Serenade to Music

Ralph Vaughan Williams was a venerable figure in British music. I clearly remember the tremendous wave of respect for him as he made his entrance, aided by a stick, to take the plaudits for the first performance of his Ninth Symphony, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent at the Royal Albert Hall in April 1958, just a few months before RVW’s death in August. One of the talking points of his new work was the inclusion of the saxophone and the flugelhorn in the scoring. Although earlier composers had written for the saxophone, the mellow flugelhorn was quite possibly making its debut in the symphonic world, but something went awry with the awaited entry and it was only years later, talking to the player concerned in this performance, that I learned that just before the flugelhorn's solo passage, one of the valves on the instrument had stuck down! Quick as a flash, a trumpet colleague leaned over and played the music.

In retrospect, the Ninth has not been as highly regarded as earlier works, whereas Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music has always been a favourite. Written in 1938 for sixteen solo voices and orchestra, the composer arranged a purely orchestral version the following year. The text for the solo voices was the beautiful passage, spoken by Lorenzo to his wife, Jessica, in Act 5, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice:-

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn:

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,

And draw her home with music.