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Vaughan Williams - On Wenlock Edge - Coggle Diagram
Vaughan Williams - On Wenlock Edge
Context
English folk song
Early 20th century when it was beginning to die out.
Country people sang traditional songs that had been passed down - often performed at home, unaccompanied.
Williams went travelling to discover these songs and to preserve them.
The English choral tradition
Thomas Tallis and William Byrd
Modal music like OWE
French impressionist music
V.W studied with Ravel in Paris before writing OWE.
Style can be heard right from the beginning - Tremolo strings and parallel harmonies.
Instrumentation
Unusual - 19th century pieces are typically a piano quintet
Instead went onto solo voice and piano quintet (piano and string quartet) - Really rare
V.W supplied an alternative part for solo piano in the absence of a string quartet.
Piano style
Block chords - Homophonic style particularly apprent in the last song to illustrate the sound of church bells
Trlls
Parallel chords
Una corda pedal
Ostinato accompaniments - Semiquaver ostinato figures fom bar 5 of first song
Rapid arpeggios
String style
Tremolo right form the start w/ pizz cello
Triple stopped pizzicato in Cello
Sul ponticello
Instrumentation is reduced - solo cello to piano from bar 9 of IMTP
Con sordino - muted affect is primarily for harmonic effect
Open harmonics - End of BH - sounds and octave higher than written
Vocal style
Tenor soloist - not particularly virtuosic
Syllabic w/ occasional melismas
Frequent use of anacrusis to fit iambic nature of poetry
Beginning of IMTP - recitative style
Rhythm and metre
Frequent time signature changes
Combined with speed changes indicated by animando
BH - sustained bell chords with tied semibreves
Careful accentuation of syllables and to work with natural rhythm of speech.
Texture
Constantly varying texture
Piano doubles the upper string parts w/ pizzicato cello doubling 2nd violin down the octave
Unison trills in 2nd Vln and Viola
IMTP - instrumental parts move together homorhythmically.
Chordal homophony in strings enables the voice to sing in free tempo
BH features sustained chords imitating sound of the tolling bells
Mel dom hom in BH
Tonality and Harmony
Much harmony is consonant
Parallel chords feature from bar 1 - typically impressionist feature
Dissonance - used in word painting
Chromatic chordal movement
Dorian mode at the beginning of IMTP
Structure
On Wenlock Edge
AABBA/B
1-16
Instrumental intro then tenor voice
At first diatonic modal over a pentatonic style
16-31
Modified repeat of the music for the 1st verse
Insturmental intro now starts in the middle of the bar
31-43
New music for the intro in 3rd verse
Extended trills
Mysterious chromatic phrases to reflect word painting
43-55
Modified repeat of 3rd verse
55-end
Music combines last verse combines elements of the music from both 1st and 3rd verses
Instrumental music from beginning of the 1st verse is heard at the beginning of the section
Vocal melody from 1st verse heard in left hand piano.
Is My Team Ploughing?
Modified strophic form
1-18
Conversation between two young men
Music of the dead man is marked misterioso and pianissimo to give the senstion of being sung from a distance
19-37
Music from 1st 2 verses repeated
38-end
Music starts the same as the previous pairs of verses
Agitated tremolos
Tutti
Brendon Hill
Severn verses
1-35
Tenor has simple diatonic melody in Mixolydian mode - recalls happier times
35-51
Repeat of the music of the first verse, with four bars of bell chords at the end
52-66
Bells now peal out more with the unaccompanied piano
66-83
Music continues without a break over similar but quieter ostinato bell phrases
84-100
Strings return and music becomes quieter
More dissonance
100-114