The 1920s

By the time the BBC was formed in 1922, Vaughan Williams was already 50 years old and established as a British composer of renown, celebrated not only for his highbrow symphonic works, but also for community-driven contributions to The English Hymnal and to the vocal sphere in general. His larger-scale works were aired in the very first season that the BBC initiated rare broadcast concerts of symphonic repertory. The first Vaughan Williams entry in the published Programmes as Broadcast records lists what was probably the earliest BBC performance of an orchestral work by him: A Pastoral Symphony (1916–21) was broadcast on 24 February 1924, in an afternoon ‘Programme of Sacred Music’ given from Southwark Cathedral, conducted by its noted organist, Dr E. T. Cook.¹ Not long afterwards, on 10 April 1924, a prime-time evening programme titled ‘Living British Composers’ – the earliest BBC series devoted to national art music – featured Vaughan Williams’s vocal and chamber works.² The very first performance of his opera Hugh the Drover (1910–14) on 14 July 1924 was broadcast from His Majesty’s Theatre, London, conducted by the young Malcolm Sargent. At that time, when many organizations and artists refused to broadcast, the British National Opera Company was a notable exception, offering to the BBC frequent performances that were generally transmitted in part.³ Thus Act ii was aired that evening, preceded by an introductory talk by BBC Music Critic, Percy Scholes.⁴ Vaughan Williams’s first talk over the airwaves also occurred that year, discussing folk carols before a late programme called ‘Carols and Waits’ on Christmas Eve.⁵

Thus Vaughan Williams’s voice, both musical and literal, was heard across the UK from 1924 via broadcasting. His apparent enthusiasm for the new medium aligns with his belief in music’s egalitarian place within society: ‘music is able to grow out of our ordinary life in a way that no other art can . . . Music is above all others the art of the humble.’⁶ Such social doctrines, alongside Vaughan Williams’s ‘distinctly nationalist agenda’,⁷ closely paralleled the commonality and democratic reach of the young BBC, set to disseminate music and cultural ideas every day across the nation, to make them audible to all at nominal cost, in ways that had previously been unimaginable.

It is impossible to know what conversations Vaughan Williams may have had when first establishing his relationship with the BBC Music Department and with radio generally. The earliest correspondence preserved at the BBC Written Archives Centre commences in 1928, confirming that the composer would conduct A Pastoral Symphony at that season’s Promenade Concerts.⁸ The following year, he agreed to conduct in the Proms again, on condition that violinist Jelly d’Aranyi would be the soloist in his Concerto Accademico (1924–5).⁹ Correspondence in the early 1930s often arranged for Vaughan Williams to conduct performances, to attend rehearsals, to approve suggestions for performers or, on occasion, to ask about new works that the BBC might broadcast. Most exchanges were with Music Department staff, but frequent letters were also exchanged with Adrian Boult, after he was appointed to a leading role in BBC music in 1930.

Vaughan Williams had a good and mutually beneficial working relationship with Boult. They were leading British musicians whose careers overlapped for more than forty years, yet the positive disposition of their relationship depended on more than synchronicity. They represented a particular kind of statesman who emerged from the Edwardian era and imparted Edwardian values – Boult even sported an Edwardian moustache. As he wrote of himself in a brief autobiographical description: ‘On the rostrum he is an impressive figure, for he is over six feet tall, and has an upright, almost military bearing. He is economical of gestures, for his theory is that a conductor should not distract the attention of the audience.’¹⁰ Moreover, the eulogistic words that Boult wrote of Vaughan Williams shortly after the composer’s death paralleled what others might have written about himself: ‘He was like many great men, approachable, sympathetic and of a piercing integrity. He was seen at any concert where an important new work was to be played.’¹¹ Although friends, they were never as close as Vaughan Williams had been with Gustav Holst, for instance;¹² yet the sense of integrity, musicianship and life values that these men shared served as common ground for mutual respect and a fruitful professional association. This bond resulted in a multitude of performances that spanned both their careers, and which we continue to listen to and admire on record today.

Though Vaughan Williams came from an elite, upper middle-class family background compared to Boult’s more modest middle-class circumstances,¹³ in both cases their families had enough money to support them through the early stages of their careers. Boult was seventeen years younger, yet Vaughan Williams’s musical interests took longer to mature;¹⁴ thus they both came of age musically during the Edwardian years, before World War I. Boult first encountered Vaughan Williams’s music in 1909 while a student at Oxford, when he sang in a performance of Toward the Unknown Region (1907), conducted by his mentor, Hugh Allen.¹⁵ He attended the first performance of A Sea Symphony (1903–9) in October 1910, and met the composer the following March, when he performed in its second performance at Oxford. During 1912–13 he studied in Leipzig with Nikisch, and after returning home his conducting career burgeoned, from opportunities that he helped to create both financially and practically. When the First World War broke out, Boult was declared unfit for active service due to a heart condition, and instead served in the War Office, assisting with leather distribution, which gave him the flexibility to conduct concerts both in London and the north of England. Through these concerts he soon became noted for his promotion of English music; in particular, he became close friends with Holst, conducting the premiere of The Planets at Queen’s Hall in September 1918.¹⁶ Boult also established a warm alliance with Vaughan Williams, when he conducted A London Symphony (1911–13) at Queen’s Hall in both February and March 1918. Although the February concert was ‘rather spoiled by a Zeppelin raid’,¹⁷ the composer famously wrote to thank Boult:

