Ralph Vaughan Williams: Early 20th century English composer of symphonies, choral music, and arranger of traditional folk songs. You may remember him from such LDS hymns as "I Saw a Mighty Angel Fly" (#15) or "For All The Saints" (#82). More famous ones include "All Creatures of Our God and King" (#62) and "If You Could Hie To Kolob" (#284).
Let's tangent onto that last one. Vaughan Williams wrote a piece for string orchestra and harp called "Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus." It's like 13 minutes long but extremely poetic, lush and gorgeous. I had the privilege of playing it at the Solo and Ensemble Festival in Olympus High's orchestra my senior year.
So what are Dives and Lazarus? It's from a lesser-known parable in Luke about an extremely poor man named Lazarus and an unnamed rich man ("dives" is apparently Latin for "rich man") who make opposite choices in life and end up in opposite places for the afterlife. The beggar Lazarus barely even eats the crumbs from the rich man's table (shades of a U2 song there?), but nothing is shared. When they both die Lazarus is carried up "into Abraham's bosom" (which I assume means paradise) and Dives to...a very warm place. A fascinating story,
All I wanted to say was the song is beautiful and even if you don't like the "Kolob" rendition you should love Vaughan Williams for it. (There's also a Christmas version here.) And I haven't even mentioned "The Lark Ascending," which is 17 minutes long and yet you never want the violin solo to end. And "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is a string masterpiece. It's featured in the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and I remember the Oscar orchestra playing it every time that film was nominated for something that year. Apparently the theme from the song is also a hymn that I would love to hear sung in church someday. (Let's ask Robert Cundick if he'll arrange it for us!)
So Ralph Vaughan Williams, I love you. And apparently you have a great last name, because I also love John Willams. (And if you really knew me you would know that already.) Remember how in the summer of 2003 I made a 5 CD John Williams tribute? I sorted tracks from his film scores into categories of Themes, People, Quests, Spirit, and Flight. For example, in the last one I noticed how many songs he writes about people flying:
"Flight to Neverland" from Hook
"Flying Theme" from E.T.
"Main Title" from Superman
"Cadillac of the Skies" from Empire of the Sun
"Fawkes the Phoenix" from Harry Potter 2
"Suite" from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
"Journey to the Island" from Jurassic Park
And since I made those CDs he's written a dozen more film scores. It's not only that his music is technically brilliant, it's the pervasiveness of his fame that astounds me. People worldwide can recognize the themes to Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic Park. Every two years we hear his Olympic Themes without realizing that he did them. Within two measures you can feel the imperial power of Darth Vader; within two notes you can feel imminent death of a shark attack from Jaws. The man cannot be overpraised.
Side note: In my Wikipedia searchings, I discovered that John Williams's son Joseph Williams is also famous: for a while he was lead vocalist for the band Toto, author of one of my favorite guilty pleasure 80s anthems "Africa" (here is a link to their hilariously hideous music video); and he was also the singing voice of adult Simba in The Lion King, heard in "Hakuna Matata" and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight." Ha!
Well, now you know more about these two Williams, more than you thought you'd ever know, and you can never un-know what you've just known. Aren't you glad. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go listen to "The Asteriod Field" track on The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack - one of the greatest action cues of all time. Mmmm mmm mmm!
3 comments:
I've forgotten how fun it is to read your music writing. You should write more.
Are you saying Jesus' teachings are doctrinally incomplete?
That said, I never knew Dives and Lazarus was about, um, Lazarus.
It would be interesting to write a paper about the depictions of flying in music. You could probably limit it in scope to John Williams' works, but there's a joke in there somewhere about going dutch with Wagner.
My captcha for this message has been "recip." Thank you.
You're right, it was I who was confused over the interpretation of the parable.
The "incomplete" part I was originally referring to was how the parable states Lazarus was taken up "into Abraham's bosom." I just thought that was an archaic phrase that didn't take into account what we know heaven really is. It turns out that it is a common Jewish way of seeing the afterlife, which fits perfectly with who Jesus was speaking to when he gave the parable, i.e. the Pharisees.
And it's not the exact same Lazarus, of course, as the one Jesus raised from the dead, but that does *raise* (ahem...) some interesting parallels.
And if he has half the talent that either one of the aforementioned Williams boys has, he is welcome welcome to be my son-in-law!
(Think of the beautiful music you could make together!)
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