In the Fen Country

Composer: VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, Ralph
  • Vaughan Williams referred to this work as a “symphonic impression.”1
  • Composed in 1904, this is one of Vaughan Williams’s earliest works influenced by the sound of British folk song. (He had begun his lifelong project of collecting folk songs in 1903, with a song called “Bushes and Briars.”)2
  • In the Fen Country premiered under Sir Thomas Beecham in 1909.3
  • This is the earliest composition that Vaughan Williams did not subsequently withdraw.4 He revised In the Fen Country in 1935.5

Sources

  1. Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley, “Vaughan Williams, Ralph,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 26, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000042507. 
  2. Ibid.
  3. Keith Anderson, liner notes to Vaughan Williams: Fantasias / Norfolk Rhapsody et al, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, James Judd, Naxos 8.555867, CD, 2003.
  4. “In the Fen Country,” Oxford University Press, accessed August 26, 2021, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-the-fen-country-9780193691919?cc=us&lang=en&#. 
  5. Ottaway and Frogley, “Vaughan Williams, Ralph,” Grove Music Online.

Cut IDs

11475 41582