Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Sitting here listening to The Lark Ascending by Vaughn Williams and I am transported back to an English summer day. I’m sitting on a hill top looking out onto a view of rolling fields stretching into the distance. Blue sky and sun above, scattered clouds, a light breeze. The lazy hours of early afternoon as the heat of the day lulls the insects and birds into a quietness. An occasional tweet, the scratching of grasshopper legs, the popping of a seed head.

And then there is the song of the Lark rising above the landscape.

I did not realize that Vaughn Williams took as his inspiration for the piece, an 1881 poem by the English writer George Meredith. Williams second wife, Ursula, wrote that in composing the piece Williams had,

taken a literary idea on which to build his musical thought … and had made the violin become both the bird’s song and its flight, being, rather than illustrating the poem from which the title was taken.¹