Vaughan Williams Gets Angry, and We Get New Prince Tracks
RVW Listening Challenge and some lagniappe
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor
Last week, we listened to RVW's London Symphony, which is fairly cheerful and full of lyrical melodies. This week, we turn to his more violent side with Symphony No. 4 in F Minor. This is the first of his symphonies not to have a title, because, he claimed, it was pure music without any programmatic intention. The symphony's power, however, certainly seems to invoke the idea of war, even if he did not intend it. There are quiet moments, but the andante second movement is spooky rather than beautiful. This is one of only two RVW symphonies to end loudly. The other is the Eighth, which we listened to a couple of weeks ago in this post. Our recording for Symphony No. 4 is by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Antonio Pappano.
Our second piece for the week provides some light-hearted relief: it is the orchestral suite taken from RVW's incidental music for The Wasps of Aristophanes. It's good fun, and I'm sure that you will enjoy it. Performing the suite is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, conducted by James Judd.
Here are links to our playlist on Apple Music and Spotify:
RVW Listening Challenge on Apple Music
RVW Listening Challenge on Spotify
Lagniappe: Two Newly Released Prince Tracks!
Over the last week, the Prince Estate dropped two surprises on us: two previously unreleased tracks from the Musicology era, circa 2004: "Magnificent," and "United States of Division." And they are both good!
Several subscribers have requested another Prince playlist, so I took this opportunity to put together this hour-long sequence, with the two new tracks leading off, and another series of (relatively) deep cuts from across his career. It includes the best ever recording of “Crimson and Clover” (apologies to Joan Jett fans), his best ever b-side (in my opinion) in “Pink Cashmere,” and an epic, 13-minute live version of “Forever in My Life.” I hope that you enjoy it. Fair warning: a couple of tracks get racy, but hey, it’s Prince. What did you expect? Burl Ives?
Here are links to the playlist on Apple Music and Spotify:
A Magnificent Prince Party on Apple Music
A Magnificent Prince Party on Spotify
I'll be back on Wednesday with week eight of The Lord of the Rings Reading Challenge, as we cover Book Five, Chapter 7 through Book Six, Chapter 4. And I haven’t forgotten my promise to provide another “Meet the Artist” feature; just let me put the spring semester to bed first.
Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.
The Prince playlist! So good! Thanks John.
Wonderful Prince playlist, although the extended 12 inch version of "Mountains" is one of my favorite of all Prince tracks. I agree with you that "Pink Cashmere" is the best Prince b-side, although it's hard to argue with "Erotic City" or the 12 inch version of "La, La, La, He, He, Hee," which was the b-side of "Sign o'the Times." The newly released tracks are very good indeed.
I don't know if you've written about this performance, but here's my appreciation of Prince's gorgeous cover of The Temptations' "Just My Imagination" from an aftershow in The Hague in 1988:https://substack.com/@simonrandall/note/c-52902829?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2brnho
John, are you familiar with Guy Davenport's essay "Hobbitry," collected in his book The Geography of the Imagination? He talks about trying and failing to learn Old English from Tolkien, and then recounts a casual conversation with a Kentucky friend who had been a classmate of Tolkien's at Oxford. He says this friend, a history teacher named Allen Barnett, remembers "Ronald" being fascinated by Barnett's tales of old time Kentucky folk. "He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins and good country names like that."