Vaughan Williams - Belonging

Title

First
Broadcast

Comments

Vaughan Williams, Adrian Mcnally

20221012

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.

Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams's work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.

Essay 3: Adrian McNally - producer/arranger/pianist for The Unthanks

Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for his band to perform with Charles Hazelwood's Army of Generals, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for The Proms, McNally has sought confidence and inspiration along the way from Ralph Vaughan Williams. He finds kinship in a quest to prove that the people's music is anything but common, to draw out and elevate the beauty and truth present in those folk songs fondly but unfairly known as low culture. In his essay, McNally looks at VW's thoughts on National Music and the inescapable relationship between place, community and creativity. At the centre of his essay will be Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It was born out of a tune Vaughan Williams was preoccupied with - a love letter to something that already existed, that inspired him to make something more.

Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer, record producer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for performances with Charles Hazelwood's Army Of Generals, the Royal Liverpool Phil, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for The Proms.

Writer and reader Adrian McNally

Sound designer Paul Cargill

Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama

Exec producer Eloise Whitmore

Photographic Image by Sarah Mason

A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3

Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.

Vaughan Williams, Amanda Dalton

20221014

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

Essay 5: Amanda Dalton - poet/dramatist

As a teenager in a 1970s working-class Coventry family, Amanda Dalton had a flamboyant favourite Uncle Gordon. He introduced Amanda to Vaughan Williams through embarrassing trips to the record shop after school. Amanda remembers the utter mortification of walking through Coventry city centre in her school uniform, Uncle Gordon sweeping along in a dramatically, her schoolmates giggling behind them. Once at the shop, Uncle Gordon waxed lyrical about his favourite composers. He bought Amanda a record of the Sea Symphony. She took it home, played it and was transported. It has remained significant to her ever since, summoning up her childhood, culture and class and what it is to be an outsider.

Amanda Dalton is a poet and playwright, tutor, theatre artist and consultant.

She is currently a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, Associate Artist at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre and a Visiting Teaching Fellow (Script and Poetry) at MMU's Writing School. Amanda has two poetry collections with Bloodaxe, How To Disappear and Stray, and Notes on Water came out in 2022. Her poetry has won awards and prizes in major competitions including the National Poetry Competition and she has been selected as one of the UK's top 20 `Next Generation Poets`.

Amanda writes regularly for BBC Radio 3 and 4 - original writing includes a number of original dramas and adaptations.

For most of her career, she also worked in the worlds of Education and Creative Engagement. After 13 years as an English and Drama teacher and Deputy Head in comprehensive schools in Leicestershire, she left the formal education sector to be a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation before becoming a senior leader at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, working for 18 years in the field of creative learning.

Writer and reader Amanda Dalton

Sound designer Paul Cargill

Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama

Exec producer Eloise Whitmore

A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3

Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.

Vaughan Williams, Clare Shaw

20221010

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

Essay 1: Clare Shaw - poet/dramatist

Clare considers the role that Vaughan Williams' setting to music of the Welsh hymn Rhosymedre has played in their life. They first played it as a teenager on the viola, for the Burnley Youth Orchestra. It symbolised an expression of beauty, love and hope, a sense of voice and connection to place and possibility... It is also that rare moment in music where the viola gets to carry the melody. Then, in Clare's fifties, when their mother (a cellist) died, the piece became a conduit for overwhelming grief, a way of holding the horrific and sublime experience of being present at the moment of death. Clare came home after their mother had died and played Rhosymedre, then wrote this poem about her and the music.

Clare Shaw is a poet and performer, tutor and trainer.

They have four poetry collections from Bloodaxe: Straight Ahead (2006), Head On (2012), Flood (2018) and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022).

Clare is a regular tutor with a range of literary organisations - including the Poetry School, the Wordsworth Trust and the Arvon Foundation - delivering creative writing courses, workshops and mentoring sessions in a variety of different settings, with individuals at all levels of ability, confidence and experience. They work with the Royal Literary Fund and the Writing Project, supporting the development of writing skills in academic settings and workplaces. Clare is the co-director of the Kendal Poetry Festival - and involved in a range of innovative projects with artists and practitioners in other disciplines, including psychology, visual arts and music. Clare is also a mental health educator. All their work is underpinned by a deep faith in language: words have the power to harm and help us, and powerful language can transform us as individuals, communities and societies.

