Those who claim not to be able to respond favorably to Ralph Vaughan Williams' songs, symphonic works, and even operas, but especially to his The Lark Ascending or his Fantasia on Greensleeves, surely must be either without soul or are in denial that this English composer had extraordinary abilities. Who can deny the greatness of his early work, Linden Lea, set to poetry by William Barnes or his On Wenlock Edge, which contains words by the poet A. E. Housman. Let us not forget his Sea Symphony, with words by American poet Walt Whitman. In other words, not only did he write varied music of great impact, but he used the words of great and varied poets to make it come alive for the voice.

Why is it that such unresponsive music 'lovers' will sing the praises of Franz Schubert's Lieder or his other works, but smirk at Vaughan Williams as a composer of great songs and symphonies? Of course, these men are of a different period, yet Schubert invariably is seen as worthwhile, Vaughan Williams as not. The English composer's voice is uncompromisingly unique, yet instantly recognizable, something that should recommend him to anyone who values good music.

The rub of the thing is that somehow people, especially continental Europeans, have convinced themselves that the English simply cannot produce art songs, or any other kind of serious music. Ah, they forget the great Tudor songs England produced. They are among the finest of this period. Those who have the attitude that only the Germans were able to produce great Lieder (songs), and symphonies, or the Italians opera, and the French ballets are somehow on the wrong track. One, therefore, begs to differ with them. Vaughan Williams is a composer who should rank among the great late 19^th and early 20^th century composers. His oeuvre, as the snobs might say, is wide-ranging and deeply moving, colorful, dramatic, and full of courage. It is music wrought from a life deeply affected by experience.

There are those who call him a mere composer of folk songs, which is highly irritating. Do we call Bartók or Dvorak folk song composers? No, we don't. Do we call Wagner thus? He, after all, relied more than any composer of large works, on supposed folk images, myths and sounds from ancient Germanic and Celtic sources. Then, there are those who accuse Vaughan Williams of nationalism because his music is 'so English.' Surely, we don't call Debussy nationalistic just because his music is clearly French in nature.

And, coming back to Schubert, many of his tunes have become folk songs. They are sung by the German-speaking peoples without ever even realizing that these songs are not anonymous folk tunes, but composed by Schubert to often highly romantic and also dark poetry, some with sinister sexual undertones, such as 'Sah ein Knab ein Röslein blühn (A youth watched a small rose bloom)'. And, let us go further back, to Beethoven. He created many famous arrangements of Scottish folk tunes to make money. Do we chide him for this?

There is something ironic in all this. Most famous composers in non-Germanic countries often used folk music as the basis for their work. They thus preserved not only a heritage of tunes created long ago by musicians whose names have been forgotten, but at the same time created new important works of lasting value. German composers, however, seldom used their own folk music as the basis of their work. Hence, there is something terribly arrogant about those who discount music that has its roots in folk songs, or in ancient hymns.

All this leads me back to the very first full-length documentary film ever made about Vaughan Williams. Award-winning directory Tony Palmer took on the task and produced a first-rate film which is now available on DVD, called 'O Thou Transcendent'. It contains more than 90 minutes of music, and much footage of interviews with a wide variety of personalities, and of the composer in his old age, as well as recordings of his voice that bring the film to a length of two hours and 28 minutes.

More than anything, what the documentary shows us is the great variety of music Vaughan Williams gave us, much of it colored darkly. This was, after all, a man who at age 42 volunteered to be a stretcher bearer in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WWI, an experience that obviously left a deep mark on him. He lost six of his friends, including the composer George Butterworth, in this conflict.

While Vaughan Williams wrote the Tallis Fantasia before the beginning of this war, it seems to foreshadow the deep sorrow that would engulf the entire world. As an aside, when the film shows footage of him at Vimy Ridge and other WWI footage, it ends up focusing on the Vimy Ridge Memorial, which happens to be not English, but Canadian. The film then follows this sequence with his Symphony No. 6, premiered in 1948, which is so deeply affecting with its subconscious imagery of war, even though the composer denied that he had this in mind.

We meet his Symphony No. 4 very briefly. While it is characterized by a severity of tone, the composer is said to have meant it to be understood as pure music, without any incidental or external inspiration. Consequently, it has no other title. The somewhat younger composer, William Walton, admired the work greatly. He called it "the greatest symphony since Beethoven." Its score is filled with many innovations. Vaughan Williams said of it, "I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant." Which is perhaps what characterizes the man. The documentary shows us clearly that, despite his upper class origins—he was related to both Josiah Wedgewood and Charles Darwin—he was a very humble man, and often unsure of his musical worth.

To that on can say, of course, 'better so, than to be too filled with one's self-worth'. This was, after all, a man who refused all honors, i.e. he never accepted a title, and so has no 'Sir' in front of his name. During WWII, too old to serve, he instead worked to support émigré musicians, wrote film music, including The 49^th Parallel, and collected scrap metal for the war effort. It is even said, he scrubbed public toilets as part of his service, for he believed that composers should be part of the people, not apart from them.

This then, is a documentary that gives us not just the music composer, but the human being, a man who was married for more than 50 years to an invalid (Adeline Fisher, a relation of Virginia Woolf) until her death, and in his remaining years found a kind of peace in his second marriage to the poet Ursula Wood, who had collaborated with him on a number of works.

Among those featured in this film are composers John Adams, Michael Tippett, Harrison Birtwhistle, and Mark-Anthony Turnage, and conductors André Previn and Sir Adrian Boult. There is Neil Tennant, a musician, singer and songwriter, who, with his colleague, Chris Lowe, make up the successful pop duo Pet Shop Boys. We learn a little about the film's subject from Imogen Holst, daughter of the composer and close friend of Vaughan Williams. There are friends and relatives, who reveal to us the man and the composer in a very personal manner. One can go on and on, for the list of personalities is long and varied. So are the musicians and orchestras involved in the performances. Let is be said that this is a comprehensive view of Vaughan Williams and the DVD belongs into anyone's library, who values music.

It concludes with his Symphony No. 9, premiered just before his death. It was his last completed work in which his original idea was to create a programmatic symphony based on Thomas Hardy's book Tess of the D'Urbervilles. As the work progressed, this idea vanished and something very different emerged. It is a work we should hear more often.

In Search of Vashti has been moved to Archives