Quiz #7: Sweet Victory
This week, Jonathan Bellman of DialM fame was first in with Pilgrim’s Progress by Ralph Vaughan Williams, composed 1921. The first performance was giving at the Royal College of Music, London on 11th July 1922.
[The opera was performed in many incarnations, so this is technically right. The full staged version wasn't performed until 1951, with final edits undertaken as late as 1952]
Your prize: one extra-large portion of satisfaction at being right, is in the mail, as they say.
Here’s some background on the piece pinched very nearly wholesale once again from the New Grove Dictionary.
Although an agnostic, Vaughan Williams had a strong sense of music as a social force, involving himself in church music and regarding it (in the days before radio) as one of the few regular musical focal points for a community. Early in his career, he planned to make an opera from Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, not because he shared Bunyan’s religious outlook but because he regarded it as a universal dramatic allegory. In the final version of his opera (which he preferred to call a morality), he altered the name of the protagonist from Christian to Pilgrim because ‘I want the idea to be universal and appeal to anybody who aims at the spiritual life whether he is Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Shintoist or 5th Day Adventist’ (as he wrote to Rutland Boughton in May 1951).
The prelude and epilogue were based on the hymn tune ‘York’, which he connected with Bunyan because of its Roundhead associations; it also opens and closes the opera. In 1921 he made a one-act opera from the episode The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains. This had many performances between the wars and was incorporated into the opera as Act 4 scene ii with its ending changed.
Vaughan Williams worked on Acts 1 and 2 from 1925 to 1936. He then decided that the opera was unlikely to reach the stage and used some of the themes in three of the four movements of his Fifth Symphony (1938&43). His interest was reawakened in 1942 when the BBC commissioned a radio dramatization by Edward Sackville-West of The Pilgrim’s Progress (first broadcast on 5 September 1943). For this he provided 38 sections of incidental music. He resumed concentrated work on the opera from 1944 to 1949.
Though lacking much of the conventional trappings of opera, The Pilgrim’s Progress, in the hands of a sensitive director, can be a remarkable theatrical experience; and the music sustains a level of meditative rapture, relieved by the colourful Vanity Fair scene, which sympathetic listeners find spiritually and emotionally powerful.
thepilatesbiz on 
Aforpeace on 
Yvonne on 
This morality may well still be my favourite work in the whole of Western series music! There are two _SUPERB_ recordings of it as far as I am concerned, Sir Adrian Boult’s EMI account from the early 1970′s on EMI and a more recent one on Chandos. I have had the privilege and pleasure of personally knowing the Pilgrim in the earlier performance, Mr. John Noble, since first meeting him in London in 1979, and his portrayal of that role is indeed special. Yet Mr. Gerald Finley, in the newer Hickox recording on Chandos, seems even more sensitive to me, and Mr. Noble even admires his portrayal. Yes, the newer set includes several contributions, in smaller roles, from my favourite current soprano, Miss Susan Gritton, but Mr. Finley might well have won the day for me, even without her, fine though her contributions are! Those who already love this work might do well to have both recordings, as I do, but, if you can only afford or only wish one, then I would personally suggest the Chandos one. As for _The_ _Shepherds_ _Of_ _The_ _Delectable_ _Mountains_, which gave rise to this post, there is a fine recording of it as well, on the Hyperion Label, with Sir John Gielgud, who was the Christian in the BBC broadcast, re-creating his role (I fear I have gotten my recordings mixed up, and have wandered off into a sequence created by the late Mr. Christopher Palmer from the 1942 Incidental Music, also on Hyperion, and also conducted, as _The_ _Shepherds_ is, by Mr. Matthew Best, another recommendable recording). But, to return to _Shepherds_ where I meant to be, Christian there is sung by another favourite singer of mine, in the early days of his star career at the time he made this, Mr. Bryn Terfel. _MAYBE_ I was thinking of the late Sir John since he is on this disc as well, as the Speaker in VW’s _A_ _Song_ _Of_ _Thanksgiving_, written during World War II to be broadcast on the BBC once the war in Europe ended and originally called _Thanksgiving_ _For_ _Victory_. Hoping that this finds you and your readers well, and with apologies for any errors since my screen reader for the blind is unable to proofread in this field, J. V.
Hello there and many thanks for your detailed comment. I’m not sure who is singing or playing on the version I have. It just appeared on my iTunes at some point. It’s a pity not to be able to give the performers their props, as it were.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the next OM Quiz!
Thank you very much for your response to my comment!
I found some errors in the early part of my last comment, both typographical and literary, but again your typing field here is unintentionally not compatible with my screen reader, though use of this reply facility is indeed otherwise accessible!
I was referred to this thread by my Google Alert for Vaughan Williams, and thus will probably not know of your next quiz unless it is covered by another of my set alerts or, amidst my other activities, I remembeer to check back here on my own, something obviously worth doing if again I do not forget!
Once again wishing you well and with many thanks, I think I may have a go at your profile, since it appears that there may be one, once I submit this comment!
J. V.