Writer and reader Clare Shaw

Sound designer Paul Cargill

Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama

Exec producer Eloise Whitmore

A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3

Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.

Vaughan Williams, Dr Rommi Smith

20221011

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

The Lark Ascending is Dr Rommi Smith's favourite piece by Vaughan Williams. It has accompanied her all over the world in her travels as a poet and teacher, reminding her of her Englishness and her home, even when as a Black woman, she is often not seen' as being English. The piece is a key part of her English DNA. This was brought home to her vividly when the violinist Tai Murray, a Black American woman, played the piece during the Proms in 2018. There was subsequent racist twitter comment, saying she had only been let in' because she is Black. Dr Rommi Smith considers her own connection to The Lark Ascending and how who performs it is significant.

Dr Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer and librettist. A three-time BBC Writer-in-residence, she is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence and inaugural 21st century Poet-in-Residence for Keats' House, Hampstead. A Visiting Scholar at City University New York (CUNY), she has presented her research and writing at institutions including: THE SEGAL THEATRE, THE SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE and CITY COLLEGE NEW YORK. Rommi's performance at THE SCHWERNER WRITERS' SERIES in New York was at the invitation of Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry.

Rommi is a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Theatre. Her academic writing was first published by NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS as part of the groundbreaking book IMAGINING QUEER METHODS (2019). Her poetry is included in publications ranging from OUT OF BOUNDS (Bloodaxe) to MORE FIYA (Canongate).

She is recipient of a HEDGEBROOK Fellowship (Cottage: Waterfall, 2014) and is a winner of THE NORTHERN WRITERS' PRIZE for Poetry 2019 (chosen by the poet Don Paterson). She was recently awarded a prestigious CAVE CANEM fellowship in the US. Rommi was selected a SPHINX30 playwright; a prestigious programme of professional mentoring for - and by - contemporary women playwrights, led by legendary company, SPHINX THEATRE.

Rommi is a contributor to BBC radio programmes including: FRONT ROW, THE VERB and the radio documentary INVISIBLE MAN: PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES?, marking 70 years since the publication of Ralph Ellison's iconic novel.

Rommi is poet-in-residence for the WORDSWORTH TRUST, Grasmere.

www.rommi-smith.co.uk

Twitter: @rommismith

Soundcloud: RommiSmith

Instagram: Rommi Smith

Writer and reader Rommi Smith

Sound designer Paul Cargill

Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama

Exec producer Eloise Whitmore

Photographic Image by Lizzie Coombes

A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3

Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.

Vaughan Willliams, Luke Turner

20221013

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams' work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams' work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.

Luke Turner - nature writer and music journalist

The Wasps - Aristophanic Suite was an EMI and John Player Special cassette tape that Luke's family listened to on long car journeys in the 1980s. Obviously the cassette opens with The Lark Ascending, but like a pop smash hit drawing your attention to an album, that piece was merely the introduction to The Wasps - Aristophanic Suite on the second side, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. It became the soundtrack to Luke's growing awareness of the English landscape as it passed by the windows, not in a simple, bucolic way, but the complexities of the place, the baked bean orange of traffic lights on the M62 over the Yorkshire Moors, the strange Cold War military installations that seemed to be everywhere, motorway reservations and the endless traffic jams around the Kings Lynn Roundabout. The piece also captures for Luke an awareness of how music works, how it combines with emotion and experience to become integral to memory, how something called The Wasps could have next to nothing to do with the insects, how his young mind could place onto this music whatever his imagination brought forward. It feels like many of his generation and certainly in his profession as a music journalist see Vaughan Williams as quite an establishment figure or quite conservative, but The Wasps was psychedelic music that made inroads into Luke's imagination, and unleashed the possibilities of sound connecting to place.

Luke Turner is a writer and editor. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio show. He has contributed to the Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Vice, NME, Q, Mojo, Monocle, Nowness and Somesuch Stories, among other publications. His first book, Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Born in Bradford, he lives in London.