Before the March performance, Vaughan Williams ‘came to my room in a distant outcrop of the War Office and sat among the samples of boots . . . and made some cuts in the score’.¹⁹

In 1919, one newspaper remarked that ‘inside a year . . . Boult had risen from obscurity to a leading place among British conductors’.²⁰ He often featured Vaughan Williams’s music in his concerts, both in London and in his role as conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra (1924–9). The spirit of musical understanding, admiration and trust described in Vaughan Williams’s letter formed the basis for a long collaboration between composer and conductor, leading to the BBC partnership that is under particular scrutiny here.²¹

The 1930s

In May 1923, six months after its foundation, the British Broadcasting Company appointed as Music Director the eminent conductor Percy Pitt, known for his promotion both of British opera and of continental contemporary music. Pitt played a highly significant role during the 1920s in shaping the BBC’s Music Department and musical output, but in 1929 he was forced to resign due to the BBC’s new policy of retirement at age sixty – which may have been implemented with Pitt in mind.²² After the BBC became a Corporation in January 1927, its musical ventures included taking over the Promenade Concerts in March of that year and the creation of a permanent, contracted BBC Symphony Orchestra.²³ The Corporation was determined to create an ensemble that equalled, in eminence and quality, the best orchestras in Europe and the United States – with a conductor to match. Thomas Beecham was the first choice, but when negotiations with him irrevocably collapsed,²⁴ the BBC turned to Boult, who had served on the BBC Music Advisory Committee since 1928.²⁵ Boult was persuaded to return from Birmingham to become BBC Director of Music in May 1930; in October he launched the BBC Symphony Orchestra in its first season, and some months later was appointed as the orchestra’s Chief Conductor.

Boult’s assumption of these positions was propitious for many reasons. His background had prepared him well for the post, not least because of his close association with British music. But he also had sufficient interest in recent continental trends, music that BBC managers then symbolically valued as a means of ‘carry[ing] into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement’.²⁶ Boult demanded from his players the discipline, concentration and tenacity needed to pull off worthy performances of unfamiliar, difficult works within limited rehearsal time. Although less charismatic than leading European conductors, it was Boult’s all-round, everyday skilfulness and intelligence, as administrator as well as daily broadcasting conductor, that certified him as the musician best suited to lead BBC music in that first decade; this was, after all, a critical period in the Corporation’s development from pioneering corporation into top-level broadcaster, on a par with the best in Europe and North America.

The steady availability of a high-quality symphony orchestra emboldened the BBC to showcase orchestral works throughout the 1930s, including those by Vaughan Williams. In 1934, after the deaths of Elgar, Delius and Holst, he became known as the leading living British symphonist.²⁷ As the decade progressed, nationalist tendencies waxed in parallel with political tensions, and Vaughan Williams’s works were regularly broadcast, generally planned and conducted with Boult’s and/or his own involvement. The works most commonly broadcast in the early 1930s include Flos Campi (1925), A Pastoral Symphony, A London Symphony, the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)²⁸ and Job (1930), his ‘masque for dancing’,²⁹ while the mid-1930s added performances of A Sea Symphony, Dona Nobis Pacem (1936) and the Symphony No. 4 (1931–4). Much correspondence was exchanged arranging for the composer to attend rehearsals or concerts, or when he sent congratulations on successful performances, given not only domestically but also by BBC personnel overseas.³⁰ The BBC consistently sought opportunities for Vaughan Williams to conduct his own works in broadcasts; for instance, he conducted at least one work in many of the Proms seasons.³¹ Moreover, he was occasionally invited to conduct full concert broadcasts.³²

An important occasion for the BBC was the celebration in 1938 of the jubilee of Henry Wood’s conducting career, marked by a concert of combined forces – including three London orchestras and massed choirs – at the Royal Albert Hall on 5 October. At Wood’s special request, Rachmaninov was invited to participate, and a commission to Vaughan Williams resulted in the Serenade to Music (1938) for sixteen solo singers and orchestra. Although the first half of the concert could not be aired, as Rachmaninov refused to broadcast live, the Serenade in the second half was transmitted on the BBC National Programme.³³

The BBC competed fiercely for opportunities to give first European performances of Vaughan Williams’s works, such as the Piano Concerto (1926–31) once it was completed.³⁴ In his negotiations with the Corporation, Vaughan Williams remained loyal to the performers with whom he associated specific works. The Piano Concerto is a case in point, as he wrote a confidential letter to Boult in 1935:

