unity in house of life - graduate center, cuny · vaughan williams, 2nd ed. (oxford: oxford...

Unity in RVW’s House of Life /1

Four Levels of Unity in Vaughan Williams’s The House of Life*

During the years 1903-1904, Ralph Vaughan Williams completed three

substantial song cycles: Songs of Travel on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson and

two musically-related cycles that set sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Willow-

Wood (sub-titled: “cantata”) and The House of Life: A Cycle of Six Sonnets

(hereafter House of Life).1 And it is with House of Life that we will be concerned

* My thanks to Ms. Sara Pecknold, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., for her thoughtful comments. 1 On Songs of Travel, see the seminal article by Rufus Hallmark, “Robert Louis Stevenson, Ralph Vaughan Williams and their Songs of Travel,” in Byron Adams and Robin Wells, eds., Vaughan Williams Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 129-57; see also Allan W. Atlas, “Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel: A Note on the Structural Role of the Thematic Relationships in Songs 4 and 9,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 7, 1 (2010): 103-17. Completed in April 1903, Willow-Wood is a four-movement cycle (each movement sets a single sonnet, with the movements played without a break) for baritone (or mezzo-soprano) and orchestra (a version with piano accompaniment was performed in March 1903); Vaughan Williams revised the work in 1908-1909, adding an ad libitum part without words for women’s chorus; see Michael Kennedy, A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 17. There is a letter from Vaughan Williams to Edward Dent—assigned to January 1910 by Hugh Cobbe—in which Vaughan Williams writes that the work was “finally revised this year”; see Hugh Cobbe, ed., Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams: 1895-1958 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 69. We might note that the little-known Willow-Wood was recorded for the first time only in 2005: Vaughan Williams—Willow-Wood, The Sons of Light, Toward the Unknown Region, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, Roderick Williams, baritone; Royal


here, with the various means by which Vaughan Williams tied the six songs tightly

together, and, more specifically, with a four-level hierarchy of unifying features

based on degrees of audibility and recognition that go from the immediately

recognizable and easily memorable to the barely perceptible.

Since with the exception of “Silent Noon,” the second song in the cycle,

House of Life is not particularly well known, a few words about its background are

in order. It was around 1900 that Vaughan Williams seems to have developed the

idea of setting sonnets from Rossetti’s monumental The House of Life: A Sonnet-

Sequence,2 itself a collection of 101 sonnets plus an unnumbered introductory

sonnet that, after various stages of composition, compilation, and publication,

reached its final format in the poet’s Ballads and Sonnets of 1881.3 From this

Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, David Lloyd-Jones, cond. Naxos 8.557798 (2005). 2 Kennedy, Catalogue, 17. It was also just after 1900 that Vaughan Williams turned his attention to the poetry of Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), Dante Gabriel’s sister, setting five of her poems and drawing inspiration from her works for his Symphonic Rhapsody, which was withdrawn after its first and only performance on 7 March 1904; see Kennedy, Catalogue, 15-16, 18-19, 21-22, 29. 3 The literature on Rossetti (1828-1882)—as both painter and poet—and The House of Life in particular is vast. A good starting point is the critical edition, The House of Life: A Sonnet-Sequence by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. Roger C. Lewis (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2007); see also, the informative online Rossetti Archive: The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Archive, ed. Jerome J.


collection, Vaughan Williams first set the poem “Silent Noon” (No. 19 in Rossetti’s

sequence), which he likely composed in 1902, had performed from manuscript on

10 March 1903, and subsequently had published as an independent song by

Willcocks & Co. in March 1904.4 Then during the remainder of 1902 and over the

course of 1903 he completed both Willow-Wood, which sets sonnets 49-52 of

Rossetti’s collection (where “Willow-Wood” appears as an umbrella-like title for the

four poems), and House of Life, which, when completed, consisted of six songs:

No. 1, “Love-Sight” (Rossetti, No. 4), No. 2, “Silent Noon,” now incorporated into

the cycle (or was it always intended as such?), No. 3, “Love’s Minstrels” (Rossetti,

No. 9, where the title is “Passion or Worship”), No. 4, “Heart’s Haven” (Rossetti, No.

