Ascending (1914)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
(1872-1958)
The Lark Ascending (1914)
When English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams used George Meredith’s poem ‘The Lark Ascending’ as inspiration for a new violin piece in 1914, he doubtless had no idea he was about to pen one of the most beloved and popular works of all time.
Then in his early 40s, Vaughan Williams’ composition career was very much on the upswing. His Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and A Sea Symphony premiered in 1910 and he finished his London Symphony just before the outbreak of World War I.
Vaughan Williams originally wrote The Lark Ascending for violin and piano, but he set the piece aside when he volunteered to serve in the war. The composer drove ambulances before joining the Royal Artillery and then, after the Armistice, served as Director of Music in the First Army of the British Expeditionary Force in France. He was demobilised in February 1919.
Back home, Vaughan Williams revised The Lark Ascending. The version for violin and piano was first performed in 1920, followed by the arrangement with orchestra in 1921. He dedicated it to the violinist Marie Hall, who gave the premiere.
The Lark Ascending is a tone poem, depicting in music the whirling flight of a skylark against a pastoral English landscape. But, as Vaughan Williams’ biographer Keith Alldritt wrote, The Lark Ascending ‘perfectly exemplifies Ralph’s view so strongly emphasised in the essay “The Letter and the Spirit” that the purpose of music is to intimate the spiritual’.
Vaughan Williams published 12 lines from Meredith’s poem at the start of the score, beginning with:
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake…
The violin solo takes flight above a tranquil orchestral accompaniment, the violin free-wheeling and almost improvisatory in its dips and whirls. It’s not hard to hear divinity in the tracery of the violin as it soars above the earth and humanity of the orchestra, the ensemble suggesting a world of open fields and folk song. Nor is it hard to imagine in the wistful, soaring melodies a nostalgia for a time before the terror and destruction of the Great War.
© Angus McPherson, 2024