MUSIC
Tribute to Vaughan Williams
THERE was one person who last week benefited from the ill-wind of war, which spared him the glare of public admiration that in happier times he would have had to endure. For Dr. Vaughan Williams shrinks instinctively from public applause as though it were inherently disagreeable and even vicious, or at best no more endurable than the gush and flattery of unintelligent adulation, Once, deeply moved by the slow movement of the F Minor Symphony, I tried to express to the composer my sense of its beauty, only to be crushed with a growl of, " I never want to hear it again! "
There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that Vaughan Williams, the composer of symphonies, chamber music, a Mass and so on, is a recondite high-brow. Not only his love of our English folk-song, which is not with him a dilettante interest in the antique and picturesque, bears witness to his enjoyment of the pleasures of ordinary mortals. He pays "homage " to Henry Hall in one of his least easily accessible chamber works, though the homage seems to be an invitation to that famous bandmaster to leave his jazzing and join the country dance rather than an imitative tribute to his style, and the " oompah " basses which give such lift and gusto to much of his symphonic music testify to his appreciation of what may be made of the music of the streets and the thumpings of a one-man band.
The occasion was timely taken by some of the composer's pupils for a serenade. I cannot say that the compositions offered are, with one exception, likely to survive the occasion. Patrick Hadley's poetry was charming and Gordon Jacobs's Chaconne op a theme from lob was brilliant. But the best was the garland of Shakespeare songs woven by Gerald Finzi and offered at a concert in the National Gallery, at which the hero of the occasion, with characteristic modesty; lurked behind a pillar unbeknown to the audience which would have liked to wish him many happy returns.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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