22), No. 5, “Death in Love” (Rossetti, No. 48), and No. 6, “Love’s Last Gift”

(Rossetti, No. 59). Finally, the cycle in its entirety received its first performance on

2 December 1904, having already been published by Willcocks earlier that year.5

McGann, at www.rossettiarchive.org. On what two critics call the “musicality” of the sonnets themselves, see Phyllis Weliver, “The ‘Silent Song’ of D.G. Rossetti’s The House of Life,” in Phyllis Weliver, ed., The Figure of Music in Nineteenth-Century Poetry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 194-212, and Elizabeth Helsinger, “Listening: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Persistence of Song,” Victorian Studies, 51, 3 (2009): 409-21; see also note 10, below. 4 On the dates of composition, early performances, and publication, see Kennedy, Catalogue, 17, 24-25. 5 The cycle was reissued without alteration except for the addition of a plate number (1760) by Edwin Ashdown in 1933. The original Willcocks edition appears online:


I should preface my comments about the cycle by saying that, once past

some basic generalizations about the structure and narrative meaning of Rossetti’s

sonnets, my approach is primarily musical. In fact, I will not argue with those who

hold that the analysis sometimes fails the test of multivalency. Yet not every

analysis must be all-embracing, and I choose to concentrate upon what most

interests me. In short, I will try to show that the six songs of House of Life are

bound together musically at four different levels, these forming a hierarchy—as

much the listener’s (thus my own) as Vaughan Williams’s (I cannot say that he was

even aware of it)—that descends from the immediately audible and easily

memorable to the barely (some might say not at all) perceptible. The levels are (in

descending order): (1) motivic recollection and allusion; (2) recitatives (explicitly

marked as such in the score) or recitative-like passages; (3) cross references

between tonal areas and/or specific pitches; and (4) internal proportions as

measured in real (performance) time.

Before turning to this hierarchy, though, we should consider matters of a

more general nature, beginning with the overall sense of unity—some have said

monotony (see note 9, below)—that results simply from each poem being cast in

sonnet form, more specifically that of the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet. The poem

“IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library,” at http://imslp.org/imglnks/usimg/b/b7/IMSLP129-134--PMLP252236-Vaughan_Williams_The_House_of_ Life.pdf.


of Song 1 of the cycle, “Love-Sight,” can serve as a reminder of this type of

sonnet’s poetic structure.6

Rhyme

Octave Quatrain 1. 1. When do I see thee most, beloved one? a 2. When in the light the spirits of mine eyes b 3. Before thy face, their altar, solemnize b 4. The worship of that Love through thee made known? a Quatrain 2. 5. Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone) a 6. Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies b 7. Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, b 8. And my soul only sees thy soul its own? a

6 The punctuation follows that of the 1904 Willcocks publication (again, Ashdown 1933 is identical), which sometimes differs—no doubt inadvertently—from that in Rossetti’s 1881 Ballades and Sonnets, presumably the version upon which Vaughan Williams drew. It is difficult to imagine that Vaughan Williams intentionally altered the punctuation. The differences between the two—which also include differences in capitalization—are these, with the comments telling what appears in Ballades but not in Willcocks 1904/Ashdown 1933: Song 1, meas. 40, comma after “alone” within the parentheses; meas. 66, comma after “love”; meas. 88, comma after “Hope”; Song 2, meas. 6, dash after “grass,”; meas. 30, no comma after “edge”; meas. 50, dash after “sky:”; meas. 67, no comma after “hour”; Song 3, meas. 19, comma after “Behold”; meas. 23, “Love’s” with capital L; meas. 26, colon after “I”; meas. 49, “sun-lit” with hyphen; meas. 55, no comma after “grove”; Song 4, no differences; Song 5, meas. 51, period after “new”; meas. 65, dash after “cling”; Song 6, meas. 12, no dash after “said:”; meas. 36, comma after “chief”; meas. 51, period after “reef” (end of octave).


Sestet Tercet 1. 9. O love my love! if I no more should see c 10. Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, c 11. Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, d Tercet 2. 12. How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope e 13. The ground whirl of the perished leaves of Hope e 14. The wind of Death’s imperishable wing? d Thus Vaughan Williams was faced with six instances of the same, unalterable bi-

partite scheme, one divided into octave and sestet, the former consisting of two

quatrains, the latter of two tercets, and with the meter of each line being fixed in

iambic pentameter.7 And though there are structural/procedural differences from

one song to the next, there is enough sonnet-induced consistency for us to discern

some structural “bottom lines.”

Table 1 tracks four aspects of the songs across the entire cycle on a song-

by-song and section-by-section basis: tonal areas, metric/rhythmic stability,

thematic recollections, and points of musical climax, about all of which a few

words of explanation are necessary: (1) under tonal areas, I do not identify those

that are settled into only briefly (both these and modulatory passages, in which 7 A note about the rhyme scheme: though abba abba is the normal pattern in the octave, Nos. 2 and 5 rhyme abba acca; the sestets show greater variation: No. 2 = dde ffe, No. 3 = cdd edd, No. 4 = cdd cdd, No. 5 = dee dff, and No. 6 = cdd cff. On Rossetti’s treatment of iambic pentameter and his varying of the rhyme scheme, see Joseph F. Vogel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Versecraft. University of Florida Humanities Monograph, 24 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1971), passim. I cannot discern any influence of the sestet’s variable rhyme scheme on Vaughan Williams’s settings.


