Symphony no.4 in F minor: the piece that started the obsession

Finding time to not only read Simona's book but to explore Vaughan Williams's work has been quite challenging over the last few weeks, fitting it around work and a bad cold. But I was determined to listen to the piece that prompted her lifelong devotion, the Symphony number 4 in F minor. 

It is a very different work to those I have listened to so far and I don't know if I had heard it randomly on the radio, whether I would have recognised it as Vaughan Williams. Described as 'discordant', 'savage' and like an 'edifice of steel of steel and concrete' by critics at the time, it is a world away from the green English countryside conjured by works such as The Lark Ascending.

I'm listening to it again as I write this and I can't escape the impression I had on my first listen that it is a Hitchcock film of a symphony, with a sense of menace always present. I can see James Stewart struggling up the bell tower unable to save Kim Novak from her untimely death in Vertigo. If I were more technically capable I'd try to match sections of the symphony to the film to see whether Vaughan Williams would work as well as Bernard Herrmann's score (it does in my head). As it is, I'll just have to continue using my imagination to marry the two. 

I hadn't realised Vaughan Williams had written film scores until I started reading Simona's book, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at this symphony's filmic nature, although it was first performed in 1935, long before film music really came into its own. So with my 21st century outlook I'm hearing something that the composer would never have intended. Mind you, I'm sure critics of the day heard just as much in the symphony that the composer had no intention of portraying. Indeed, Vaughan Williams said of the piece "Here is a Symphony, occasionally in the key of F minor. Take it or leave it, for that is nearly all I can tell you about it". 

But can I see why Simona was drawn to it? Absolutely. But I am also surprised that being so struck by this most un-Vaughan Williams-esque work that she wasn't disappointed that the other works sound so different. Wouldn't she have been looking for more of the same? My taste in music spans quite a wide range of different styles and genres, but I would be quite perturbed if Cud started releasing tracks that sounded like The Lilac Time. 

But I think the most interesting revelation of this chapter of the book was Simona's dancing. I never saw her dance, nor did she ever come across as somebody who would dance. I would have expected dancing to elicit one of her appalled "Oh"s. (An example of its usual appearance: Simona "Where is this ham from, it is quite delicious." Mum "Tesco's." Simona "Oh!").  But as the quote below shows, this secret music addict was also a secret dancer!

“Falling under its spell at a first hearing did not make the understanding of it any easier, indeed, when I procured the records of it I was shattered to find that I could neither recognise it nor discover what it was that had, on the first hearing, thrown me into such a transport of delight - bit that is a common experience. Finding its sheer noise and the dissonance to which, in those days, I was not accustomed, a barrier between myself and any concentrated attempt to come to terms with it, I decided to subject myself to one movement daily (as background music) while I cleaned the shoes, deliberately not listening in the hope that i would subconsciously get used to the noise - for I was passionately anxious to recapture my original vision. By the fourth day an the fourth movement the shoes were hurled across the room and I was dancing.”