Boult clearly disagreed with Vaughan Williams, believing that

Rather than confronting Vaughan Williams, Boult was among those who persuaded him to re-score the extremely difficult solo part for two pianos.³⁷

In 1934, when Boult inquired about the work that turned out to be the Symphony No. 4 in F minor (1931–4), the composer responded:

Undeterred, Boult arranged for the BBC to give the first performance the next season, smoothing over the half-promise of the premiere that Vaughan Williams had given to Malcolm Sargent.³⁹ While Boult prepared for the performance, a paragraph appeared in the Radio Times asserting that Arnold Bax and Sibelius were the ‘greatest living symphonists’.⁴⁰ Boult was so annoyed that he wrote to the magazine’s editor:

He also wrote a letter of apology to Vaughan Williams, who took it in his stride.⁴²

The following year, Boult wrote to Vaughan Williams to request ‘a large and comprehensive lesson from you re the performance of sundry R.V.W. works – if you can be bothered – e.g. Sea Symphony. We are doing it at Queen’s Hall in October, and if there was anything in the performance (if you heard it) that irritated you, I should much like to hear about it and put it right’.⁴³ Vaughan Williams asked to attend a rehearsal,⁴⁴ and the result was a performance that prompted an effusive letter from the composer:

The spirit of this letter would have been enormously gratifying for Boult.

On occasion, Vaughan Williams asked to attend BBC rehearsals of works by his contemporaries, such as Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, broadcast on 18 November 1931,⁴⁶ and sometimes Boult served as liaison between Vaughan Williams and internationally acclaimed conductors who had engagements with the BBC. For instance, in May 1935 Boult arranged for the composer to meet both with Serge Koussevitzky and – at Vaughan Williams’s request, as ‘I should like so much to see how it is done’ – Arturo Toscanini. Though ‘practically everyone has been refused’, Boult offered Vaughan Williams a choice of Toscanini rehearsals to attend.⁴⁷

Given his standing with the BBC, Vaughan Williams sought opportunities also to promote the music of his pupils, such as when he conducted a studio broadcast in December 1934 featuring orchestral works by former students Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams and Robin Milford, by RCM colleague R. O. Morris, and by himself.⁴⁸ He also found ways to champion the music of Holst.⁴⁹ In the same way, Boult looked out for Vaughan Williams, determined to promote his lesser-known works; for example, in September 1933, he wrote: ‘Hearing “The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains” . . . last week performed in a way which made a lot of it sound almost ugly, I felt I should very much like sometime to give a carefully prepared performance of it . . . Properly done I have known it to make a most profound effect.’⁵⁰

Thus Vaughan Williams was increasingly associated with British radio of the 1920s and 30s, interacting frequently and cooperatively with the new medium as it developed. But alongside this ease of access, the composer began to develop misgivings that distressed him. In 1934, he wrote:

Interestingly, although Boult agreed that music-making was an essential activity, he distinguished between the music produced by amateur and professional musicians: ‘[amateurs] are the aristocracy of music, and it is for them that we professionals live and work, and through them that we get our audiences and most of our inspiration’.⁵² Boult recognized that radio fostered new connections in the performer–listener relationship, amateur and professional musicians each serving as an incentive and inspiration to the other.

The war years

According to Ursula Vaughan Williams, ‘the beginning of the war made Ralph feel desperate for useful work’.⁵³ The BBC provided an outlet for this, serving as an official body to which the composer could communicate his views, and, given his considerable connections there, he had confidence that they would be heard. On a number of occasions he challenged BBC policies or practices, or championed issues that paralleled the values that civilians or those serving in the armed forces daily risked their lives to protect. In other instances, he agreed to contribute to BBC-led schemes by arranging suites from his popular film scores, or composing occasional works to engage the attention and voices of the British people. As he said in a broadcast talk soon after the war started:

Interactions with the BBC offered Vaughan Williams ways to achieve exactly that, amplified through radio transmission to reach homes across the nation and internationally.

In September and October 1939, Vaughan Williams joined with Henry Wood and other leading musicians in voicing objections to the music that the BBC chose to broadcast in the initial weeks of the war. As the Corporation effected its difficult and cumbersome evacuation from London, cinema-organ music was aired for hours at a time. Vaughan Williams, apparently with Boult’s encouragement,⁵⁵ wrote a long and passionate letter to the Director-General:

Vaughan Williams wrote on in support of the many musicians who would lose their livelihoods through lack of work, as had occurred during the First World War.⁵⁷

In those early months, Vaughan Williams offered the BBC assistance in two other ways that reflected his social convictions. Firstly, he gave a talk, ‘Making Your Own Music’, on 3 December 1939,⁵⁸ encouraging active music-making as a response to national crisis: ‘If we neglect the amateur side of music and become a nation of mere passive listeners all the life will go out of our art – Art must be creative if it is to be vital.’⁵⁹ Secondly, he worked closely with BBC staff to build two half-hour programmes, recommending ‘such folksongs as he considers would be very suitable for marching purposes’;⁶⁰ he prepared scripts to explain these ‘tunes with real blood in their veins and real muscles in their limbs. I don’t believe that you could help stepping out to them even when you are tired after a long day’s march.’⁶¹

