THE ART OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

A textcritical approach of the Elizabethan partsongs

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PRELUDE

A short introduction to the third and final part of this paper.

One of the most outstanding features of the human mind, is its strange incapability to accept – or even to recognize – the most obvious facts. That is to say: inconvenient facts. Such an ostrich like attitude is in general no help to improve knowledge. But this is not always a disadvantage. As demonstrated in that mental case known as politics; the noble art of selling chalk for cheese. A country would be ingovernable if its inhabitants refused to buy it. Problems must only be expected when politicians start to swallow the stuff themselves. Like that day when a disgraced Welsh courtier had convinced himself that the Prime Minister was selling the country:

To prevent that from happening, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, launched on Sunday eight February 1601 a coup d’état against the government of Elizabeth I of England. An action that led him straight to the scaffold. Which was at the time considered a fairly normal result. But the Essex rebellion is unique in both planning and execution. The motive was imaginary to begin with. A personal feud with the PM was apparently not enough to serve Essex as a justification. And the Earl made his move while half his men were still on their way to London. The advantage of surprise would have compensated for their absence, but what on earth made this former commander of the Queen’s Expeditionary Forces to neglect the necessity to attack according some plan?

The result was surreal. Instead of seizing the unprotected Westminster Palace, with the guarantee of instant victory, or the Tower, which would have secured him at least a firm grip on London, Essex launched a surprise attack on… lunch. While government was racing in reinforcements from all directions, the rebels were for three precious hours reinforcing the inner swordsman, untill all momentum of their action was spoiled.

The only reason for the Essex rebellion to keep scholars occupied, therefore is its upbeat; the notorious performance of Shakespeare’s 1595 history play; ‘The Tragedy of King Richard the Second’. To the pleasure of a more than receptive audience, this play on the succesfull coup of 1399 had proven itself the previous evening, as staged on short notice by Shakespeare’s own company, a revolutionary piece of art in the most literal sense of the word. It took a thorough inquiry before authorities decided that the players had been fooled into assistance. Yet, it is not impossible that Shakespeare, being the protegé of deputy rebel leader Henry Wriothesley, had been informed in advance, or even had purposedly assisted in the fooling itself. By lack of a source of inside information, research on this matter is restricted to inventing theories, and discussing their plausibility. All in the reassuring certainty that no hard evidence will ever come to light to prove Shakespeare guilty of high treason. Discussing the matter on an abstract level is a pleasant way to keep the mind occupied, but what can be gained by blackening a great artist’s reputation for real?

In regard to Shakespeare’s political preferences; less than nothing. To the audience nothing should matter but the quality of his works. But this quality is of course not always answering to the highest standards.

Especially the Victorian ones on decency are somewhat overdone to judge lines written to please people more familiar to the symptoms of syphilis than to soap. These standards however, have been in common use deep into the final quarter of the twentieth century. Forcing people for a long period of time to turn in public a blind eye to a significant aspect of some of literature’s greatest masterpieces. An aspect only returning to a certain degree of acceptability very recently, due to television’s increasing influence on society. Taking away all need for experts, facing it, to submerge their heads in sand.

And so, in the autumn of 2004, I finally found the courage to prepare my 1991 analysis of the short love song O Mistress Mine for publication (At last television has achieved something positive).

Written for the comedy Twelfth-Night, the song’s first public performance seems to have taken place during the twelfth night of Royal Court’s 1600 Christmas revels, being the sixth of January 1601. Which, as it happens, dates the completion of the play about the time Essex started to prepare for rebellion. But as a rule love songs stay clear from such trivialities as political upheaval, and therefore my analysis has so far produced only dates on human interaction of a more friendly nature.

As the overall title of this paper shows, my analysis is to a great extend tributary to the 1913 release of a cycle of three Elizabethan partsongs by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

Part One, titled; ‘An impossible combination’, demonstrated which way a set of three independent poems by different authors establishes a single story about reduced virtue. The second part; ‘Adults only’ revealed whose virtue it was Vaughan Williams seems to have had in mind, when he wrote his music.

This final part will deal with the consequences of fooling following three innocent texts into co-operation. And in the process we will unavoidably experience that there is a lot of wisdom in this old saying from German origin:

Every consequence leads to the devil.

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Sweet Day  (ca. 1625)

Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
           For thou must die.

Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
           And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
           Then chiefly lives.

