Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Template:Short description Template:Italic title Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox musical composition Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia, is a one-movement work for string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The theme is by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis. The Fantasia was first performed at Gloucester Cathedral as part of the 1910 Three Choirs Festival, and has entered the orchestral repertoire, with frequent concert performances and recordings by conductors and orchestras in various countries.
Background and first performance
Vaughan Williams did not achieve wide recognition early in his career as a composer, but by 1910, in his late thirties, he was gaining a reputation.<ref>Howes, pp. 86–87; and Ottaway, Hugh, and Alain Frogley. "Vaughan Williams, Ralph", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 24 December 2020 Template:Subscription required</ref> In that year the Three Choirs Festival commissioned a work from him, to be premiered in Gloucester Cathedral; this represented a considerable boost to his standing.<ref>Ursula Vaughan Williams, p. 88</ref> He composed what his biographer James Day calls "unquestionably the first work by Vaughan Williams that is recognizably and unmistakably his and no one else's".<ref>Day, p. 25</ref> It is based on a tune by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis, which Vaughan Williams had come across while editing the English Hymnal, published in 1906.<ref name=h87>Howes, p. 87</ref> Vaughan Williams conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the first performance of the Fantasia, as the first part of a concert in Gloucester Cathedral on 6 September 1910, followed by Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by its composer.<ref>"Three Choirs Festival", The Musical Standard, 3 September 1910, p. 143</ref>Template:Refn
Music
Theme
Template:Listen Like several of Vaughan Williams's other works, the Fantasia draws on the music of the English Renaissance.<ref>Mellers, pp. 49–50</ref> Tallis's tune is in the Phrygian mode, characterised by intervals of a flat second, third, sixth and seventh;<ref name=h87/> the pattern is reproduced by playing the white notes of the piano starting on E.<ref name=foreman>Foreman, Lewis (2019). Notes to Onyx CD 4212</ref>
Tallis's theme was one of nine tunes he wrote for the Psalter of 1567 of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. It was a setting of Parker's metrical version of Psalm 2, which in the King James Bible version begins, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?", and is rendered by Parker as "Why fumeth in sight: The Gentils spite, In fury raging stout? Why taketh in hond: the people fond, Vayne things to bring about?".Template:Refn The tune is in Double Common Metre (D.C.M. or C.M.D.).<ref name="EH">Dearmer and Vaughan Williams, p. 63</ref>
According to his biographer Michael Kennedy, Vaughan Williams came to associate Tallis's theme with John Bunyan's Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, a subject with which the composer had a lifelong fascination; he used the tune in 1906 in incidental music he composed for a stage version of the book.<ref name=mk>Kennedy, Michael (2014). Notes to Hallé CD CDHLL 7540</ref> For the Hymnal, he adapted the tune as a setting of Joseph Addison's hymn "When rising from the bed of death".<ref name=f90>Frogley and Thompson, p. 90</ref>Template:Refn
Fantasia
The term "fantasia", according to Frank Howes in his study of Vaughan Williams's works, referred to the 16th-century forerunner of the fugue "in that a thread of theme was enunciated and taken up by other parts, then dropped in favour of another akin to it which was similarly treated".<ref name=h91>Howes, p. 91</ref> Vaughan Williams's fantasia draws on but does not strictly follow this precept, containing sections in which the material is interrelated, although with little wholly imitative writing, and antiphony in preference to contrapuntal echoing of themes.<ref name=h91/> Template:Listen
The Fantasia is scored for double string orchestra with string quartet, employing antiphony between the three contributory ensembles. Orchestra I is the main body of strings; Orchestra II is smaller.<ref>Howes, p. 90</ref> The published score does not stipulate the number of players in Orchestra I; Orchestra II consists of two first violins, two seconds, two violas, two cellos and one double bass<ref>Ralph Vaughan Williams, p. 2</ref> The composer's metronome marking indicates a playing time of 11½ minutes,<ref name=a119>Atlas (2011), p. 119</ref>Template:Refn but in recorded performances the duration has varied between 12m 40s (Dimitri Mitropoulos, 1958) and 18m 12s (Leonard Bernstein, 1976), with a more typical time of between 15 and 16½ minutes.<ref name=a119/><ref>Notes to Parlophone 0724356724051 (Barbirolli); Parlophone 0077776401751 (Boult); Parlophone 0077774939454 (Haitink); Onxy ONYX4212 (Manze) and CDHLL7540 (Elder)</ref>
The piece is structured with an introduction, opening statement of the themes (Tallis’s original hymn melody broken up into its four constituent phrases and interspersed with a “swaying chord” motif), four episodes (exploring different variations of those themes and different voicings across the three ensembles), and then a restatement of the themes and a coda.<ref name="classical.net">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Introduction begins in B-flat major with all three groups playing together, ppp molto sostenuto for two bars of Template:Music time before moving to Template:Music and the low strings plucking hints of the first two phrases of the Tallis theme interspersed with the bowed sway motif.<ref>Ralph Vaughan Williams, p. 3</ref> Kennedy describes the introduction as “a hauntingly poetic introduction before we hear its first full statement in Tallis's four-part harmonisation".<ref name=mk/> Howes comments that "a phrase of swaying chords" after the initial statement of the theme "acts as a kind of recurrent refrain" throughout the main body of the piece.<ref name=h91/>
In the Opening Statement of the full theme, beginning in the 15th bar, the two orchestras and solo quartet come together. The first two Tallis phrases and sway motif are played on all second violins, violas and celli continuing into a Template:Music section in Phrygian mode for the third and fourth phrases of Tallis’s theme.<ref>Ralph Vaughan Williams, p. 4</ref> The first violins join for a restatement of the fourth phrase. In the 30th bar the time signature changes back to Template:Music and the music rises to a climax. Schwarts says “There's much octave double-stopping (each string player sounds two notes at once), a higher dynamic, and an appassionato marking after all!”<ref name="classical.net"/> The statement ends dying away in Template:Music section dying with a texture reminiscent of the opening two bars.
