Letting the Lark Ascend: Vaughan Williams's ‘Most Popular Work’ and the Limits of Revisionism

IF 0.2 3区 艺术学 0 MUSIC
Ryan Ross
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending is a perennial favourite in the British classical music radio station Classic FM's ‘Hall of Fame’ poll. In spite of its apparent popularity, however, the work sits uncomfortably with the way revisionist critics and scholars have wanted to portray the composer. As an escapist piece of English musical pastoralism, The Lark undermines their preferred view of Vaughan Williams as a progressive or even ‘modernist’ participant in his artistic milieu. To combat this image, some critics and musicologists have argued for complex, harder-edged interpretations of the work that have little to no basis in the music's primary source materials or the composer's stated priorities in his own writings. Such emphases reflect a problem in recent revisionist literature, wherein traditionalist, nationalist, or Romantic aspects of Vaughan Williams's music are excessively downplayed (or re-situated) in favour of arguments that better support elite sensibilities. As a work consisting of accessible, melody-centric music, and following from a poem excerpt suggesting an idyllic scene, The Lark serves as a bulwark against revisionist overreach and a check against over-emphasis on trendy priorities.
让云雀升空沃恩-威廉斯的 "最受欢迎作品 "与修正主义的局限性
拉尔夫-沃恩-威廉姆斯(Ralph Vaughan Williams)的《云雀升起》(The Lark Ascending)是英国古典音乐电台 Classic FM "名人堂 "投票中的常胜将军。尽管这部作品表面上很受欢迎,但评论家和学者对作曲家形象的修正却让人感到不舒服。作为一部逃避现实的英式田园音乐作品,《云雀》破坏了他们心目中沃恩-威廉斯作为其艺术环境中的进步甚至 "现代主义 "参与者的形象。为了消除这种印象,一些评论家和音乐学家主张对这部作品进行复杂、强硬的诠释,而这些诠释在音乐的原始资料或作曲家在自己的著作中所阐述的重点方面几乎没有任何依据。这种强调反映了近代修正主义文献中的一个问题,即过分淡化(或重新定位)沃恩-威廉斯音乐中的传统主义、民族主义或浪漫主义方面,而倾向于支持精英情感的论点。云雀》是一部由平易近人、以旋律为中心的音乐组成的作品,其后的诗歌节选展现了田园诗般的场景,它是防止修正主义过度扩张的堡垒,也是防止过度强调潮流优先事项的制衡器。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
66.70%
发文量
58
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