there is no settling in at all, are designated with an “x”, and thus not differentiated

from one another); (2) for meter/rhythm to be stable, it cannot be interrupted by

another meter and/or surface-rhythm pattern, or, as in Song 3, an unrelenting

recitative-like style; (3) thematic recollections include only those instances in which

a theme returns after it had been stated earlier and then “put aside,” this opposed

to instances in which motives and/or figuration (especially in the accompaniment)

are sustained constantly or almost so; and (4) though the point of musical climax

can be somewhat subjective, all but one of the instances so designated correspond

to the highest and loudest note in the voice part; the one exception comes on the

highest and softest note. In all, Table 1 does not aim for subtlety!


Table 1. House of Life: an overview of the sonnet-induced structure that runs through Vaughan Williams’s cycle. Note: (1) under tonal area(s), “x” means unstable;

(2) under metric/rhythmic stability, “y” = yes, “n” = no; (3) under thematic recall, I

identify both the measure in which the recollection begins and then, in parentheses,

the measure in which the original statement began; and (4) the citation under musical

climax refers to both measure and (after the slash) line of poetry, followed by a very brief description of the event; finally Inter 1 and 2 = Interludes 1 and 2.

Octave → Sestet → Intro Q1 Inter 1 Q2 Inter 2 T1 T2 Postlude

Song 1 (A major) tonal area(s) x — I I I x – V V bV – x i – x VI – I metric/rhythmic stability y y y y y n y — n y thematic recollection 92 (6) musical climax m. 92/l. 14 “Death’s” – e’ flat – ff cf. Song 5 Song 2 (E-flat major) tonal area(s) I I – V III III – x – IV IV II – ii – V I I metric/rhythmic stability y y y y y n – y y y thematic recollection 61 (3) musical climax m. 64/l. 13 “song” – e’ flat – pp


Song 3 (D dorian/mixolydian) tonal area(s) I i none i – I none i – I I – I I metric/rhythmic stability at meas. 1: “il tempo sempre rubato.” – further along: “senza misura” and “freely recited” thematic recollection n o r e c o l l e c t io n musical climax m. 50/l. 11 “sea” – e’ natural -- ff

Octave → Sestet → Intro Q1 Inter 1 Q2 Inter 2 T1 T2 Postlude Song 4 (E major)

tonal area(s) I I – iii V of vi x – I7 I7 x x – I

I metric/rhythmic stability y y y y y y y y thematic recollection 42 (3) musical climax m. 46/l. 14 “one” – e’ natural -- f Song 5 (C major) tonal area(s) I I I – x x – I I – x x x i metric/rhythmic stability y y y y y y – n n y thematic recollection 44 (1) 85 (6 of Song 1) musical climax m. 85/l. 14 “Death” – e’ flat – ff cf. Song 1 Song 6 (F major)


tonal area(s) bIV I – iii – x none IV – x – bVI x I – III – x x – I VI – I metric/rhythmic stability y y y – n n y – n n – y y thematic recollection 54 (6) 71 (1 of Song 1) 80 (6) musical climax “thy” – f’ – ff Thus i terms of providing a sense of sonnet-induced structural unity over the

course of the cycle as a whole a few things are obvious.

(1) Just as all six songs are consistent in including an introduction and postlude,

so they are consistent in never having an interlude between the two tercets of the

sestet; likely, Vaughan Williams thought it too late in the piece—both musically and

poetically—to stop the forward motion. Things are less consistent in terms of

interlude 1 (between quatrains) and interlude 2 (between octave and sestet);

whereas five of the songs (1, 2, 4, 5, and 6) have an interlude between the octave

and the sestet, only four songs (1, 2, 4, and 5) have one between the two quatrains.

And in all instances, the inclusion of the interlude seems to be related to the

punctuation that appeared in the 1881 edition of the poems: “full stops” of one

type or another (period, colon, question mark, exclamation point) invite an

interlude,8 a criterion that works in reverse, as it were, at the end of quatrain 1 of

Song 6, where there is neither punctuation nor interlude. There are, however, two 8 Note that in songs 5 and 6, the period at the end of Quatrain 2 is missing in both Willcocks 1904 and Ashdown 1933; it is present in both poems in the 1881 Ballades and Sonnets (see note 6).


exceptions to this “rule”: Vaughan Williams ignores the period at the end of each

quatrain of Song 3, which song often goes its own way, as if marching to a

different lute and “hautboy” (the two instruments cited in the poem).