In the First Episode the two orchestras divide, the key switches to C major and the time signature (but not the pulse of the music) changes rapidly. The section uses the second and third Tallis phrases alternating with the sway motif.
The solo viola leads off the Second Episode with a variation on the third Tallis phrase in E phrygian marked Poco più animato. The other three members of the quartet join, followed by the two orchestras, while “the string quartet continues its polyphonic meditation”.<ref name="classical.net"/>
The Third Episode explores the sway motif. The quartet and orchestra 1 play together, contrasting with orchestra 2, and moving poco a poco animando to a crescendo to fortissimo. The climax is in Template:Music.<ref>Ralph Vaughan Williams, pp. 9–17</ref> This dies down to a pianissimo "afterglow".<ref name="classical.net"/>
In the Fourth and shortest episode, marked molto adagio, the sway motif is fragmented. Schwartz describes it as the "deep heart's core of the entire piece - a miracle of the imagination”.
The music reverts to the original time and key for the Restatement. The themes return once again plucked on the low strings then taken up by solo violin and viola, while the reunited orchestras provide a “featherbed of sound”.<ref name="classical.net"/>
In Howes's analysis, "by way of coda the solo violin soars [and] The work ends on a chord of G major".<ref name=h91/>
Kennedy observes: Template:Blockindent
Vaughan Williams revised the work twice: first in January 1913 (for the first London performance), and then again in April 1919, making it more concise each time,<ref>Atlas (2011), p. 118</ref> taking a total of about two minutes off the original 1910 playing time.<ref>Atlas (2011), p. 141</ref>
Reception
The premiere of the Fantasia received a generally warm welcome, with a few exceptions: Herbert Brewer, the Gloucester cathedral organist, described it as "a queer, mad work by an odd fellow from Chelsea".<ref>Hurd, p. 24</ref> The Musical Times reviewer said, "It is a grave work, exhibiting power and much charm of the contemplative kind, but it appears over long for the subject-matter".<ref>"The Gloucester Festival", The Musical Times, 1 October 1910, p. 650</ref> Other reviews were more enthusiastic. The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph praised Vaughan Williams's mastery of string effect and added that although the work might not appeal to some because of its "seeming austerity", it was "extremely beautiful to such as have ears for the best music of all ages".<ref>"Gloucester Festival", The Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1910, p. 7</ref> In The Manchester Guardian, Samuel Langford wrote, "The melody is modal and antique in flavour, while the harmonies are as exotic as those of Debussy … The work marks out the composer as one who has got quite out of the ruts of the commonplace".<ref>Langford, Samuel. "Gloucester Musical Festival", The Manchester Guardian, 7 September 1910, p. 6</ref> In The Times, J. A. Fuller Maitland also commented on ancient and Debussian echoes, and observed: Template:Blockindent In 1954 Howes wrote: Template:Blockindent Listeners of the British classical music radio station Classic FM have regularly voted the piece into the top five of the station's "Hall of Fame", an annual poll of the most popular classical music works.<ref name=halloffame>"Hall of Fame 2014 Template:Webarchive and "Hall of Fame 2020", Classic FM. Retrieved 26 December 2020</ref>
Recordings
Although the BBC first broadcast the Fantasia in 1926, and again over the following decade, conducted by the composer and Arturo Toscanini,<ref>"Vaughan Williams Fantasia Thomas Tallis", BBC Genome. Retrieved 24 December 2020</ref> it was not until 1936 that the work was recorded for the gramophone. The fledgling Decca company recorded it with Boyd Neel conducting his orchestra under the supervision of the composer in January 1936,<ref>Stuart, Philip. Decca Classical, 1929–2009, AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music. Retrieved 5 September 2014</ref> a set described by The Gramophone as one of the outstanding records of the year.<ref>"Some records of the year", The Gramophone, December 1936, p. 279</ref> Since then there have been more than fifty recordings by orchestras and conductors from various countries.
Notes, references and sources
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References
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Books
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Journals
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Further reading
See also
External links
- Score and parts from IMSLP
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