Vaughan Williams: Three Songs of Travel

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Three Songs of Travel (texts: Robert Louis Stevenson)

1. The Vagabond
2. Whither Must I Wander?
3. Bright is the Ring of Words

Vaughan Williams had a long apprenticeship: after leaving school he spent two years at the Royal College of Music, then three at Trinity College Cambridge where he gained degrees in music and history. After that he spent a further year back at the Royal College. As late as 1908 he still felt the need to seek instruction and took lessons with Ravel. The Songs of Travel, written mostly in 1904, are a product of the end of his studies. In these songs as well as the Sea Symphony that he began at the same time, the first signs of a distinctive voice emerge.


It was around this time what two events occurred that profoundly shaped his career. The first was in 1903 when he began to collect folk songs. The second came in 1904 when he was invited to edit the English Hymnal. Both of these influences are clearly to be heard in the songs.


Vaughan Williams intended Songs of Travel to be published as a single cycle. In the event, it was came out in two volumes, neither of which contained “Whither Must I Wander.” Only in the 1960s was the set published complete and in the order he intended, including a posthumously discovered song that acts as an epilogue and is intended only to be performed as part of the complete cycle.


Vaughan Williams orchestrated the three songs originally published as “Volume One” himself, including “The Vagabond” and “Bright is the Ring of Words”. The remainder were orchestrated posthumously by his assistant Roy Douglas. “The Vagabond” establishes the romanticism of the cycle, introducing the archetypal character of the wanderer. This reflects Vaughan Williams’ debt to the example of Schubert’s song cycles, in particular Die Winterreise; indeed, Stevenson, who often set his words to tunes of his own and others’ composition, had originally written the poem “to an air of Schubert.”


“Whither Must I Wander” was the first of the songs to be composed, and appeared in print in 1902 in issue two of the Voice, whose first issue had given a major boost to Vaughan Williams’ career by printing his song “Linden Lea” on the advice of his former teacher Stanford. This is another highly lyrical poem: Stevenson indicates that it was written to fit the folk tune “Wandering Willie”. Vaughan Williams’ setting is unaffected, direct and extraordinarily moving.

“Bright is the RIng of Words” has something of the feel of a hymn about it, which is entirely appropriate for a poem that meditates on the way that what we do lives on after us. Apppropriately, it nods towards the tune “Sine Nomine” that he wrote for the hymn “For All the Saints” in the New English Hymnal: a tune to which he repeatedly returned to throughout his career, and which is a legacy so widely known that it is often forgotten that it was he who created it.

Walton: Variations on a theme of Hindemith

William Walton (1902-1983)

Variations on a theme of Hindemith


Theme: Andante con moto – I Vivace – II Allegramente – III Larghetto – IV Moto perpetuo –
V Andante con moto – VI Scherzando – VII Lento molto – VIII Vivacissimo – I
X Maestoso – Finale – Allegro molto


Walton and Hindemith were almost exact contemporaries - the German was the senior of the two by seven years - and enjoyed a friendship that lasted most of their careers. They first met in 1923, but the defining moment of their friendship came in 1929, when the viola player Lionel Tertis rejected the concerto that Walton had written for him. Viola soloists were a breed hard to come by. Fortunately for Walton, Hindemith was an accomplished player as well as a composer and stepped in to give the premiere of the concerto. The success of it was crucial in establishing Walton's reputation. Walton never forgot the debt he owed him.


Walton had been considering writing a set of variations on a theme from Hindemith’s Cello Concerto for some time when he was commissioned by the Philharmonic Society to compose a work for their 150th anniversary in 1963. The timing was perfect: Walton was enjoying one of his increasingly rare productive periods, and had recently completed two major orchestral works, the Partita and the Second Symphony. His music was by this time out of fashion, as was Hindemith's, and he saw the Variations not only as a thank-you to his old friend, but as a declaration of solidarity with one of the few composers alive with whom he felt a real affinity.


Walton repaid the debt just in time. Hindemith and his wife heard the premiere via a private recording that Walton sent them. He declared himself delighted: “Let us thank you for your kindness and for the wonderfully touching and artistically convincing manifestation of this kindness, “ he wrote, promising to programme it as part of his upcoming conducting engagements. The planned performances never came about; within six months Hindemith died.


The opening statement of the theme uses not just Hindemith’s melody, but much of his orchestration, with the cello line redistributed among the winds. There follow nine variations and a finale. Walton had a nagging sensation writing the work that the theme reminded him of something else: he suddenly realised its resemblance to a theme from Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler, from a scene centered around the German painter Matthias Grünewald’s portrait of St. Anthony. Walton duly quotes from the opera in the slow sixth variation, which forms the core of the work. The finale takes the form of an energetic, syncopated fugue in which virtuosity is to the fore - the whole piece could very easily have been styled as a concerto for orchestra - before the theme is restated very simply once more in a calm, elegiac coda.