himself and

some musicologists believe that the influence was “grossly overrated.” As Hubert Foss said in

his study of Vaughan Williams, “It should be added that Rave;’s French influence was grossly

overrated in judgements passed by certain critics on the subsequent music.” (Foss p.14) While

some critics may feel this way, it is undeniable that Vaughan Williams himself claimed that

Ravel helped relieve him from “​the heavy contrapuntal Teutonic manner.” (Nichols p.67)

An analysis of Vaughan Williams’ music after studying with Ravel could also show “a

new, lighter, more colorful kind of instrumentation” which is observed in compositions like “The

Wasps”, “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”, and the subject of this paper, “On Wenlock

Edge.” Vaughan Williams gave another statement regarding his music post-Ravel, “After three

months I came home with a bad attack of French fever and wrote a string quartet which caused a

friend to say that I must have been having tea with Debussy, and a song cycle with several

atmospheric effects...” (Pummill p.7)


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Vaughan Williams also had a large passion for the folk music of England, spending time

traveling around to collect songs from all over the country. Most of the music he recorded was

written by hand, while some of it was done by recording on a phonograph. He served on the

committee of the Folk Song Society for 42 years and regularly contributed music to the society.

While he recorded a great deal of folk music and songs, he often would not record the text, or

would only record the first verse. Because of this, much of the music lost its text and only the

tunes remain. These folk songs had a large influence on his writings, some instances more direct

than others. For example, he wrote two large anthologies, one of which entitled “Folk Songs of

the Four Seasons.” In other compositions, you can hear tunes that resemble a folk song, although

not necessarily a direct quote or tune of a true English folk song.

A.E. Housman was also an Englishman, living around the same time as Vaughan

Williams. Housman grew up a religious boy, but later turned into a “devout” atheist while

studying at St. John’s College, Oxford. He fell in love with his roommate, Moses Jackson;

Moses was a heterosexual and therefore did not share the same feelings with Housman. His love

interest in Moses lasted for many years, and is thought to be reason as to why his poetry is often

very dark and pessimistic. His atheism also plays a role in his pessimism because of his lack in

belief of the afterlife or salvation after death.

Housman’s largest and most famous work was ​A Shropshire Lad, a​ cycle of 63 poems

written about the soldiers of Shropshire. Although the cycle does not have a clear through line,

there are many recurring themes throughout. These themes include nature, love lost,

reminiscence, homeland, and others. The poems were also not written in order, which can

explain the lack in narrative. Housman, similar to Vaughan Williams, had a strong connection to
ECOLOGY IN R.V. WILLIAMS AND A.E. HOUSMAN: ON WENLOCK EDGE 4

nature. Many of his poems use nature as a metaphor to the inner feelings of man. The turmoil,

troubles, love, and death of man can all be seen as nature in Housman’s poetry. Many of the

poems in ​A Shropshire Lad ​came to Housman when he was walking along Hampstead Heath.

The poet is said to have “waited for the verses to come to him.” (NYTIMES) This is another

clear reasoning of how Housman related to nature and his own natural surroundings.

The song cycle ​On Wenlock Edge ​offers a great deal of nature and inner turmoil of man,

making some clear, and some less clear references to nature. In the first movement of the work,

On Wenlock Edge, t​ he opening statement in the piano and strings is a clear foreshadowing of the

text that is to come. The opening stanza reads as such:

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;

His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

This stanza provides a vivid image of a hillside, covered in trees, getting thrashed about

by the wind. The saplings, being young and able to be bent, are thrown so powerfully that they

are bent down all the way. Wind gets thrown back and forth, gusting in multiple directions all

while keeping this constant feeling of excitement or urgency. This experience is put into sound in

the opening two bars of the piece. The strings and right hand of the piano move in parallels up

and down, swelling in dynamic. The left hand of the piano keeps sextuplets going through the
ECOLOGY IN R.V. WILLIAMS AND A.E. HOUSMAN: ON WENLOCK EDGE 5

held notes of the strings to provide for the constant energy of the wind. The strings also are using

tremolo the entire time, which provides an even clearer representation of the wind.