(2) In general, there is a notable increase in instability—harmonic, tonal,

metrical, and rhythmic—within the individual song as it moves along. Thus quatrain

2 will usually range farther afield than quatrain 1, with a similar relationship being

apparent between sestet and octave (particularly in terms of tonality and the

disruption of metric/rhythmic stability).

(3) With the exception of a single recollection in Song 5 in which the music line

1 (measure 1) reappears at line 8 (measure 44), all other musical recollections of

material that first appears in the octave (no matter where) must wait until the

sestet to make their reappearance. Clearly, Vaughan Williams wanted space

between original statement and recollection (see below with respect to the

proportional placement of the recollections).

(4) Finally, five of the six songs attain their melodic—and emotional—climax in

the final tercet (where one would expect to find it). In all, then, Vaughan Williams’s

rather similar treatment of each of the sonnets produced at least a minimal sense

of unity—of expectations fulfilled—across

the cycle in terms of both structure and the placement of various gestures.9

9 Writing with reference to both “Silent Noon” and the Willow-Wood cycle in the issue of The Pilot for 21 March 1903, W. Barclay Squire stated that “the sonnet-form [. . .] presents almost insuperable difficulties for musical illustration” (quoted after Michael Kennedy, The


More tentative, perhaps, is a sense of poetic-narrative unity, since not only

does Rossetti’s collection lack a prominent “story line,” but Vaughan Williams set

only six of the 101 sonnets, with some skipping around in the process (Nos. 4, 19,

9, 22, 48, 59). Briefly, Rossetti’s sonnet-sequence deals with dualities: life/death,

matter/spirit, time/eternity, dream/reality, Platonic/erotic love, unity/separation,

etc.10 And if McGann discerns an “implicit,” partially autobiographical narrative,11

Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 2nd edition [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 55); since then, this judgment has been reiterated at least twice in discussions of House of Life: James Day, Vaughan Williams, 2nd ed. The Master Musicians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 111; Trevor Hold, Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song-Composers (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2002), 105, though none of the three writers gives specific reasons for his assertion. A.E.F. Dickinson, Vaughan Williams (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 146, has a slightly different—if not entirely clear—take on the matter: “The broad 8 [line] – 6 [line] symmetry must either be exploited in a wider context or re-moulded according to a fresh and musical sense of proportion [. . .]”; he goes on to write (p. 148): “[. . .] the composer has handled a series of limited, richly charged, near-monotonous, Dante-esque poems with resource, exploiting the sonnet structure [. . .].” Is it, then, the form of the sonnet itself or its six-fold appearance that Dickinson finds troublesome? 10 I have found the following particularly helpful in shedding light on Rossetti’s dense poetry (note that I have no argument with Dickinson’s characterization of the poetry as “near monotonous”—see note 9): Jerome McGann, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Game that Must be Lost (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); David G. Riede, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Limits of Victorian Vision (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Florence Saunders Boos, The Poetry of Dante G. Rossetti (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1976); Stephen J. Spector, “Love, Unity, and Desire in the


Riede argues that Rossetti’s sequence “[. . .] exhibits a tension in which sequentiality

suggests narrative, logical rational development, but the parts [of which], the

individual sonnets resist [. . .].”12 Perhaps Florence Saunders Boos sums things up in

a refreshingly down-to-earth fashion: critics have differed about whether Rossetti’s

sonnet-sequence is a

[. . .] unified love sequence or treatment of various topics, a compilation of loosely arranged descriptions of emotional states or a definable progression of ideas, a descent from love to despair and disintegration, or an ascension into qualified resolution and hopefulness.13 And what effect does Vaughan Williams’s having set only six of the sonnets

have on all this? He seems to have chosen his six sonnets with care and in a way

that does, perhaps, offer a narrative that moves in general terms from hope to

despair over the course of the cycle. Thus whereas the narrator (male lover) in

Song 2, “Silent Noon,” can speak optimistically about “This close companion’d

inarticulate hour/When two-fold silence was the song of love” (lines 13-14), Song 6,

“Love’s Last Gift,” ends with Love despairing (lines 9-14):

[. . .] all sweet blooms of love Poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” ELH: A Journal of English History, 38, 3 (1971): 432-58 (see also the articles by Weliver and Helsinger cited in note 3). 11 McGann, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 39. 12 Riede, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 194. 13 Boos, The Poetry of Dante G. Rossetti, 18.


To thee I gave while spring and summer sang; But autumn stops to listen, with some pang From those worse things the wind is moaning of. Only this laurel dreads no winter days:

Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.

