George Meredith

 

He rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound,

Of many links without a break,

In chirrup, whistle, slur, and shake,

All intervolved and spreading wide,

Like water-dimples down a tide

Where ripple ripple overcurls

And eddy into eddy whirls;

A press of hurried notes that run

So fleet they scarce are more than one,

Yet changingly the trills repeat

And linger ringing while they fleet,

Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dear

To her beyond the handmaid ear,

Who sits beside our inner springs,

Too often dry for this he brings,

Which seems the very jet of earth

At sight of sun, her music's mirth,

As up he wings the spiral stair,

A song of light, and pierces air

With fountain ardour, fountain play,

To reach the shining tops of day,

And drink in everything discerned

An ecstasy to music turned,

Impelled by what his happy bill

Disperses; drinking, showering still,

Unthinking save that he may give

His voice the outlet, there to live

Renewed in endless notes of glee,

So thirsty of his voice is he,

For all to hear and all to know

That he is joy, awake, aglow,

The tumult of the heart to hear

Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,

And know the pleasure sprinkled bright

By simple singing of delight,

Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,

Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained

Without a break, without a fall,

Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,

Perennial, quavering up the chord

Like myriad dews of sunny sward

That trembling into fullness shine,

And sparkle dropping argentine;

Such wooing as the ear receives

From zephyr caught in choric leaves

Of aspens when their chattering net

Is flushed to white with shivers wet;

And such the water-spirit's chime

On mountain heights in morning's prime,

Too freshly sweet to seem excess,

Too animate to need a stress;

But wider over many heads

The starry voice ascending spreads,

Awakening, as it waxes thin,

The best in us to him akin;

And every face to watch him raised

Puts on the light of children praised,

So rich our human pleasure ripes

When sweetness on sincereness pipes,

Though naught be promised from the seas,

But only a soft-ruffling breeze

Sweep glittering on a still content,

Serenity in ravishment.

For singing till his heaven fills,

'Tis love of earth that he instills,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup;

And he the wine which overflows

To lift us with him as he goes—

But not from earth is he divorced,

He joyfully to fly enforced.

The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,

He is, the hills, the human line,

The meadows green, the fallows brown,

The dreams of labor in the town;

He sings the sap, the quickened veins;

The wedding song of sun and rains

He is, the dance of children, thanks

Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,

And eye of violets while they breathe;

All these the circling song will wreathe,

And you shall hear the herb and tree,

The better heart of men shall see,

Shall feel celestially, as long

As you crave nothing save the song.

Was never voice of ours could say

Our inmost in the sweetest way,

Like yonder voice aloft, and link

All hearers in the song they drink.

Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,

Our passion is too full in flood,

We want the key of his wild note

Of truthful in a tuneful note,

The song seraphically free

Of taint of personality,

So pure that it salutes the suns,

The voice of one for millions,

In whom the millions rejoice

For giving their one spirit voice.

Yet men have we, whom we revere,

Now names—and men still housing here—

Whose lives, by many a battle-dint

Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,

Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet

For song our highest heaven to greet;

Whom heavenly singing gives us new,

Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,

From firmest base to farthest leap,

Because their love of Earth is deep,

And they are warriors in accord

With life to serve, and pass reward—

So touching purest and so heard

In the brain's reflex of yon bird.

Wherefore their soul in me—or mine,

Through self-forgetfulness divine,

In them—that song aloft maintains,

To fill the sky and thrill the plains

With showerings drawn from human stores,

As he to silence hearer soars,

Extends the world at wings and dome,

More spacious making more our home,

Till lost on his aerial rings

In light—and then the fancy sings.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending

During a long career that spanned the first half of the 20th century, Ralph Vaughan Williams sparked a new Renaissance of English music. In works ranging from symphonies and concerti to operas, ballets, and hymns, Vaughan Williams blended English folk song, hymnody, and Elizabethan music with themes inspired both by classical masters such as Bach and Handel and the impressionism of Ravel and Debussy. His work in transforming traditional sources into modern settings led the way for later British composers such as Benjamin Britten and William Walton.

 

Born in Gloucestershire, Vaughan Williams studied both in England, at the Royal College of Music in London and at Trinity College in Cambridge, and with Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris. A dedicated musicologist, he collected and catalogued over 800 English folk songs; this work led to his editing the new English Hymnal of 1906, to which he added several new hymns of his own. In compositions such as his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1909) and his first symphony (A Sea Symphony, 1910) he acknowledged his strong debt to historical sources. Yet modern events affected him as well, and his turbulent fourth symphony (1934) is generally considered to reflect his anguish at the growing turmoil during the period before the second World War. In general, his music often evokes both reverence for England's bucolic past and a modern meditiation upon its inevitable passing. 

 

In The Lark Ascending, Vaughan Williams found inspiration not only in English folk themes but in a poem by the English poet George Meredith (1828-1909). The composer included this portion of Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work:

 

He rises and begins to round, 

He drops the silver chain of sound, 

Of many links without a break, 

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. 

 

For singing till his heaven fills, 

‘Tis love of earth that he instils, 

And ever winging up and up, 

Our valley is his golden cup 

And he the wine which overflows 

To lift us with him as he goes. 

 

Till lost on his aerial rings 

In light, and then the fancy sings. 

 

Vaughan Williams's orchestral romance offers an impressionistic image of the lark's song and the countryside, with "our valley" represented by two folk tunes. He completed an early version of the piece in 1914 for violinist Marie Hall, who consulted with him on revisions and first performed the work in a violin-piano arrangement in December 1920. The orchestral version premiered in London at a Queen's Hall concert in June, 1921. 

The formal structure of the piece is a straightforward ABA development, with each theme introduced and linked by the solo intervals. Yet within that structure, the violin solo is notable for its fluid writing and the organic way in which it emerges from and blends back into the orchestral texture throughout the piece. 

 

The work opens with a calm set of sustained chords from the strings and winds. The violin enters as the lark, with a series of ascending, repeated intervals and nimble, then elongated arpeggios. These rise into the first theme, and the orchestra quietly enters to accompany the solo in the development of this somewhat introspective, folk-like motif. The solo cadenza is reprised, then the woodwinds, led by flute and clarinet, announce the second theme, a folk dance. The full orchestra joins in, though Vaughan Williams always keeps the orchestration restrained, never forceful. At one point the soloist pauses in a trill while woodwinds play a series of bird-like calls themselves. Then the violin soars in cadenzas over the orchestra, an effect seen by some as representing the lark flying over the countryside. Another solo lark episode leads to the reprise of the original theme, finally stated by the full strings. The work comes to a quiet close, with the soloist returning to the original ascending, repeated intervals as the lark's song is, indeed, "lost on aerial rings."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbcuteYm-EA