R. Vaughn Williams – Underhill Lounge

144a – For All The Saints

Please turn to number 144 (First Tune) and join with the clarinets in, “For All The Saints Who From Their Labors Rest”.

Number: 144 (First Tune)
First Line: For All The Saints Who From Their Labors Rest
Name: SINE NOMINE.
Meter: 10 10 10. With Alleluias.
Music: R. Vaughn Williams, 1872-1958
Text: William Walsham How, 1823-97
From The English Hymnal

Clarinet Arrangement: 144a-ForAllTheSaints

This one is written with the congregation singing in unison for the first section, while the organ plays parts, and the second part with the congregation singing parts. So I couldn’t resist doing something similar. I changed the arrangement up a bit to be unison parts with organ, a capella parts, and then a return to unison with organ accompaniment.

I wrote out the organ parts and exported a midi file for them. Imported it into garageband, and then recorded the clarinet parts.

Here’s a short biography of R. Vaughn Williams from the Ralph Vaughn Williams Society Webpage.

Ralph Vaughan Williams is today fully established as a composer of the utmost importance for English music. In a long and extensive career, he composed music notable for its power, nobility and expressiveness, representing the essence of ‘Englishness’.

Vaughan Williams was born on the 12th October, 1872 in the Cotswold village of Down Ampney. He was educated at Charterhouse School, then Trinity College, Cambridge. Later he was a pupil of Stanford and Parry at the Royal College of Music, after which he studied with Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris.

At the turn of the century he was among the very first to travel into the countryside to collect folk-songs and carols from singers, notating them for future generations to enjoy. As musical editor of The English Hymnal he composed several hymns that are now world-wide favourites (For all the Saints, Come down O love Divine). Later he also helped to edit The Oxford Book of Carols, with similar success. Before the war he had met and then sustained a long and deep friendship with the composer Gustav Holst. Vaughan Williams volunteered to serve in the Field Ambulance Service in Flanders for the 1914-1918 war, during which he was deeply affected by the carnage and the loss of close friends such as the composer George Butterworth.

For many years Vaughan Williams conducted and led the Leith Hill Music Festival, conducting Bach’s St Matthew Passion on a regular basis. He also became professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in London. In his lifetime, Vaughan Williams eschewed all honours with the exception of the Order of Merit which was conferred upon him in 1938.

He died on the 26th August 1958; his ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey, near Purcell. In a long and productive life, music flowed from his creative pen in profusion. Hardly a musical genre was untouched or failed to be enriched by his work, which included nine symphonies, five operas, film music, ballet and stage music, several song cycles, church music and works for chorus and orchestra.

123- Come Down, O Love Divine

Please turn your hymnals to number 123 and join with the clarinets in, “Come Down, O Love Divine”.

Number: 123
First Line: Come Down, O Love Divine
Name: DOWN AMPNEY.
Meter: 6 6, 11. D.
Tempo: Moderately slow; may be sung in unison
Music: R. Vaughn Williams, 1872-1958
Text: Bianco da Siena, 1434
Tr. Richard Frederick Littledale, 1833-90

Clarinet Arrangement: 123-ComeDownOLoveDivine

Not the first R. Vaughn Williams hymn, but a nice one. I will note, the tune seems to be named after the town he was born in.

Ralph Vaughan Williams; OM 12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many folk song arrangements set as hymn tunes, and also influenced several of his own original compositions.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on 12 October 1872 in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, where his father, the Reverend Arthur Vaughan Williams (the surname Vaughan Williams is an unhyphenated double-barrelled name of Welsh origin), was vicar. Following his father’s death in 1875 he was taken by his mother, Margaret Susan née Wedgwood (1843–1937), the great-granddaughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, a Wedgwood family home in the Surrey Hills. He was also related to the Darwins, Charles Darwin being a great-uncle. Though born into the privileged intellectual upper middle class, Vaughan Williams never took it for granted and worked all his life for the democratic and egalitarian ideals in which he believed.

Despite his substantial involvement in church music, and the religious subject-matter of many of his works, he was described by his second wife as “an atheist … [who] later drifted into a cheerful agnosticism.” It is noteworthy that in his opera The Pilgrim’s Progress he changed the name of the hero from John Bunyan’s Christian to Pilgrim. He also set Bunyan’s hymn Who would true valour see to music using the traditional Sussex melody “Monk’s Gate”. For many church-goers, his most familiar composition may be the hymn tune Sine nomine written for the hymn “For All the Saints” by William Walsham How. The tune he composed for the mediaeval hymn “Come Down, O Love Divine” (Discendi, Amor santo by Bianco of Siena, ca.1434) is entitled “Down Ampney” in honour of his birthplace.

044.LongAgoAndFarAway

Please turn to number 44 and join with the clarinets in “Long Ago and Far Away”.

First Line: Long Ago and Far Away
Name: RESONET IN LAUDIBUS.
Meter: Irregular. With Refrain.
Tempo: Brightly in unison
Music: German Carol Melody, 14th Century
Harm. by R. Vaughn Williams, 1872-1958
Text: Edward Traill Horn, III, 1909-
Written for this Book
Refrain XV cent., German, Tr. Oxford Book of Carols

Another well known composer providing Harmonization to this hymn. From the Wikipedia:

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (ⁱ/ˈreɪf ˌvɔːn ˈwɪljəmz/^{[n 1]} 12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

I wasn’t sure about this hymn when I first listened to the sounds from the arranging software, or, indeed the first couple times I played through. The harmonies are kind of delicate and it is quite a bit more complicated than the usual hymns. Almost a small choral piece, more than a hymn.

Clarinet Arrangement: 044-longagoandfaraway

But eventually, when I got the phrasing worked out, I really liked it. Another hymn I don’t remember hearing as a child.

The usual, at this point, method. Doubled all parts, applied Audacity “Large Room” Reverb Effect.