In the end, though, I would suggest that any sense of across-the-cycle unity

that results either from the six-fold statement of the sonnet form or from the

twists and turns of a somewhat shadowy narrative are minimal. Rather, the more

meaningful unity in Vaughan Williams’s House of Life lies in the hierarchy of four

musical elements that I cited above: motivic recollection, recitatives, cross

references between tonal areas and pitch-classes, and internal proportions; and it is

to these that we now proceed.

The most immediately audible of the unifying features is that of motivic

recollection.

Song 1 begins with what might be called a “double introduction”: whereas

measures 12-15, which simply doodle on a tonic A-major chord, may be said to

introduce and belong to Song 1 proper, measures 1-11 consist of two contrasting

motives (Ex. 1) that will return on a number of occasions during the course of the

cycle and that therefore serve as the introduction to the cycle as a whole. Banfield


labels these two motives “tenderness in love” (motive x) and “death in love”

(motive y, the first two measures of which I will refer to as its headmotive).14

Ex. 1. House of Life: Song 1, “Love-Sight,” meas. 1-11. (Note: this and all subsequent examples from the cycle are drawn from the 1904 Willcocks edition, which appears online at IMSLP/ Petrucci Library [see note 5].) In fact, the recollections begin in Song 1 itself, as measure 92/line 14 introduces

the word “Death’s” on a searing, fortissimo e’ flat, which immediately triggers two

statements of the headmotive of motive y in the piano (Ex. 2).

Ex. 2. House of Life: Song 1, “Love-Sight,” meas. 92-100. We then wait until nearly the end of Song 5, where “Death” (now without the

apostrophe + “s”), once again sung fortissimo on e’ flat (measure 85/line 14), sets

off another recollection of motive y, this time as three statements of the

headmotive (Ex. 3).

Ex. 3. House of Life: Song 5, “Death in Love,” meas. 82-91.

14 Stephen Banfield, Sensibility and English Song: Critical Studies of the Early 20th Century, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. 1, 78; see also, Hold, Parry to Finzi, 105.


Both times, then, it is “Death’s/Death” and their high, fortissimo e’ flats that prompt

the return of motive y; both times the recollection marks the climax at line 14 of

the sonnet in which it appears; and both times “Death’s/Death” is preceded by

chords on G: major in Song 1, minor in Song 5, with the e’ flat being approached in

both instances from the d’ a half step below it. (Note that on both occasions the e’

flat is a chord tone in the triad that supports it: in Song 1, an A-flat major chord in

first inversion, in Song 5, a C-flat major chord above a non-chordal F natural.) It

seems impossible to miss the recollections and the relationships that bind them

together.

Motive y will make a final appearance in Song 6, but I would like to digress

for a moment before considering it. I do so for the following reason: while I am

not about to charge Vaughan Williams with “cribbing”—the term he himself used

when he occasionally admitted to borrowing15—the combination of “Death’s/Death”

and the high e’ flat sung calls to mind

two songs by an English contemporary that similarly associate the word “Death”

with a high e’ flat: Arthur Somervell’s “I Hate the Dreadful Hollow” and “A Voice by

15 Ralph Vaughan Williams, “A Musical Autobiography,” in Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Choral Symphony with Writings on other Musical Subjects (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 149: “Cribbing is, to my mind, a legitimate and praiseworthy practice, but one ought to know where one has cribbed [. . .] Deliberate cribbing is all right and the funny thing is that what is most deliberately cribbed sounds the most original, but the more subtle, unconscious cribbing is, I admit, dangerous.


the Cedar Tree,” Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in his Cycle of Songs from Tennyson’s

Maud, which, like House of Life, is for baritone and piano. Still a third song in that

cycle, No. 12, “My Life has Crept So Long,” sets the word “doom” in a similar

fashion.16 Example 4 provides the three passages in question.

Ex. 4. Arthur Somervell, Maud: (a) Song 1, “I Hate the Dreadful Hollow,” meas. 25-30; (b) Song 2, “A Voice by the Cedar Tree,” meas. 24-28; (c) Song 12, “My Life has Crept So Long,” meas. 87-92. (After Boosey & Co., 1898; online at IMSLP/Petrucci Library [see note 5].)

Although I know of no evidence to show that Vaughan Williams consciously leaned

on Somervell’s songs, it is hard to imagine that he did not at least know them.

