[Hardy-l] TESS and Vaughan Williams

[Arthur Efron]

Is this  well known?

I happened to notice that Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony #9 is thought 
to be a musical rendition, in part, of Hardy's novel. Music critics  
named Michael Kennedy, and in greater detail, Alain Frogley, have worked 
out the relationship. Not that I've ever heard of either of them: they 
are credited in the liner notes I have for my Naxos recording of  the 
symphony, written by Stephan Perreau. 

Vaughan Williams apparently worked from notes expressing his 
understanding of TESS as he composed the symphony, but then he removed 
any written trace of this when it was performed,  in 1958. There are 
enough notes in his surviving manuscripts however to warrant the idea.

First performed in 1958, the symphony was set to be recorded on August 
26 of that year.  But on that day Vaughan Williams, who was born in 
1872, had a heart attack and died.

I think it is a good symphony. And now I can "hear" TESS in it.

--Art Efron