The finale of Vaughan Williams' Sixth Symphony (1948) puzzled listeners at the time: a chilly carpet of sound some 10 minutes long, undulating across the fields like ground fog. So much emptiness, this had to be a post-nuclear landscape à la Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was thought. Vaughan Williams did not like such declarations, as if as an artist he understood the signs of the times. He himself
… associated this music with the wizard Prospero's famous monologue from The Tempest (Shakespeare): We are the dust of dreams, and our life is surrounded by sleep. Vaughan Williams was already an elderly man when he composed the Sixth Symphony. Which did not stop him from making three more original contributions to the genre. The Eighth Symphony (1956) belonged to a more optimistic era. The work was no less cryptic for it. For example, the opening movement is a series of variations on a theme that has actually yet to be found. The seemingly joyous finale - a 'toccata' with lots of percussion - begins with notes that seem to slip right off the solid dance floor. 'A rather sinister dedication,' according to the composer's program notes. (HJ)more