Somervell’s cycle, which consists of twelve songs, was published by Boosey & Co.

in 1898—with a note that the twelve songs are “designed for continuous

performance” —and Vaughan Williams might well have heard the cycle when it was

performed at St. James’s Hall on 7 March 1901.17 In the end, the dark notions of

16 Clearly, this is not to say that all instances of a high e’ flat in Somervell’s cycle are associated with the idea of death. Thus another passage in Song 2, measures 68-71, also climbs to the e’ flat, only to have it enunciate the word “adore”! Nor do all of Somervell’s references to death occur on e’ flat. 17 On the performance, see Linda K. Hughes, “From Parlor to Concert Hall: Arthur Somervell’s Song-Cycle on Tennyson’s Maud,” in Nicholas Temperley, ed., The Lost Chord: Essays on Victorian Music (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 102; Hughes (pp. 111-12, Ex. 3a) also cites the passage given in Ex. 4 above, though not in connection with Vaughan Williams.


death and doom on a climactic e’ flat in both House of Life and the earlier Maud

may well be more than a coincidence.

As noted above, the y motive makes one more appearance in House of Life:

in Song 6, “Love’s Last Gift,” measures 74-79, where once again it follows motive

x—itself now sung to the words of line 13, “Only this laurel dreads no winter days—

as it did at the very beginning of the cycle (see Ex. 5).

Ex. 5. House of Life: Song 6, “Love’s Last Gift,” meas. 71-79. Thus in one respect the cycle has come full circle: the paired motives x + y, which

opened Song 1, but were then separated from one another, now sound together

once again near the very end of Song 6.

Although I will take up matters of pacing and proportion in the cycle in some

detail below, I would like to address those matters as they concern the

recollections of motives x + y here in order to close the book on that aspect of

unity across House of Life. Table 2 shows the real-time distance between

statements of the motives based on the recording by Roderick Williams (baritone)

and Iain Burnside (piano), which, I would argue, is by far the most satisfying

recording of the cycle in terms of tempo and pacing.18

18 See note 20 for discographical information about this and two other recordings of the entire cycle that I cite in Tables 3 – 6 below.


Table 2. House of Life: real-time distances between statements of the unifying motives

x and y based on the recording by Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside (see note

20); Int = intervening time, end = Song 6, measures 80-102; timings are given in minutes and seconds; the numbers below the motives identify the song and, after the slash, measures within the song. x + y Int = 2:32 y Int = 13:42 y Int = 3:13 x + y end = 0:59 1/1-11 1/92-100 5/85-90 6/71-79 One must admire Vaughan Williams’s sense of pacing—whether loosely planned or

entirely intuitive—in connection with these recollections. Whereas the first

recollection of motive y, now separated from x, appears near the end of Song 1,

only 2:32 after the initial statement of the two motives sounded as a pair, we then

must wait no less than 13:42 (or until the very final line of

Song 5) for the next recollection; in fact, so much time has elapsed that we had

probably come to assume, somewhere along the line, that there would be no

further recollections. Yet the recollection of motive y in Song 5 is followed rather

quickly in Song 6 by the combined x + y motives after an interval of only 3:13. And

if we translate those real-time distances of 2:32 and 3:13 between (1) the initial


statement of x + y and the first recollection of y alone (both in Song 1) and (2) the

recollections of y alone in Song 5 and the combined x + y Song 6, respectively,

into percentages of Roderick Williams’s performance of the cycle as a whole (the

total duration of which is 25:34), we find that they represent a rather closely-

balanced—almost symmetrical—10% and 13%, respectively, of Williams’s total time,

with the difference of 3% certainly being imperceptible. In all, one cannot

overestimate the unifying power produced by the network of the x and y motives

and the association of the latter motive with “Death’s/Death” and the fortissimo

e’ flat. It is where the sense of cyclic unity begins; and it is where that sense of

unity is as strong as it will get.

The second set of unifying features in our hierarchy consists of passages

that are recitative-like, that is, declamatory passages with little or no rhythmic

support. The first of these appears in Song 1. Having begun its eighth-note

surface rhythm in measure 12, the piano does not relent until measure 66, where it

starts the sestet by slipping chromatically from E major to E-flat major, on which

sustained, second-inversion chord it momentarily gets stuck (Ex. 6).

Ex. 6. House of Life: Song 1, “Love-Sight,” meas. 64-67. Much the same thing occurs at the beginning of the sestet of No. 2, this time with

the explicit performance direction: “Quasi Recitative” (Ex. 7).

Ex. 7. House of Life: Song 2, “Silent Noon,” meas. 41-46.


Vaughan Williams knew when to stop: the same unexpected gesture in two

successive songs was enough. But the idea of recitative-like declamation could still

be exploited, and Song 3 does just that. After an introduction in which both meter

and pulse are barely discernible—the tempo indication reads: “Lento. (Il tempo

sempre rubato.)”—large chunks of the piece consist of little else than recitative-like

dialogues between voice and piano (Ex. 8).

Ex. 8. House of Life: Song 3, “Love’s Minstrels,” meas. 7-12. In fact, the performance instruction “senza misura” appears four times (meas. 7,

14, and twice in 18), while “freely recited” appears twice (meas. 19 and 36). Thus

the brief, unexpected gesture of Songs 1 and 2 becomes the norm in Song 3.

