- This piece started life as an aria from Vaughan Williams’s opera about Falstaff, Sir John in Love.1 “Greensleeves” is one of several English folk tunes the composer used in the opera.2
- Vaughan Williams adapted the libretto himself from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor.3
- Sir John in Love premiered on March 21, 1929, in a performance by the Parry Opera Theatre at the Royal College of Music in London.4
- Synopsis of Sir John in Love (and program notes)
- In 1934, Ralph Greaves (1889-1966) arranged Vaughan Williams’s Greensleeves setting from Sir John in Love for one or two flutes, harp, and strings, and it was published as Fantasia on “Greensleeves.”5
- Greaves used another folk tune as a contrasting central section: “Lovely Joan.”6
Sources
- Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley, “Vaughan Williams, Ralph,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed May 20, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000042507.
- Paul Conway, liner notes to Vaughan Williams: Sir John in Love, Roderick Jones et al, Lyrita REAM.2122, CD, 2016.
- Ibid.
- “Sir John in Love (Vaughan Williams, Ralph),” IMSLP, accessed May 21, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Sir_John_in_Love_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph).
- Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley, “Vaughan Williams, Ralph,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed May 20, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000042507.
- “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” Oxford University Press, accessed May 21, 2021, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fantasia-on-greensleeves-9780193603486?cc=us&lang=en.
Cut IDs
40083 40913 41422 44633 48389