Writer and reader Luke Turner

Sound designer Paul Cargill

Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama

Exec producer Eloise Whitmore

A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3

Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.

Episodes

Title	First Broadcast	Comments
Vaughan Williams, Adrian Mcnally	20221012	Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them. Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams's work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Essay 3: Adrian McNally - producer/arranger/pianist for The Unthanks Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for his band to perform with Charles Hazelwood's Army of Generals, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for The Proms, McNally has sought confidence and inspiration along the way from Ralph Vaughan Williams. He finds kinship in a quest to prove that the people's music is anything but common, to draw out and elevate the beauty and truth present in those folk songs fondly but unfairly known as low culture. In his essay, McNally looks at VW's thoughts on National Music and the inescapable relationship between place, community and creativity. At the centre of his essay will be Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It was born out of a tune Vaughan Williams was preoccupied with - a love letter to something that already existed, that inspired him to make something more. Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer, record producer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for performances with Charles Hazelwood's Army Of Generals, the Royal Liverpool Phil, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for The Proms. Writer and reader Adrian McNally Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore Photographic Image by Sarah Mason A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3 Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.
Vaughan Williams, Amanda Dalton	20221014	Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them. Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams's work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Essay 5: Amanda Dalton - poet/dramatist As a teenager in a 1970s working-class Coventry family, Amanda Dalton had a flamboyant favourite Uncle Gordon. He introduced Amanda to Vaughan Williams through embarrassing trips to the record shop after school. Amanda remembers the utter mortification of walking through Coventry city centre in her school uniform, Uncle Gordon sweeping along in a dramatically, her schoolmates giggling behind them. Once at the shop, Uncle Gordon waxed lyrical about his favourite composers. He bought Amanda a record of the Sea Symphony. She took it home, played it and was transported. It has remained significant to her ever since, summoning up her childhood, culture and class and what it is to be an outsider. Amanda Dalton is a poet and playwright, tutor, theatre artist and consultant. She is currently a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, Associate Artist at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre and a Visiting Teaching Fellow (Script and Poetry) at MMU's Writing School. Amanda has two poetry collections with Bloodaxe, How To Disappear and Stray, and Notes on Water came out in 2022. Her poetry has won awards and prizes in major competitions including the National Poetry Competition and she has been selected as one of the UK's top 20 `Next Generation Poets`. Amanda writes regularly for BBC Radio 3 and 4 - original writing includes a number of original dramas and adaptations. For most of her career, she also worked in the worlds of Education and Creative Engagement. After 13 years as an English and Drama teacher and Deputy Head in comprehensive schools in Leicestershire, she left the formal education sector to be a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation before becoming a senior leader at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, working for 18 years in the field of creative learning. Writer and reader Amanda Dalton Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3 Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.
Vaughan Williams, Clare Shaw	20221010	Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them. Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams's work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Essay 1: Clare Shaw - poet/dramatist Clare considers the role that Vaughan Williams' setting to music of the Welsh hymn Rhosymedre has played in their life. They first played it as a teenager on the viola, for the Burnley Youth Orchestra. It symbolised an expression of beauty, love and hope, a sense of voice and connection to place and possibility... It is also that rare moment in music where the viola gets to carry the melody. Then, in Clare's fifties, when their mother (a cellist) died, the piece became a conduit for overwhelming grief, a way of holding the horrific and sublime experience of being present at the moment of death. Clare came home after their mother had died and played Rhosymedre, then wrote this poem about her and the music. Clare Shaw is a poet and performer, tutor and trainer. They have four poetry collections from Bloodaxe: Straight Ahead (2006), Head On (2012), Flood (2018) and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022). Clare is a regular tutor with a range of literary organisations - including the Poetry School, the Wordsworth Trust and the Arvon Foundation - delivering creative writing courses, workshops and mentoring sessions in a variety of different settings, with individuals at all levels of ability, confidence and experience. They work with the Royal Literary Fund and the Writing Project, supporting the development of writing skills in academic settings and workplaces. Clare is the co-director of the Kendal Poetry Festival - and involved in a range of innovative projects with artists and practitioners in other disciplines, including psychology, visual arts and music. Clare is also a mental health educator. All their work is underpinned by a deep faith in language: words have the power to harm and help us, and powerful language can transform us as individuals, communities and societies. Writer and reader Clare Shaw Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3 Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.