Again Vaughan Williams sensed when enough was enough, and Song 4 lacks

even the slightest trace of recitative. Song 5, though, revives it. The passage in

question begins at measure 67/line 11 (“Then plucked a feather from the bearer’s

wing”), with the instructions “a piacere” in the voice part and “colla voce” in the

piano’s sustained chords; in effect, the passage continues in this highly

declamatory manner right to the climax on “Death” and the fortissimo e’ flat at

measure 85 (the measures immediately preceding which are shown in Example 3).

Finally, there are two instances of recitative-like moments in Song 6: (1) there is

the speech-like passage in the piano that serves as a miniature interlude between

octave and sestet, and (2) as we have already seen in Example 5, the words “Only


this laurel dreads no winter days,” are not only sung to motive x, but bear the

instruction “quasi Recit.” In sum, the declamatory, recitative-like passages that took

us by surprise in Songs 1 and 2 become a unifying factor, as similar passages

return in all of the subsequent songs save Song 4.

Less obvious, at least immediately, I think, than either the motivic

recollections or the persistence of the recitative-like passages in the hierarchy of

unifying features are those relationships that result from cross references between

either tonal areas and/or individual pitches. The six songs of House of Life are in

the following keys: No. 1, A major (after the introductory motives x and y had

moved through ii – V – I in C); No. 2, E-flat major; No. 3, D-dorian/

mixolydian; No. 4, E major; No. 5, C major; and No. 6, F major (after a short,

introductory preview of the main theme in D-flat major).

At first, Song 2, “Silent Noon,” seems to be something of an anomaly, since

without that song, the others are related to one another by the more usual intervals

of descending 5th (Songs 1 and 3, 5 – 6), descending major 3rd (Songs 4 – 5), and

ascending major 2nd (Songs 3 – 4). Perhaps “Silent Noon” stands out because it

was composed prior to the five other songs, quite possibly with no thought that it

would become part of the larger cycle (see above). Two observations, though:

(1) once Vaughan Williams decided to incorporate the song into House of Life and

had decided upon the keys of the other five songs, he could have transposed it if


he wanted to, and (2) the key of E flat is, in fact, well integrated with respect to the

key areas that come just before and after it.

There are two events in Song 1 that set up the E flat of Song 2. First, as

noted above, the climax of Song 1 came at measure 92, with the e’ flat sung

fortissimo on the word “Death’s” (see Ex. 2); and second, it was with the

unexpected, even jarring, chromatic slip from E major to E-flat major that the

sestet of Song 1 introduced the first of the cycle’s recurring recitative-like

passages (see Ex. 6). Thus both of Song 1’s ventures into or onto E flat are ear-

catching and memorable, and when “Silent Noon” establishes that key as its own, it

is a bit like returning to an old tonal (or at least pitch-class) friend.

Likewise, Song 2 prepares Song 3’s tonal center on D. Like Song 1, Song 2

reaches its climax on an e’ flat, though here sung pp (meas. 70, on “silence was the

song”).19 But whereas the

e’ flat climax in Song 1 came as something of a shock, that in Song 2 is well

prepared. Prior to measure 70, “Silent Noon” had taken aim at that e’ flat with what

I would call a “yearning” d’ on four occasions: measures 8 (“rosy blooms), 17

(“and amass), 55 (“wing’d hour), and 66 (“inarticulate hour”), and each time the d’

was denied resolution to the e’ flat. A sense of “D-ness,” then, has been

established. And just as we encountered the key of E flat for the first time when

Song 1 approached it with a chromatic side step from E (see Ex. 6), we take leave 19 Here and below, the italicized word/syllable is the one that is pronounced on the note in question.


of “Silent Noon” as it echoes that chromatic motion with a descending halfstep of

its own to the D-dorian/mixolydian of Song 3.

In all, what we find in House of Life in terms of unifying tonal/pitch-class

relationships is this: with the exception of the relationship between Songs 4 and 5,

each song emphasizes (in one way or another) the pitch that will become the tonal

center of the next song. Thus in addition to Songs 1 and 2 setting up the tonics of

Songs 2 and 3, respectively, Song 3’s very prominent fortissimo e’ natural on “sun

lit sea” at measure 50, plays a role in setting up the E major of Song 4, while Song 5

seems to prepare the F major of Song 6 on two occasions: it momentarily

tonicizes

F major at measures 13-15, and then, more significantly, plays mysteriously with

the note F at measures 74-79 (Ex. 9).

