Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Turtle Dove

- Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams (12 October 1872 -- 26 August 1958) - Ensemble: The Cambridge Singers - Conductor: John Rutter - Year of recording: 1984 "The Turtle Dove" (English Traditional, collected and arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams). Perhaps it was in response to Hubert Parry's advice to "write choral music as befits an Englishman and a democrat," that Vaughan Williams developed his lifelong interest in the folk music of his native England. Nowhere can this interest be seen more clearly than in his choral arrangements of folk songs: music of the people for the people. In accordance with the belief that each singer, or in this case each composer, must bring something of himself or herself to the performance of each melody, many of Vaughan Williams's arrangements border on being recompositions. Ironically, the more "composed" the setting, the more the final product seems an organic product of the melody. "The Turtle Dove" is one such setting. Vaughan Williams came across the melody of "The Turtle Dove" in November of 1904, while on a folksong collecting expedition in Sussex. In 1919 he published it in an arrangement for male chorus, but it is more commonly heard in a setting for mixed chorus, published in 1924. The melody is first introduced by the solo baritone, who takes on the role of the traveler, destined to roam the earth while the love of his heart is to remain behind. As the intensity of the lyric grows, so does the activity of the choir. This continues until the third verse, where the choir's florid lines take on the character of the seas that the traveler must traverse. The work ends quietly, as it began, with the solo baritone bemoaning the loss of his love.

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