Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, England, on October 12, 1872. After attending the Royal College of Music, he studied composition privately with Max Bruch in Berlin. In 1901 he was appointed organist of the St. Barnabas Church in London. For the next few years he devoted himself mainly to church music. His interest in the English folk songs of the Tudor period, first stimulated in 1904, proved for him a decisive turning point. Besides dedicating himself henceforth to intensive research in English folk music (much of which he helped to revive from neglect and obscurity through his editions and adaptations) he found a new direction as composer: in the writing of music with a national identity, music absorbing the melodic, harmonic and modal techniques—at times even the actual material—of these old songs and dances. This new trend first became evident in 1907 with his Norfolk Rhapsodies. After an additional period of study with Maurice Ravel in Paris, Vaughan Williams embarked upon the writing of his first major works which included the famous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, London Symphony, and the opera Hugh the Drover. Subsequent works in all fields of composition placed him with the masters of 20th-century music. These compositions included symphonies, operas, concertos, fantasias, choral and chamber music. For more than thirty years, Vaughan Williams taught composition at the Royal College of Music in London; from 1920 to 1928 he was the conductor of the Bach Choir, also in that city. He paid two visits to the United States, the first time in 1922 to direct some of his works at a music festival in Connecticut, and the second time a decade later to lecture at Bryn Mawr College. He received the Order of Merit in 1935 and the Albert medal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1955. He died in London on August 26, 1958.
Only a meagre number of Vaughan Williams’ compositions have popular appeal. One of these is the Fantasia on Greensleeves, for orchestra. “Greensleeves” is an old English folk song dating from the early 16th century, and mentioned in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. In the 17th century it became the party song of the Cavaliers. Americans know it best through a popular-song adaptation in 1957. Vaughan Williams’ delightful fantasia appears as an orchestral interlude in his opera Sir John in Love (1929), based on The Merry Wives of Windsor. A brief episode for flute leads to “Greensleeves,” which is harmonized opulently for strings. Two brief variations follow. Then the opening flute episode is recalled as is the folk song itself—the main melody in lower strings with embellishments in the upper ones.
The March of the Kitchen Utensils is an amusing little episode for orchestra, part of the incidental music prepared by the composer for a production of Aristophanes’ The Wasps in Cambridge in 1909. This march opens with a humorous little theme for the wind instruments in the impish style of Prokofiev. The theme is taken over by the strings. The middle section is much more in the identifiable national style of Vaughan Williams with a melody that resembles an old English folk dance.
Jacques Wolfe
Jacques Wolfe, composer of songs in the style of Negro Spirituals familiar in the repertory of most American baritones, was born in Botoshan, Rumania on April 29, 1896. He was trained as a pianist at the Institute of Musical Art. While serving in the army during World War I, a member of the 50th Infantry Band, he was stationed in North Carolina where he first came into contact with Negro folk songs. This made such a profound impression on him that he devoted himself to research in this field. After the war he made many appearances on the concert stage both as a solo performer and as an accompanist. For several years he was also a teacher of music at New York City high schools.
Wolfe’s two best known songs in the style of Negro folk songs appeared in 1928. One is “De Glory Road,” words by Clement Wood, a work of such extraordinary fervor and dramatic character that it has proved a sure-fire number with concert baritones throughout the country, and notably with Lawrence Tibbett with whom it was a particular favorite. The other was “Short’nin’ Bread,” to Wolfe’s own words. The latter in all probability is not original with Wolfe but an adaptation of one of the melodies he discovered in North Carolina. Several Negro composers have been credited with being its composer; one of them was Reese d’Pres who is said to have written the melody in or about 1905.
Among Wolfe’s other familiar songs are “God’s World,” “Goin’ to Hebb’n” and “Hallelujah Rhythm.”
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice, Italy, on January 12, 1876. Originally planning to make art his career he went to Rome, but while there became so fascinated by opera that then and there he decided to become a musician. He completed his musical training in Munich in 1895 with Josef Rheinberger. In 1899 he returned to his native city where his first major work—an oratorio, La Sulamite—was successfully performed. His first opera, Cenerentola (Cinderella) was introduced in Venice in 1900. His first comic opera (or opera buffa) came to Munich in 1903: Le Donne Curiose. He achieved world renown with still another comic opera, The Secret of Suzanne, first performed in Munich in 1909. This distinguished achievement was followed by an equally significant achievement in a serious vein, the grand opera, The Jewels of the Madonna, first heard in Berlin in 1911. One year later Wolf-Ferrari paid his first visit to the United States to attend in Chicago the American première of The Jewels of the Madonna. He wrote many operas after that, both in a comic and serious style, but his fame still rests securely on The Secret of Suzanne and The Jewels of the Madonna. From 1902 to 1912 he was director of the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice. He died in that city on January 21, 1948.
From The Jewels of the Madonna (I Gioielli della Madonna) have come several familiar orchestral episodes. This tragedy—libretto by the composer with verses by Carlo Zangarini and Enrico Golisciani—was successfully introduced in Berlin on December 23, 1911. Rafaele, leader of the Camorrists, and Gennaro, a blacksmith, are rivals for the love of Maliela. After Rafaele appears to have won Maliela’s love, Gennaro wins her away from his rival by stealing for her the jewels decorating the image of the Madonna. Maliela confesses to Rafaele and other Camorrists about this theft, then rushes off into a raging sea to meet her death. After Gennaro has returned the jewels to the Madonna, he plunges a dagger into his own breast.