In the next song of the cycle, From Far, From Eve and Morning, there are a few mentions

of nature. The most distinctive mention would be the term “twelve winded sky”. Clearly, this is

about wind, but it is not just any reference to wind. This is a reference to the classical Greek and

Roman world, where direction was measured by twelve different directions. Housman is trying

to say here that the wind comes from many directions, while also making reference to his

classical training and education. (Dust)

The final stanza reads:

Speak now, and I will answer;

How shall I help you, say;


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Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters

I take my endless way.

In the music, there is a clear depiction of this urgency in the man’s words. There is only an

eighth rest in between the previous word and “speak now” which creates this sense of

hurriedness. In the rest of the song, most of the rests between phrases are either quarter rests or

half rests, so clearly the eighth rest was intentional for the sake of depicting urgency.

In the fifth song of the cycle, Bredon Hill, the speaker tells the story of hearing the bells

on Bredon. He can hear them ring through the valleys while sitting with his love, they lead to his

wedding, and eventually ring at the funeral of his beloved. There are clear representations of the

bells in the score, the first of which beginning at the third stanza.

The triplet descending motive in parallels sounds very similar to a carillon ringing to call people

to a church service on a Sunday. The next example of the bells is toward the end when the

speaker is talking about his wife going to her funeral. He says “They tolled the one bell only.”

The piano and first violin parts have a note to play the octave Gs at a much louder dynamic than
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the rest of the music playing at that time. These octaves are the bells tolling. While the first

violin play with pizz to replicate the attack of a bell, the second violin plays a sustained note that

carries over the bar line, giving the sustain and decay of the bell. The piano is able to do both of

these effects on its on own because of the natural decay of a note. These effects combine to give

a clear depiction of a bell.

In the final song of this cycle, Clun, there are references to many different rivers in England. The

rivers mentioned are Ony, Teme, Clun, and Thames. These rivers are all well represented by the

piano accompaniment. The piano has this running eighth note uprising, sounding just like

flowing water down a river. The piano is also using the damper pedal to wash the notes together.
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There is also a mark in the score for “poco piu mosso” when the piano begins its “river music.”

This must be because the rivers are rushing around and Vaughan Williams wanted to portray the

quickness or the rivers. This theme of the running eighth notes carries through the first five

verses, only sometimes switching to sixteenth notes, but still with the same ascending motive. At

the beginning of the sixth verse, Ravel’s impact on Vaughan Williams is clearly seen. The piano

goes between an A major and B major chord with no leading tones or pivots, just a direct motion.

This is so very clearly a French Impressionist motion, something that is seen in Debussy and

Ravel’s music all over the place.

When thinking about the study of folk song by Vaughan Williams, there are clearly some

influences in his music. Bredon Hill most certainly sounds like it could be a folk song, although

there does not appear to be any clear examples of traditional English folk songs in this entire

work. The opening melody is written on a pentatonic scale, only broken by the F natural that

follows on the word “shires.” “The pentatonic scale know also to the old Greeks can be found in
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Scotch, Irish, and occasionally in English folk song.” (Keith p.30) Vaughan Williams was also

clearly drawn to the text of Housman because of his emphasis on England and English nature.

Works Cited

Dickinson, A. E. (1945). ​An introduction to the music of R. Vaughan Williams.​ London: Oxford
University Press.

ADAMS, P. B. (2016). ​VAUGHAN WILLIAMS ESSAYS​. Place of publication not identified:


ROUTLEDGE.

DUST IN THE WIND: HOUSMAN’S “FROM FAR, FROM EVE AND MORNING”. (2017,
May 14). Retrieved December 18, 2017.

Foss, H. J., & Williams, R. V. (1981). ​Ralph Vaughan Williams: a study.​ Ann Arbor: University
Microfilms International.

Housman, A. E. (2006). ​The name and nature of poetry.​ Bromsgrove, Worcestershire: Housman
Society.

Keith, R.A. (1916). ​English Folk Song

Nichols, Roger (1987). ​Ravel Remembered.​ London: Faber and Faber.

Ricks, C. (1973). ​A. E. Housman: a collection of critical essays.​ Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.

Riding, A. (2017, July 27). England’s Poet of Melancholy, and Why He Never Went Out of
Print. Retrieved December 18, 2017.

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