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Soul Music

Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme, by Thomas Tallis

Soul Music

BBC

Music, Music Commentary

4.7831 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2009

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Series exploring famous pieces of music and their emotional appeal.

Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis

When Vaughan Williams wrote his Tallis Fantasia in 1910, he changed the course of British music. Here at last was a piece of music which was no longer under the Teutonic influence, but which drew on old English hymn tunes and folk idioms for its themes. As the string music builds to a climax, interviewees tell how this music has brought solace and hope in times of tragedy and changed the course of their lives.

When composers Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney heard the premiere of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910, it's said that they walked the streets of Gloucester all night because of the sheer excitement of possibility that this new piece had awakened in them.

This programme tells how the beauty and richness of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia awakened a life long love of classical music in a nine year old boy at bedtime; how it served as comfort for an artist in despair and how it brought solace to a grieving father

Contributors: Michael Kennedy Ian Clarke EM Marshall Rolf Jordan Peter Phillips Harry Atterbury Colin Wood

Producer: Rosie Boulton

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others.

0:05.1

My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland.

0:11.3

It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here,

0:16.2

but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world.

0:19.6

And because the team is such a diverse range of skills and strengths,

0:23.0

we have trained journalists, people who love digging through archives,

0:26.6

we've got drama and even comedy experts.

0:28.9

We really can do those stories justice.

0:31.5

So if you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds

0:34.2

where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK.

0:39.3

You're listening to a download of soul music from BBC Radio 4.

0:44.4

The way in which he, first of all, introduces that great tune is something that when you,

0:49.3

if you strikes on your box properly and if you love that sort of music then it's with you for life and you

0:55.1

think it can't be a time when you didn't know it i would say that it rises from nothing it seems to

1:01.3

come out of the soil which i know is a very vaughan william's phrase actually this sense of something

1:07.9

just appearing from nowhere there's the tune you've always known.

1:12.4

Never heard, but always known.

1:14.6

My name is Ian Clark.

1:16.6

I suppose I was about eight, nine,

1:19.9

and I'd had my Saturday bath.

1:23.3

So I was all pink from the bath, as they say.

1:26.2

And in clean pajamas, and in clean pyjamas,

...

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