Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony Number Five
Beginning of paper
Ralph Vaughan Williams, descended from the famous Wedgwood and Darwin families,
was born at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire in 1872. In 1890 he entered the Royal
College of Music, and in 1892 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. One of the
greatest of the British composers, a prolific writer of music, folksong
collector, and champion of ....
Middle of paper
.... his transposition wrong? Or is this a deliberate feature
of the music, intended to blur the tonality? Musicologists prefer the latter
explanation. This is by no means an unusual feature of his music, when he was
asked what the 4th symphony was about, RVW replied "It is about F-minor",
alluding to his sometimes hazy tonalities, often augmented by his use of modal,
mainly pentatonic melodies, which, with no leading note, often help to 'fudge'
t ....
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Number of words: 1227
Number of pages: 5 (approx. 250 words per double-spaced page)
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