George Herbert (1593 – 1633)
Originally ‘Virtue’ but this setting omits four lines

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The Willow Song  (1603/04)

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
     Sing all a green willow;
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
     Sing, willow, willow, willow:
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur’d her moans;
     Sing, willow, willow, willow;
Her salt tears fell from her, and soften’d the stones;
     Sing, willow, willow, willow:
Sing all a green willow must be my garland.

Words from Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’
Originally ‘The Song of Willow’, but this setting omits four lines

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O MISTRESS MINE   (1600)

O mistress mine! where are you roaming?
O! stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
       That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
       Every wise man’s son doth know. 

What is love? ‘t is not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
       What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
       Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
This setting of ‘Carpe Diem’ omits Morley’s four line repetitions

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CONTENTS

Part One ; or, An Impossible Combination

Part Two ; or, Adults Only

Part Three ; or, Revolutionary Art

• an impossible plot
• for thou must die
• the year of living dangerously
• to alter the numbers
• Bach to basics
• symmetry
• repeat the message
• take the word of one who still does lie
• zero seconds from disaster
• the proper time to publish
• to die unvoluntary
• revolutionary art

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Part III 

Revolutionary Art 

AN IMPOSSIBLE PLOT

What started as lovely music on an haphazard choice of poetry, appeared to be a singular box where sweets compacted lie; and dallying with the innocence of love, Ralph Vaughan Williams combined this pieces to a message for the ears of King Edward VII only.

So it stands to reason to assume this music was composed to be performed in the presence of the adulterous king himself, in order to confront him with his guilty concience. But this possibility causes a very nasty problem, for things are hidden far to well to serve this purpose. Even worse; Vaughan Williams would have served poisoned sweets if he ever had informed Edward VII that only a virtuous soul is like seasoned timber:

The woodwork supporting a roof is usually as rigid as a poem’s structure. But at this occasion both the overall song and all three assembling parts are equally moving;  they spin round like roofs blown away in a tempest. And this way at least the shape of the message is straight about the consequences of royal misconduct:

the king must go.

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FOR THOU MUST DIE

When reversion turns into revolution – and blowing a reigning monarch, who is habitually unfaithfull to his queen, to kingdom come with the message

‘Only the virtuous soul shall live, and
the soul which is not virtuous shall die’

might easily be interpreted like that – artistic innocence turns into high treason. And so, even without any information whether the partsongs have ever been performed in the presence of King Edward, logic reasoning has led step by step into absurdity. To prepare music to such an objective would have been criminal in itself, but Ralph Vaughan Williams to plot against his sovereign is as ridiculous a thought as, for instance, George Herbert to write pornography.

The contents of Sweet Day made me therefore soon decide I was dealing with an Edwardian mystification. But when I revealed my findings to an Englishman, he responded instantaniously by quoting the first lines by heart. This sample from ‘Shakespeare’s Bawdy’ happens to be a much used textbook example of Herbert’s style. It was the Department of English from Amsterdam Free University that informed me subsequently that: “the poem is not titled ‘Sweet Day’ but ‘Vertue’ (virtue), as all religious poetry of GH it was first published in 1633.” It should be impossible, but this perfect Shakespeare imitation indeed is a genuine Herbert.

RVW not only renamed the poem, he also removed the second quatrain. Because this has no negative effect on the remainder, Virtue is reduced to Sweet Day by the removal of four superfluous lines. With this quatrain in its proper place, it is virtually impossible to deny that the Herbert’s rose belongs to the botanic genus Rosa. Which apparently rules out the liberty to consider the word to represent a pretty girl, as the English language would have allowed otherwise. And so all ambiguity collapses to nought; the rose is used here as a metaphor, showing that in the midst of life we are in death:

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave,
           And thou must die. 

Which leaves us with sixteen lines of first rate religious poetry with a timber like structure and another nasty problem: it is impossible for these Elizabethan partsongs to exist when Herbert did not enable the reduction Virtue for the very purpose of enabling Ralph Vaughan Williams to confront Edward VII with his opinion on the king’s private affairs. Had I been aware of this conflicting piece of evidence from the beginning, I had very likely failed to recognize what the poem is telling sub rosa. And would have lacked a vital link in the chain of reasoning.

Lack of knowledge was for once to my advantage, I started my research with nothing but the half forgotten outlines of English history in mind, and an old schoolbook on the country’s literature on my desk. When I faced all double dealings in their almost perfect symmetry -12, 9 and 12 lines = 73, 65 and 74 words – with identical twin poems flanking the centre piece my conclusion was an obvious one. The more because I could not find the title ‘Sweet Day’ in the index of Herbert’s poetry. Obvious because the second line seems to be a poetic view on the constitutional monarchy. A feature that cannot be found in a genuinly seventeenth century document. The next paragraphs will show that it would almost certainly have stopped me in my tracks if I had known the complete poem from the beginning. 