As the war developed, Vaughan Williams’s own works, such as Flos Campi, the Wasps overture (1909), Job, the Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’ (1939) and the Mass in G minor (1922), were broadcast, often with Vaughan Williams’s and/or Boult’s involvement. A year after the war’s commencement, the Ministry of Information suggested that the Corporation develop a ‘scheme for commissioning patriotic songs’,⁶² and Vaughan Williams was invited to compose a ‘song or lay hymn, with orchestral accompaniment, the theme patriotic but not necessarily war-like’; the text should avoid ‘the word “England” . . . as a synonym for Britain’.⁶³ He set a W. E. Henley poem for baritone solo, double chorus, unison voices and orchestra, sending a draft version to Boult and others for criticism in late October 1940,⁶⁴ and soon after, submitting the work to the BBC. Imprudently, Vaughan Williams had set Henley’s ‘England, my England’, but Boult was untroubled by the text: ‘it seems to me to hit every nail on the head, except . . . the prejudices of Wales and Scotland, and I really do not think we can worry about this’.⁶⁵ The BBC lost no time in arranging the work’s premiere, planned for broadcast on 4 April 1941.

In March, however, Vaughan Williams wrote an angry letter to the Director-General, protesting against the banning from broadcasts of works by the composer Alan Bush, who was a member of the Communist Party. Though he did not share Bush’s political views, Vaughan Williams ‘wish[ed] to protest against this victimization of private opinion’ by withdrawing the commissioned work.⁶⁶ The question of the BBC’s policy towards ‘artists holding certain religious or political opinions’ was raised in the House of Commons,⁶⁷ and the Corporation soon reversed its position;⁶⁸ Bush’s compositions were no longer banned. Once the furore died down, Vaughan Williams’s publisher wondered if plans for the premiere might be resumed,⁶⁹ but only in the autumn did the BBC again consider a broadcast. By this time ‘Vaughan Williams himself . . . regretted very much that other circumstances, not connected with the song itself, prevented the original arrangements with the B.B.C., being carried out’.⁷⁰ The first domestic broadcast,⁷¹ on 14 December 1941, took place in a programme ‘Spirit of the Empire’, presenting ‘four songs by British composers inspired by this war’.⁷² A subsequent performance in February 1942 disappointed the composer. ‘I was particularly sorry because the tune is rather a ewe lamb of mine & I feel that if it got a proper send off it might hit the nail on the head – But I felt on Sunday night that it had been strangled at birth.’⁷³

In the meantime, wartime conditions made it too difficult logistically for Boult to hold both his BBC positions. From April 1942, Arthur Bliss, a long-time friend and colleague of both Boult and Vaughan Williams, took over the duties of Director of Music,⁷⁴ while Boult carried on as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The BBC continued to broadcast Vaughan Williams’s works, such as The Poisoned Kiss (1936),⁷⁵ a suite of film music from 49th Parallel (1940),⁷⁶ and the ‘Pavane’ from Job, the latter ending a programme to celebrate Empire Day ‘on a note of slow dignity’.⁷⁷ The noteworthy Vaughan Williams event of 1942, however, was his seventieth birthday, which the BBC marked vigorously with ‘a week’s celebration – one programme each evening, ending on the Saturday with a broadcast of the Celebration Concert by the Royal Philharmonic Society’, which presented ‘“birthday gift” compositions’ by friends and colleagues.⁷⁸ About all these broadcasts, Vaughan Williams wrote to Gerald Finzi: ‘The more I hear my own stuff the more I dislike it – where I shall be at the end of the week I don’t know – & I shan’t have the courage not to listen’.⁷⁹ Boult too was unhappy,⁸⁰ as, of the major works, he was scheduled to conduct only A Pastoral Symphony.

To placate him, Boult was invited to conduct the Fourth Symphony in a November broadcast.⁸²

In spring 1943, Vaughan Williams worked on incidental music to a radio production of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.⁸³ In February, while working on that score, Vaughan Williams wrote to tell Henry Wood that his new symphony ‘must now go forward “for better, for worse”’, and Wood accepted the Fifth Symphony sight unseen for the 1943 Proms.⁸⁴ In that wartime season, the Proms concerts were patriotically filled with works by living allied and Empire composers, and a new Vaughan Williams symphony provided a substantial homeland contribution. Despite overstretched resources, Boult offered: ‘We should be most happy to put aside a rehearsal as soon as you like to go through the work and enable you to test the Parts, etc.’⁸⁵ The private play-through took place on 25 May 1943 at the BBC’s Maida Vale studio. A number of guests were invited to attend, ‘a good indication of those who were musically closest to Vaughan Williams at this time’.⁸⁶ The first public performance was scheduled for the Proms on 24 June in the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by the composer.⁸⁷ Boult was pleased with the performance, particularly given wartime concerns:

