Vaughan Williams: The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains & Other Works
9/29/2023, 7 Tracks, 1:12:57
Featuring
Lynne Dawson
Sir John Gielgud
John Scott
Matthew Best
John Bowen
Roger Judd
Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Duke Dobing
Linda Kitchen
Adrian Thompson
John Mark Ainsley
Alan Opie
Bryn Terfel
Jonathan Best
The London Oratory Junior Choir
Corydon Singers
City of London Sinfonia
Ralph Vaughan Williams
William Hayes
Did you know?
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Composition History
The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains is an operatic scena, not a cantata, adapted by Vaughan Williams from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Vaughan Williams intended his Magnificat to "lift the words out of the smug atmosphere" that had settled on them from being sung at evening service for so long.
Composition History
Vaughan Williams composed his Magnificat for contralto Astra Desmond, a married woman with four children, after a conversation about the suitability of young unmarried sopranos singing the work.
Notable Performances
The recording of A Song of Thanksgiving, originally titled Thanksgiving for Victory, was first broadcast on a special Thanksgiving Service on May 13, 1945, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Composition History
Vaughan Williams's cantata A Song of Thanksgiving was commissioned by the BBC in mid-1944 to be performed immediately upon the cessation of hostilities in World War II.
Composition History
The Three Choral Hymns and The Hundredth Psalm were both composed for the jubilee of the Leith Hill Musical Festival in 1930, where the composer, Vaughan Williams, conducted their first performances.
Compositional Technique
In his Magnificat, Vaughan Williams assigns an important role to the solo flute, which he described as "the disembodied, visiting spirit."
