The early works of Vaughan Williams and a digression about Sickert
So this week I have been reading the first section of Simona's book about Vaughan Williams, which focuses on his early works, written between 1894 and 1922. I also bought myself a box set of his symphonies and a few other key works; there is little to be enjoyed in a book about a musical obsession if you don't know the music being obsessed about.
I was. however, familiar with one of the pieces discussed in the chapter before my collection arrived: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. This was a favourite piece of one of my music teachers and whenever he wanted a quiet lesson (or perhaps had not prepared a lesson plan) he would play it, and the Fantasia on Greensleeves, and go into silent, closed-eye raptures. We always enjoyed these particular lessons, as it usually meant he hadn't thought of any work for us to do, and provided we didn't disturb his reverie, we were free to do whatever we wanted. These are stunningly beautiful works and I can quite appreciate my teacher's desire to listen to them so often, but it was a missed opportunity to teach us about them and their composer. The unusual scoring, for example, for one large and one small string orchestra, placed apart from each other, as well as a string quartet.
Simona's writing also took me back to these lessons as it discussed the musical structures and forms used by Vaughan Williams in his early works. I could have rattled off these terms myself at one time, but my music O level was many years ago and they had long since been relegated to that place for redundant facts at the back of your brain, to be dragged out only when needed to answer a question on University Challenge.
I'm not going to attempt to summarise Simona's analysis of the music, which is erudite and well informed - something I could never achieve with my limited knowledge. I've enjoyed most of what I've listened to so far; The Wasps had me batting away pesky insects and I could hear the bustle of the capital in the London Symphony, before reading that my father, aged three, declared the scherzo to be "full of trains". The choral Sea Symphony, however, I am struggling with. I definitely prefer my classical music without a voice.
The passion with which Simona wrote about the music took me again by surprise, given how controlled she was in her emotions when I knew her. For a woman of her era and class, emotional displays wouldn't have been the norm, but she clearly felt able to express this in her writing. If only I had made the effort to read her books while she was alive so we could have talked about her love for Vaughan Williams and she could have guided my discovery of his music in person.
A digression about Sickert
My Great Great Grandmother Ginny, by Walter Sickert. c.1900
Last Thursday was the anniversary of the death of the artist Walter Sickert.
Sickert lived in Dieppe at the same time as my family and became friends with Simona's grandmother, Polly Price (Ginny), her sisters Eliza and Lilias, and their mother, the original Simona Middleton. He even used to take Polly's daughter (Simona's mother Phil) to and from school and let her play in his studio.
“Though he presented all of the Middletons with pictures, Polly received the most. He also drew her often. Coquettishly, she claimed not to like Sickert’s depictions of her face; he responded by insisting that in future he would only draw her from behind.”
So given the anniversary of Sickert's death, I decided to post a picture he drew of Ginny on Twitter. It had quite a lot of interest, mostly from people commenting what a lovely picture it was, and how special it is to have such an memento. But, of course, somebody replied "did you know many people believe he was Jack the Ripper?" with a snarky tone that suggested I should be ashamed that my ancestor had been drawn by him. Well, yes I do know all about the rumours, and I also know that nobody in the art world, nor 'Ripperologists' pay it any heed. There is a notorious murderer in Simona's story (more on that at a later date), but it is not Jack the Ripper.