Ralph Vaughn Williams: If You Want to Hear What Heaven Must Sound Like, Listen to The Lark Ascending

 

 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

This is the most lyrical music I’ve ever heard, this side of Scheherazade.

Passages and riffs sound familiar, such that I am convinced that Williams has been ripped off by many movie composers. Indeed, I first recall hearing his name in a comment at the Youtube posting of a suite of John Williams’ Oscar-nominated score to The Reivers.

The commenter said, to paraphrase, that Ralph Vaughn Williams’ (1872-1958) fields were among John Williams’ favorite for poaching, at least in the case of The Reivers.

My chief of research insists that he played this for me about a year ago.


The Lark Ascending
 


 

Published on Sep 1, 2010

The World Rose:

http://richardbrittain.wordpress.com/...

An English classic, performed here by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with David Nolan on violin and Vernon Handley conducting.

(Picture: "The Cornfield", 1826, by John Constable)