In the final eighteen months of the war, works by Vaughan Williams were frequently aired, many conducted by Boult, including Job and the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies.⁸⁹ In February 1944, Vaughan Williams was asked to give a talk about Elgar for the tenth anniversary of his death, but the composer declined: ‘I had very little personal acquaintance with Elgar – I used to meet him for a few minutes once a year at the 3 Choir Festivals – he was always very kind & friendly – but we were never intimate.’⁹⁰ Interestingly, Vaughan Williams agreed to write and record four short talks for WQXR, the New York station, in December 1944.⁹¹

Meanwhile, several years before the end of the war, the War Office and BBC wanted to be ready with material with which to greet the peace. The BBC commissioned Vaughan Williams to write a ten-minute Victory Anthem for mass consumption, to be sung at Westminster Abbey,⁹² and he composed a work for soprano solo, large chorus, children’s chorus, full symphony orchestra, organ and narrator. Thanksgiving for Victory was pre-recorded on 4 November 1944, conducted by Boult and in the composer’s presence, ‘for immediate use when the moment comes . . . We would presumably have to [have the right forces ready] when it comes to a grand performance in the Albert Hall in the presence of Their Majesties on some special occasion later on.’⁹³ Copies of the discs were distributed internationally for overseas use, with strict injunction that they not be aired until after the official first broadcast, once peace was declared.

The first performance took place in a service of thanksgiving on the Sunday after Victory in Europe day (13 May 1945). After all the planning and promises, the work’s public emergence was awkwardly subdued. Boult believed that the problem was in part technical: ‘the recording . . . utterly failed to place the various levels of tone in proper perspective.’⁹⁴ By this time, Victor Hely-Hutchinson had succeeded Bliss as the BBC Director of Music, and he attributed the problem to lack of public awareness, ‘express[ing his] profound regret at the complete absence of publicity for it in the “Radio Times”’; the music broadcasts for Victory Week were to have been introduced in an article that was omitted due to space restrictions.⁹⁵ Others took up the cry for a live broadcast with full forces as part of the victory festivities, but a live performance was not mounted by the BBC until the 1945 Proms.⁹⁶ During that Promenade season, three concerts presented major works by Vaughan Williams, and the first public performance of Thanksgiving for Victory took place on 14 September.⁹⁷

After the war

In the years after the war the BBC, like Britain generally, was musically behind the times, as a function of conservative attitudes among the staff members in decision-making positions. Music for general audiences continued to be broadcast in the Home Service; in addition, the pioneering Third Programme was launched in September 1946 as an evening radio canvas dedicated to exploring all aspects of the fine arts, old and new. Even with the Third Programme, the Corporation was slow to follow Europe musically on the wave of new developments stemming from serialism, not investing in it wholeheartedly until later in the decade; nevertheless, the BBC’s attitude towards Vaughan Williams in those conservative years was surprisingly restrained. He was lauded at major birthdays, he took his stand at the podium during Proms seasons, and his symphonies and other popular works were broadcast on a regular basis. But the unceremonious, creative partnership between Corporation and composer became a thing of the past.

Vaughan Williams’s seventy-fifth birthday in October 1947 was celebrated in style. The composer conducted A London Symphony in the Royal Albert Hall for the opening of that season’s Symphony Concerts, broadcast on the Home Service on 15 October.⁹⁸ He conducted a repeat performance from a studio the following evening, when the Music Department held a party in his honour.⁹⁹ Each evening of the birthday week, This Week’s Composer presented a gramophone recording retrospective of his best-known works.¹⁰⁰ At the composer’s request, Sancta Civitas was featured in a Third Programme studio concert on 13 October.¹⁰¹ On the birthday itself (the 12th), Music Magazine included tributes by Harriet Cohen, Constant Lambert, Vaughan Williams’s friend and admirer Alan Kirby, and Boult.¹⁰² Boult gave homage to Vaughan Williams as ‘the undisputed leader of English musical life’, but, interestingly, also addressed the issue of international recognition:

Pre-recorded in English, German and Italian, the different versions of this talk were broadcast on the BBC’s European Service on Vaughan Williams’s birthday.¹⁰⁴

However, after the 1947 birthday celebrations, the strength of the BBC’s commitment to Vaughan Williams’s music began to decline. His standing as the leading living British composer prompted those in authority to take notice at important moments, but otherwise musical attention was turned sharply on the younger generation – particularly on Britten, after Peter Grimes achieved such outstanding success just as the war ended.¹⁰⁵ Vaughan Williams continued to loom, but it was not long before the ideals he championed – in particular, music for the people, heartily expressed in choral settings or large-scale symphonic landscapes – came to seem uncomfortably outdated, relics of a war-torn time from which people so painfully wished to disconnect; that is, his causes were increasingly out of step with a post-war musical environment that, as the 1950s unfolded, looked increasingly to Europe’s art-for-art’s-sake milieu for inspiration.