Vaughan Williams, Dr Rommi Smith	20221011	Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams's work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them. Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams's work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. The Lark Ascending is Dr Rommi Smith's favourite piece by Vaughan Williams. It has accompanied her all over the world in her travels as a poet and teacher, reminding her of her Englishness and her home, even when as a Black woman, she is often not seen' as being English. The piece is a key part of her English DNA. This was brought home to her vividly when the violinist Tai Murray, a Black American woman, played the piece during the Proms in 2018. There was subsequent racist twitter comment, saying she had only been let in' because she is Black. Dr Rommi Smith considers her own connection to The Lark Ascending and how who performs it is significant. Dr Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer and librettist. A three-time BBC Writer-in-residence, she is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence and inaugural 21st century Poet-in-Residence for Keats' House, Hampstead. A Visiting Scholar at City University New York (CUNY), she has presented her research and writing at institutions including: THE SEGAL THEATRE, THE SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE and CITY COLLEGE NEW YORK. Rommi's performance at THE SCHWERNER WRITERS' SERIES in New York was at the invitation of Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry. Rommi is a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Theatre. Her academic writing was first published by NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS as part of the groundbreaking book IMAGINING QUEER METHODS (2019). Her poetry is included in publications ranging from OUT OF BOUNDS (Bloodaxe) to MORE FIYA (Canongate). She is recipient of a HEDGEBROOK Fellowship (Cottage: Waterfall, 2014) and is a winner of THE NORTHERN WRITERS' PRIZE for Poetry 2019 (chosen by the poet Don Paterson). She was recently awarded a prestigious CAVE CANEM fellowship in the US. Rommi was selected a SPHINX30 playwright; a prestigious programme of professional mentoring for - and by - contemporary women playwrights, led by legendary company, SPHINX THEATRE. Rommi is a contributor to BBC radio programmes including: FRONT ROW, THE VERB and the radio documentary INVISIBLE MAN: PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES?, marking 70 years since the publication of Ralph Ellison's iconic novel. Rommi is poet-in-residence for the WORDSWORTH TRUST, Grasmere. www.rommi-smith.co.uk Twitter: @rommismith Soundcloud: RommiSmith Instagram: Rommi Smith Writer and reader Rommi Smith Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore Photographic Image by Lizzie Coombes A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3 Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.
Vaughan Willliams, Luke Turner	20221013	Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams' work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them. Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams' work, taking it outside the standard English pastoral' box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Luke Turner - nature writer and music journalist The Wasps - Aristophanic Suite was an EMI and John Player Special cassette tape that Luke's family listened to on long car journeys in the 1980s. Obviously the cassette opens with The Lark Ascending, but like a pop smash hit drawing your attention to an album, that piece was merely the introduction to The Wasps - Aristophanic Suite on the second side, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. It became the soundtrack to Luke's growing awareness of the English landscape as it passed by the windows, not in a simple, bucolic way, but the complexities of the place, the baked bean orange of traffic lights on the M62 over the Yorkshire Moors, the strange Cold War military installations that seemed to be everywhere, motorway reservations and the endless traffic jams around the Kings Lynn Roundabout. The piece also captures for Luke an awareness of how music works, how it combines with emotion and experience to become integral to memory, how something called The Wasps could have next to nothing to do with the insects, how his young mind could place onto this music whatever his imagination brought forward. It feels like many of his generation and certainly in his profession as a music journalist see Vaughan Williams as quite an establishment figure or quite conservative, but The Wasps was psychedelic music that made inroads into Luke's imagination, and unleashed the possibilities of sound connecting to place. Luke Turner is a writer and editor. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio show. He has contributed to the Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Vice, NME, Q, Mojo, Monocle, Nowness and Somesuch Stories, among other publications. His first book, Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Born in Bradford, he lives in London. Writer and reader Luke Turner Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3 Personal essays on what Vaughan Williams means to five different writers.