Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge

Context:

• Born in Gloucestershire in 1872 and had family connections with the wedgewood and Darwin dynasties

• Educated at the Royal College of Music and Trinity Hall Cambridge

• His principal teachers were Parry and Stanford known for their British religious choral music, he was later taught by Bruch(Berlin,1897) and Ravel(Paris, 1908)

• Known for his interest in folk music

• His early works reflect a shift from a more ‘Romantic’ approach in Songs of Travel to a style incorporating: Folk influences, Tudor music, Impressionistic influences - Most notably harmonic parallelism, whole-tone harmony and colouristic sonorities

  • On Wenlock Edge - song-cycle consisting of six poems for tenor, string quartet and piano

  • Draws on verses from A Shropshire Lad - A.E. Housman (1859-1936) contemporary

  • Generally melancholy in tone, concerns mortality, the fleeting nature of life and thwarted love

No. 1 ‘On Wenlock Edge’

What is it about?

A gale sweeping over Shropshire - buffeting the modern landscape just as it did the Romans 2000 years prior.

Sonority:

• The vocal range is D below middle C, to G above middle C - Tenor range

• Stringed instruments avoid extreme ranges, highest pitch of the violin being Eb 2 octaves above middle C, in the recurring motif bars 1-3

• Pizzicato - Only in cello

• Multiple stopping only occurs in cello part

• Tremolo represents the gale

• Lengthy trills applied with colouristic effect

• Sul ponticello used to produce a thin, harsh quality

• Conventional chords and broken chord passages on piano

• Colouristic washes of sound (bar 31)

• Long trills

• Tremolos

• Piano occasionally carries melody - bar 7 where it doubles the tenor

• Dynamic level never rises above fortissimo

• Sudden cresc and dim + accents

Texture

• Homophonic throughout with considerable variety in use of voice and instruments

Tempo, metre and rhythm

• Allegro moderato, the effect of the gale indicated by agitato and its subsiding by tranquillo

• 4/4

• Prominent triplets and sextuplets

• Forcefully articulated rhythm with effect of dotted rhythm in which the dot is replaced with a semiquaver rest

• Rhythm helps to establish the stormy atmosphere

• Piano demisemiquaver scale at bar 12

• Piano hemidemisemiquavers at bar 31

• Off-beat entries in strings at bar 35

Melody

• Word-setting is predominantly syllabic, 2 slurred notes on the first syllable of ‘Wrekin’ bar 10

• Pentatonic lines - bars 6-10

• Monotone passages - bars 13-16

• Dimished 5th leap - bars 67-68

• Instruments occasionally share the vocalist’s material, but their most important motif is the recurring figure, first heard in the opening bars. It moves down then up through a 5th and is harmonised in first inversion chords

Harmony

This number is largely devoid of functional chord progressions, although repeated V-I notes are heard in the bass to bring the song to a close

• Parallel first inversion chords at the opening

• The false relation which appears at the end of the opening motif

• Parallel root position chords(without 5ths) at bar 35

• Largely whole-tone figuration in piano at bars 43-44

• Closes with dissonant passage with clashing G and Ab, before fading out with open 5ths and dominant to tonic octaves.

Tonality and Structure

No.3 ‘Is My Team Ploughing?’

What happens?

Dialogue between a ghost and his living friend. The friend has taken over the dead man’s girl as his lover.

Sonority

Ranges:

• Tenor: D below middle C to A above middle C

• V1: B almost 3 octaves above middle C

• Cello: B over an octave below middle C to B above middle C

String techniques:

• Pizz in cello

• Mutes

• Trem

Use of Piano:

• Silent at opening

• Triplet chords

• Trem

• Una corda in piano reduction

Dynamics range from pp to ff

Texture

Effectively contrasts unaccompanied strings with textures involving the piano

Various homophonic and melody-dominated homophonic textures:

Tempo, metre and rhythm

• Flexible tempo

• Movement from Andante to (poco) Animato, allargando, misterioso, agitato

• Mostly 4/4 with some ¾ and 2/4 

• Rhythm relatively free, pulse is sometimes disguised - long intro with its mix of dotted rhythms, tied notes, triplets, syncopations, and long sustained notes

• Lengthening of note values at the ends of phrases leading into time sig changes

• Triplet quavers in piano

• Quintuplets and sextuplets

Melody

• Mostly syllabic

• Opening melody in dorian mode - (Bnatural on D)

• More complex melodic style is used for the reply, with chromaticism and larger leaps suggesting the character is more full of life or anxious

• Higher tessitura is used in the final stanzas

• Final note in vox is Bnatural, clashes with the tonic triad which follows

Harmony:

• Introductory music draws on root and first inversion chords only, some parallelism

• Augmented triads

• Half-diminished chords

• Neapolitan chords

• Augmented 6ths

• Fourths chord

Structure and tonality

No.5 ‘Bredon Hill’

The scene is not in Shropshire but the borders of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire

Ravel’s influence on VW is most clear in this song - Piano sonorities reminiscent of Ravel’s Miroirs La vallée des cloches

Sonority

Ranges:

• Tenor: 11th

• 5 8ve piano range

• Relatively high ranges for strings reached through harmonics

String techniques:

• Pizz in v1 only to reinforce effect of the tolling funeral bell

• Mutes

• Double stopping increases the density of the sounds

• Tremolo

• Succession of down bows for emphasis

• Harmonics applied at various points

Use of Piano:

• Extensive passage for piano alone accompanying voice

• Triplet parallel 5th and 8ve chords for pealing bell effects; some parallel 4ths

• Extensive use of both una corda and sustain pedal

• Limited use of tremolo

• pppp-ff

Texture

Tempo, metre and rhythm

• Tempo is flexible with frequent changes to underline narrative

• Some accel + rit

• 2/2 with one bar of 2/4, one bar of 3/2 

• 4/4 at bar 81 - slackening of pace to emphasise solemn mood of funeral march

• Returns to 2/2 bar 115 and at the closing passage with the intervening section that leads to the climax in 4/4

• Long, spacious time-values establish the serenity of the opening

• Quasi recitative vocals - ‘sung freely’ - aleatoric effect

• Persistent triplets bar 56

• Cross-rhythms between piano and vocal line - 52

• Ponderous dotted rhythms and off-beat tolling effect contributes to atmosphere of funeral around bar 100

• Urgency of bells underlined by the quaver motor rhythms

• Piano and strings introduce a triplet figure which appears every third beat - cross-rhythmic effect