Yet Vaughan Williams’s oeuvre still fitted well within post-war BBC programming schemes, in that the Music Department liked to broadcast sets of works. Thus all the Vaughan Williams symphonies to date were given in the 1946 Proms, with the composer conducting A London Symphony on 31 July.¹⁰⁶ The Corporation also continued to take interest in first performances. In 1948, the composer offered to the Third Programme the premiere of his Partita for Double String Orchestra, which was broadcast on 20 March¹⁰⁷ and ‘diagonalized’ on the Home Service the day after;¹⁰⁸ the work was given its first concert performance on 29 July in the 1948 Proms, conducted by the composer. Moreover, the Corporation continued to promote new Vaughan Williams symphonies. The Music Department urgently wished to broadcast the first performance of Symphony No. 6 in spring 1948. Boult had been invited to a piano play-through at the Royal College of Music on 5 June 1947,¹⁰⁹ and an orchestral run-through took place on 16 December,¹¹⁰ conducted by the composer with Boult assisting; a BBC recording was made for Vaughan Williams’s private use.¹¹¹ The first performance, conducted by Boult, was given on 21 April 1948 on the Home Service, diagonalized on the 24th on the Third Programme, and repeated on 11 May on the Home Service to promote greater comprehension through repetition – and to arouse further attention and acclaim for the BBC. The symphony was performed again on 4 August, in the 1948 Proms, conducted by Basil Cameron.

The 1949–50 season was marked by the BBC’s choosing Hugh the Drover, alongside Verdi’s Falstaff, ‘as repertory productions for the whole winter season’; as a result, six broadcasts of Vaughan Williams’s opera were given between October and May on the Third Programme.¹¹² The composer was present for rehearsals leading to the initial broadcasts, and even for subsequent rehearsals, ‘simply for the pleasure of the thing’.¹¹³ In August 1950, Vaughan Williams expressed interest in writing incidental music for a series based on Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge;¹¹⁴ he subsequently arranged some of the music into an orchestral Prelude, and made this available to the BBC in September 1952.¹¹⁵ The following year, he was invited to write incidental music for Hardy’s The Dynasts, but declined the invitation.¹¹⁶ Throughout this period, Vaughan Williams continued to work on his Pilgrim’s Progress opera, and when the BBC Director of Music, Steuart Wilson, asked if it would be ready for performance in the 1951 Festival of Britain, Vaughan Williams immediately sent the score.¹¹⁷ The opera was given its first performance and broadcast on 26 April 1951 from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,¹¹⁸ and a second broadcast aired on 30 April.

From around this time, Vaughan Williams’s interactions with the BBC became fewer and less personal, undoubtedly due to the fact that Boult was no longer on the staff there. Boult had left his position as BBC Director of Music during the war, and ultimately, in April 1950, he left the Corporation altogether. He retired from his position as Chief Conductor ostensibly due to the BBC’s mandatory retirement age; as when Percy Pitt had been forced to leave under the same rule twenty years before, however, the matter was handled disagreeably, leaving a bitter aftertaste.¹¹⁹ After Boult’s departure, Vaughan Williams works were still broadcast – four of the symphonies were given at the 1951 Proms, for instance – but he was rarely invited to conduct. The BBC began to treat Vaughan Williams and his music monumentally, broadcasting major works of the past, rather than recognizing an individual whose outlook and musical language continued to develop and change.

Concerning Vaughan Williams’s eightieth birthday in October 1952, the BBC Head of Music, Herbert Murrill, asked: ‘What are we going to do about Vaughan Williams? . . . Although he is not a controversial figure in the Schönberg manner he seems to me to deserve some considerable gesture.’¹²⁰ The full set of six symphonies was presented at that summer’s Proms, with the Fifth on 3 September conducted by the composer.¹²¹ A retrospective of choral works and songs was proposed for the Third Programme in the final quarter of the year,¹²² but the idea was dropped: ‘if the symphonies are given at the Promenade concerts . . . I rather doubt if it is right to do much more than this’.¹²³ For the birthday itself, Murrill first considered a studio production of The Pilgrim’s Progress, as it ‘represents a crystallization of the composer’s thought and style over thirty years or more’;¹²⁴ but that plan also proved too onerous to realize, and instead a performance of On Wenlock Edge was broadcast in a late-night Third Programme recital.¹²⁵ The String Quartet in A minor aired on the Third Programme on 13 October, and the Home Service carried ‘a symphony concert of the composer’s best-loved works’, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.¹²⁶ Thus the five years that had passed since the war were telling; whereas the BBC celebrated the composer’s seventy-fifth birthday heroically, with all stops pulled out, the Corporation approached his eightieth reductively, as a ‘best-loved’ anachronism.

