I’m Suspicious

 

Well, kind of.

I’ve been hung up over the past few days thinking about Ralph Vaughan Williams, or rather, the Ralph Vaughan Williamses.

There were three of them. They shared the same birthday, the same clothes. The same brain.

It is very difficult to conceive how this one English composer could have possessed three separate categories of genius. Hymns, folk tunes, and crazy modernist symphonies all have significant places in his large library of compositions. For the most part, these categories stayed separate; listening to each in turn, it would be impossible to guess that they came from the same guy. Occasionally, there is overlap- a few bars here and there.

But that’s occasionally.

To give you an idea of just how different his work is, I’ve given a sampler of each below.

Hymn (Dominus Regit Me):

Folk (English Folk Song Suite):

Modern (Symphony No. 6):

How Do You Compose When You’re Blind?

Joaquín Rodrigo would know better than I. The Spanish composer, who died in 1999 at age 97, was left completely blind, or ciego, at a very young age and spent his entire musical career without sight. Though he most known for his Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, a different work of his lies closer to my heart: the Concierto como un Divertimento for cello and orchestra. Written for the British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, it is a frivolous, lightly orchestrated piece that never fails to please.

Here is Lloyd Webber’s recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Jesús López-Cobos.