As things stand now, it is as if the composer has personally asked Herbert to write exactly the words he needed to his music. Words from a class neither Ralph Vaughan Williams nor George Herbert have ever been associated with in their entire lifes, and including a reference to a modern constitutional monarchy, with the king acting as his government’s ‘bridle’ to lead society. In short: ‘Three Elizabethan Part Songs’ exists against all reason. And that is the optimistic assessment.

When taken into account that rulers by ancient tradition are entitled to sow their seed as wide as humanly possible – once they had in a certain primitive culture even the right to stand in for their male subjects in their first wedded night – it is absolutely not done to threaten a king with removal for having plenty of mistresses. Their (rumoured, but never officially confirmed) numbers rather served between colleagues for status symbols.

And as if things are not complicated enough allready, the threat is camouflaged far too well to achieve anything. King Edward lived out his life untroubled by guilt or revolution, while Ralph Vaughan Williams in his turn was left in peace by the public prosecutor. So stating this cycle to exist against all reason is by no means strong enough:

The three-part song is against all reason.

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THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY 

Of course Ralph Vaughan Williams was well aware of this paradoxal character of his composition, explaining why it was not published untill three years after the king’s sudden death in 1910. An interval that allows all necessary time for a highly important look into the overall design of the music. As to be expected from music on a text which unity goes under maximum cover; at first glance there is none:

Sweet Day                                              50 bars
– – – – – – – – – –
The Willow Song                                 33 bars
– – – – – – – – – –
O Mistress Mine                                   29 bars

Even the copyrights differ per song, but the opening pair has in E-minor a common key, leaving the third one (E flat-major) on itself. And because all this article’s links between songs are nothing but shortcuts to information initially extracted from Mistress, I consider her a key on her own:

Sweet Day                                            E-minor
The Willow Song                                E-minor
– – – – – – – – – –
O Mistress Mine                           E flat-major

This choise of keys is a well considered one: E-minor is, according to the composer Johann Mattheson (1681 – 1764), best suited to express sadness & sorrow (as in TWS), and reflectiveness (as in SD). Unfortunately I do not know what he makes of airily OMM’s key,  but it evidently creates a contrast. And both keys happen to refer to a certain initial.

Meanwhile we now see a repetition of moves from Part I. Therefore we can be pretty certain the music must be able to place the Herbert song opposite a Shakespearean couple, before uniting the cycle by the common beat. And of course Sweet Day is from a more recent date than the others.

Sweet Day                                                  1896
– – – – – – – – – –
The Willow Song                                       1891
O Mistress Mine                                         1891

And to complete the procedure:

Sweet Day                                            3/4 beat
The Willow Song                                3/4 beat
O Mistress Mine                                 3/4 beat

The musical composition follows the regrouping from three stand alone songtexts to an unity (see Part One) at pitch. Making it impossible for the cycle not to be designed as such in advance. Information that sheds new light on following words from the booklet accompanying the Hyperion cd-recording of these songs:

Scored for mixed voices, these partsongs show charm, but little sophistication in the choral writing. Nevertheless their simple, diatonic harmony is far removed from the rich chromaticism of the day and points to the mature composer.

(Andrew Burn ©1995) 

It is very well within any composer’s range, to write less sophisticated than his skills allow, but the nineteen year old pupil of Hubert Parry to abandon in his Shakespeare settings the prevailing fashion is something remarkable. Even more so, because he preludes on developments taking place long after he is in five years time to compose Sweet Day in the same manner.

Dismissing the years of composition as antedatings, however, has a major drawback: the collapse of the regrouping. This regrouping’s third position is based on the dates of composition, and accepting these dates as correct is not done when constructing what is still the sole available piece of evidence for antedating. This cycle’s paradoxal character is causing enough problems already, and allowing it to develop a similar defect in its dating is the last thing we can afford. So we are in need of something better to divide Sweet Day from the united Shakespeares. The year of composition never was quite as musical a division as the other ones anyway.

Some advanced research, performed on my behalf by Marius Lindeijer (Head of the Composition Department at ARTEZ High School of Music, Zwolle, Netherlands) has brought no other musical connections between songs to light. Leaving only one option open to deal with the problem, even when in terms of musicology it seems to be an absurd one: the recount of 112 bars of music.

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