On Wenlock Edge (song cycle)

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On Wenlock Edge
by Ralph Vaughan Williams
19th-century painting of a hilly landscape, sen from a hill with trees framing the view
View from Wenlock Edge, Shropshire
GenreSong cycle
TextExtracts from A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman (1896)
Languageen
Movements6
Scoring
Premiere
Date15 November 1909
LocationAeolian Hall, London
PerformersGervase Elwes, Frederick Kiddle and the Schwiller Quartet

On Wenlock Edge is a song cycle composed in 1909 by Ralph Vaughan Williams for tenor, piano and string quartet.[1] The cycle comprises settings of six poems from A. E. Housman's 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad. A typical performance lasts around 22 minutes.[2] It was premiered by Gervase Elwes, Frederick Kiddle and the Schwiller Quartet on 15 November 1909 in the Aeolian Hall, London.[3]

It was later orchestrated by the composer in a version first performed on 24 January 1924.[4] Subsequent editions show a measure excised from the final movement (Clun): the third measure from the end. The Boosey and Hawkes 1946 score notes indicates this in a footnote on the last page. The cycle was recorded by Elwes, Kiddle and the London String Quartet in 1917.

The Roman numerals in the following list refor to the poems in A Shropshire Lad,:[5][6] including "Is My Team Ploughing". Bredon Hill and Clun refer to locations.

  1. XXXI "On Wenlock Edge"
  2. XXXII "From Far, from Eve and Morning"
  3. XXVII "Is My Team Ploughing"
  4. XVIII "Oh, When I Was in Love with You"
  5. XXI "Bredon Hill" (first line: "In summertime on Bredon")
  6. L "Clun" (Housman's title, first line: "Clunton and Clunbury")

An earlier version of "Is My Team Ploughing?", for voice and piano, had been performed on 26 January 1909 in a concert sponsored by Elwes and James Friskin.

To Housman's annoyance, Vaughan Williams omitted the third and fourth verses of "Is My Team Ploughing". The composer remarked in 1927 or later that he felt “that the composer has a perfect right artistically to set any portion of a poem he chooses provided he does not actually alter the sense”.[3]

References

[edit | edit source]
  1. ^ A Critical Analysis of “On Wenlock Edge” by Ralph Vaughan Williams digitalcommons.cwu.edu
  2. ^ On Wenlock Edge: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
  3. ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  4. ^ Trevor Hold, Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song-composers, Woodbridge 2002, p.113
  5. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  6. ^ A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman at Project Gutenberg

Further reading

[edit | edit source]
  • Evans, Edwin (June 1, 1918). "English Song and 'On Wenlock Edge.'" The Musical Times, vol. 59, no. 904, pp. 247–249.
  • LaRue, Jan (1967). "A Legacy from Vaughan Williams: Authentic Tempi for On Wenlock Edge." The Music Review, vol. 28, pp. 147–148.
[edit | edit source]
  • File:Wikisource-logo.svg Texts on Wikisource:
  1. "On Wenlock Edge"
  2. "From Far, from Eve and Morning"
  3. "Is My Team Ploughing?"
  4. "Oh, When I Was in Love with You"
  5. "Bredon Hill"
  6. "Clun"

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