The Lark Ascending

Ralph Vaughan Williams originally composed his The Lark Ascending in 1914 for violin and piano. He put the score aside when he enlisted in the army in 1914, serving as an orderly with the Royal Army Medical Corps, after the outbreak of World War I. When he returned home in 1919, he came back to the score and orchestrated it; the work now (in the words of Phillip Huscher) "a touching souvenir of a time gone by."

Vaughan Williams prefaced his score with these lines from George Meredith’s poem of the same name:

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
’Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

Here are two beautiful performances of The Lark Ascending, a video featuring the incomparable Hillary Hahn, and a recording of the work (one of my favorites) featuring violinist Pinkas Zuckerman. A good way to unwind into the weekend.

The Lark Ascending with violinist Pinkas Zuckerman