In this vein, the first performance of Sinfonia Antartica, given in Manchester on 14 January 1953 by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, was not at first going to be broadcast; though ‘something of an event in British music’,¹²⁷ a new Vaughan Williams symphony no longer warranted BBC attention. Two regional Home Services, however, bravely decided to broadcast the first performance,¹²⁸ and the Third Programme aired the Hallé’s second performance the next night; it was diagonalized from London on the basic Home Service on 21 January. The Corporation mounted its own broadcast in a BBC Symphony Concert conducted by Sargent on 11 March, with a studio repeat diagonalized the following night.¹²⁹ The Light Programme wondered whether it might approach Vaughan Williams about a broadcast talk, ‘to get him to illustrate his new symphony for a popular audience . . . with the object of getting him to bridge the gulfs between the great masses who cannot read a score and the musical cognoscenti’.¹³⁰ But the Music Programme Organiser reported: ‘V.W. summed up “All my life I have refused to talk about my own music and I’m certainly not going to start at 80”. He loves us very much – but not that much.’¹³¹

The major event of 1953 was of course the coronation, and Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony was included in the Coronation Concert on 27 May 1953, an all-British event that received major coverage on the BBC Home Service.¹³² A profound broadcasting effect of the coronation was that it was televised, bringing the phenomenon of television more firmly into the nation’s sitting-rooms. It is interesting, then, that around that time the BBC proposed to televise a performance of The Bridal Day, a ballet written by Vaughan Williams in 1938–9 to a libretto by Ursula Vaughan Williams, based on Spenser’s Epithalamion.¹³³ When the composer rediscovered the score in 1952, he sent it to Stanford Robinson, who wondered whether it could ‘be done twice in the Great Hall at Hampton Court, by the London Opera Club, during the Coronation Season’. Kenneth Wright, then head of music for television, believed that ‘a new work, with visual possibilities, by our greatest composer, and based on a great Elizabethan poet, might be an attractive idea’.¹³⁴ The first performance was televised from a London studio on 5 June 1953, narrated by Cecil Day Lewis and conducted by Robinson. Ursula Vaughan Williams later recalled:

In 1955, BBC radio featured several first Vaughan Williams broadcasts,¹³⁶ but the most significant transmissions of his music that year featured all seven symphonies, given between February and June on the Home Service by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. ‘They represent in a way easily discernable by the average music-lover the process by which a seer-composer of wide sympathies and great mental power assimilates the major experiences of life through music.’¹³⁷ The performances aired on Sunday evenings, each introduced by Frank Howes. Vaughan Williams conducted A Sea Symphony in the first concert on 6 February; Boult was invited to conduct No. 5 and Job in a concert on 1 May, and the final concert with Sinfonia Antartica on 19 June; and the rest were conducted by Rudolf Schwarz.

Nevertheless, declining interest in Vaughan Williams resulted in there being no Radio Times promotion for the first performance and broadcast of the Symphony No. 8 from Manchester, given by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Barbirolli, on 2 May 1956. Similarly, the Radio Times issue for the first Proms performance on 29 August, given again by Barbirolli and the Hallé, offered no special coverage of the symphony.¹³⁸ Thus it is not surprising that for Vaughan Williams’s eighty-fifth birthday in October 1957, the BBC’s plans seem rather thin and obligatory, reflecting minimal enthusiasm. The plans included a tribute in Music Magazine (6 October) and part of a Royal Philharmonic Society concert (9 October), conducted by Boult;¹³⁹ the Songs of Travel were aired on the birthday itself, but at the rather subdued hour of 9.25 a.m. When chastised for this half-hearted effort, the BBC explained, ‘we do not normally celebrate half-decades – we are saving up for 1962!’¹⁴⁰ The composer’s publisher found this all ‘rather grim’, particularly as the BBC was ‘not broadcasting any work later than 1922’.¹⁴¹ The Corporation did rustle up a further performance on 17 October, presenting the Fifth Symphony.¹⁴²

In spring 1958, Vaughan Williams invited the BBC’s Eric Warr to a run-through of Symphony No. 9 at St Pancras Town Hall on 21 March,¹⁴³ at which the work was played twice.¹⁴⁴ Despite the ‘coolness of the critics’ reception of the music’,¹⁴⁵ the first performance on 2 April, given by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sargent, was broadcast on the Home Service with adequate BBC promotion. Sargent and the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the work again on 5 August at the Proms, with the composer in attendance.¹⁴⁶ Following the composer’s death on 26 August 1958 – the day that Boult was scheduled to record the Ninth Symphony – the commemorations started, and the following year all nine symphonies were done at the Proms.¹⁴⁷

Epilogue

In a world that relied more and more on modern technologies for musical experience, Vaughan Williams’s passion for music as ‘the art of the common man’¹⁴⁸ was played out through a process that was largely dependent on the BBC’s partnership, particularly when directed by Adrian Boult. During his fifteen years in leading roles with the Corporation, the conductor contributed enormously to modern music of his time, especially contemporary British music. But what he did for Vaughan Williams, in particular, can be attributed not only to his fundamental belief in his music, but also to a number of profound convergences in their musical, spiritual and political viewpoints.

