[Hardy-l] TESS and Vaughan Williams

[segrmusic]

Kennedy was a well-known music critic who wrote knowledgably about VWs
orchestral works as well as other British composers.   I especially recall
his compelling sleeve notes on the vinyl recording of the London Symphony.

Looks as if you may have picked up the Tess connection from Wikipedia.
I can't find my recording but I remember No.9 is full of ghosts and
a very disturbing work.   Let us know where you hear Tess.
Is it near "the ghostly drummer of Salisbury Plain"?!

Roy.



-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Efron [mailto:efron at buffalo.edu]
Sent: 28 December 2008 07:06
To: hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu; efron at buffalo.edu
Subject: [Hardy-l] TESS and Vaughan Williams


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


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