Boult frequently wrote, taught and lectured about conducting as a fundamentally pragmatic art;¹⁴⁹ yet, his performing aspiration emerged from a more essential source. In effect, his basic view on musical performance complemented Vaughan Williams’s own. Vaughan Williams maintained that

From his point of view as a conductor, Boult heartily agreed about his deferential role within that connective process:

Vaughan Williams and Boult thus held in common this fundamental view of music-making.

Spiritually, Boult retained a religious belief that Vaughan Williams, as an agnostic, denied. In one of his writings, the conductor stated baldly: ‘Music is the language of God . . . Surely it is not possible for the mystery that is music to have evolved naturally without some commanding authority.’¹⁵² Nevertheless, the two musicians shared an understanding of music’s spiritual function. For Vaughan Williams, ‘music is not only a form of enjoyment, it is also a spiritual exercise in which all have their part’.¹⁵³ Boult went further in his view: ‘music opens up immense spiritual and psychological resources in the task of lessening some of the misunderstandings which result in political conflicts and their attendant social disasters’.¹⁵⁴ Throughout his long career, Boult published articles and gave lectures and radio talks about his musical perceptions and experiences, relating his conviction that music performance at its best provided a framework for tapping spiritual resources:

Thus at music’s foundation was a unity that spiritually purified and fortified the human condition.

Both Boult and Vaughan Williams lived through two world wars, which had an immense impact on their political perceptions of the world. When the threat of war re-emerged in the 1930s, Vaughan Williams became profoundly attracted to an organization that seemed to offer a solution. The Federal Union advocated ‘democratic self-government for the prevention of war, the creation of prosperity and the preservation and promotion of individual liberty’.¹⁵⁶ Vaughan Williams set up a branch of the Federal Union in Dorking, acting ‘not [as] an authority on F.U. only [as] a layman who strongly believes in it’.¹⁵⁷ Boult came through World War II also believing in this kind of political unity as the way forward for modern Europe. He was a delegate at the Congress of Europe in May 1948, a ‘gathering of Europe’s finest citizens and most prominent statesmen’, coming together to explore the convictions of ‘the European Union of Federalists, along with Mr. Churchill’s “United Europe” and other movements’.¹⁵⁸ When the Korean War became a further threat, Boult spoke out in support of international political unity as the only viable path.¹⁵⁹ Although Vaughan Williams pursued these views less actively late in his life,¹⁶⁰ on the first anniversary of his death a Royal Festival Hall concert was held in support of the Federal Trust, an educational offshoot of the Federal Union. In Boult’s introduction to the concert, he made particular reference to Vaughan Williams’s belief that ‘politically the world lacks a fresh vision of its own unity and that it is often for the artist to show the way’.¹⁶¹

It is clear, then, that in a variety of important ways, Vaughan Williams and Boult shared world-views that underpinned their long bond of friendship. Forged during the first decade of the twentieth century and lasting until Vaughan Williams’s death over forty years later, their alliance was characterized by a number of vital elements: a shared sense of musical principles in the realm of music-making, a shared sense of music in relation to the spiritual, and a shared sense of music in relation to the political – core values that fundamentally framed their artistic identities. In part due to Boult’s lifetime of performances and his strong influence at the BBC, Vaughan Williams continues to be remembered today as – in Boult’s words – ‘one of [the] great men – some of us would say [the] very greatest man’¹⁶² of British music of the mid-twentieth century.

Files of unpublished documents held at the BBC Written Archives Centre

[abbreviations used in footnotes appear to left]

RVW1

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer, 1a (1928–33)

RVW2

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer 1b (1934–8)

RVW3

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Artists 1 (1930–40)

RVW4

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer 2a (1939–41)

RVW5

R41/241, PCS, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1939)

RVW6

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Artists 2 (1941–55)

RVW7

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer 2b (1942–3)

RVW8

R19/921, Features, ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ (1936–54)

RVW9

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer 2c (1944–6)

RVW10

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer 3 (1947–51)

RVW11

RCONT1, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer 4 (1952–62)

ACB1

S32/7, Special Collections, Boult, Autobiographical Material (1928–65)

ACB2

S32/26, Special Collections, Boult, Articles: Ralph Vaughan Williams (1958–62)

ACB3

S32/12, Special Collections, Boult, Conducting (1946–61)

ACB4

S32/10/1–2, Special Collections, Boult, Thoughts on Conducting & Trumpet

ACB5

S32/30, Special Collections, Boult, Lectures (1929–61)

ACB6

S32/31, Special Collections, Boult, Lectures – The Broadcasting of Music (1932)

ACB7

S32/32/1–5, Special Collections, Boult, Scripts

ACB8

S32/32/2, Special Collections, Boult, Scripts (1944–50)

ACB9

S32/24, Special Collections, Boult, Articles (1928–67)