Ex. 9. House of Life: Song 5, “Death in Love,” meas. 74-79. There is, however, another meaningful tonal relationship between Songs 5 and 6.

For just as Songs 2 and 3 were related by halfstep motion from E-flat major to D-

dorian/mixolydian (already prepared, as it were, by the move from E major to E-flat

major in Song 1—see Ex. 6), so Song 5 ends in C minor (measures 93-100), while

the introduction to Song 6 reverses the direction of the previous halfstep

progressions and begins a halfstep higher in D-flat major (measure 1-5).


And in addition to these instances of chromaticism as a unifying factor in

terms of setting up tonal relationships among the songs, halfstep motion ties the

entire cycle together in still another respect. As noted above, the climactic pitch in

both Songs 1 and 2 is the voice’s high

e’ flat, sung fortissimo in Song 1 (measures 92-95—see Ex. 2) and pp in Song 2

(measures 70-72). With Songs 3 and 4, the climactic notes push up a halfstep to e’

natural (Ex. 10).

Ex. 10. House of Life: (a) Song 3, “Love’s Minstrels,” meas. 47-50; (b) Song 4, “Heart’s Haven,” meas. 42-47. To be sure, Song 5, temporarily pulls us back down to the e’ flat in order that

“Death” may recall Song 1’s setting of “Death’s” (see Exx. 2 and 3). But Song 6

finally fulfills our expectations: after restoring the e’ natural at measure 39 (sung

fortissimo on “Victorious summer”), it pushes up one more halfstep and reaches

the high f’ for the first and only time in the cycle, thus providing a logical—and

emotionally satisfying—tonal conclusion to the work as a whole (Ex. 11), one that is

also reflected in the tonal centers of Songs 2 (E flat), 4 (E), and 6 (F).

Ex. 11. House of Life: Song 6, “Love’s Last Gift,” meas. 80-95. Finally, there are the bookend-like tonal relationships that frame the cycle as

a whole. Just as the double introduction to Song 1 moved down a minor third from


C major to A major (see Ex. 1), the postlude of Song 6 reverses the direction of

the third relationship and brings the cycle to a close with a move up a minor third

from D major to F major (measures 95-102), this after the introduction to Song 6

had itself juxtaposed the keys of D flat and F); in effect, then, the progression from

D to F at the end of Song 6 is bookend-like in two respects: it results in a third-

relationship frame around both Song 6 itself and, at the largest level, the cycle as a

whole.

We come now to the final—and least perceptible—level of our four-level

hierarchy of unifying features: internal proportions, the data for which is based on

the performance times of three recordings of the cycle in its entirety, those by

Thomas Allen, Benjamin Luxon, and Roderick Williams.20 Table 3 begins this

analysis by correlating the proportions of the poetic structure of the sonnet—

octave = 57%/sestet = 43%—with those of Vaughan Williams’s settings.

20 Thomas Allen and Geoffrey Parsons: On the Idle Hill of Summer: Song Cycles and Songs by Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Quilter, Graham Peel, British Composers. EMI Classics, EMI 67248 (2001); Benjamin Luxon and David Willison, Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel, Four Poems of Fredegond Shove, House of Life. Chandos, CHAN 8495 (1986); Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside, Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel, The House of Life, Four Poems of Fredegond Shove, The English Song Series, 14. Naxos, 8.557643 (2005).


Table 3. House of Life: proportional relationships between octave and sestet and the significance of the halfway mark; timings are given first in both minutes and seconds and then, after the oblique slash, in seconds only; percentages by which the arrival at line 9 misses the true halfway mark are rounded off to the nearest 1/10th of a percent; those that show the proportional split between octave and sestet are rounded off to the nearest whole number Total duration ½-way mark Arrival at line 9 Misses true Octave/Sestet split (= line 1 of sestet) ½-way mark Song 1 (with measures 1-11, the introduction to the cycle as a whole, heard as falling within the frame of Song 1 proper—see above) Allen 5:31/331s 2:46/166s 3:10/190s 24s late = 7.2% 57% + 43% Luxon 3:28/208s 1:44/104s 1:54/114s 10s late = 4.8% 55% + 45% Williams 4:10/250s 2:05/125s 2:20/140s 15s late = 6.0% 56% + 44% Alternate reading: measures 1-11 heard as not falling within the frame of Song 1 proper Allen 5:13/313s 2:57/157s 2:52/172s 20s late = 6.3% 55%/45% Luxon 3:04/184s 1:32/92s 1:30/90s 2s early = 1.0% 49%/51% Williams 3:39/219s 1:50/110s 1:49/109s 1s early = 0.4% 50%/50% Song 2 Allen 4:44/284s 2:22/142s 2:19/139s 3s early = 1.0% 49% + 51%


Luxon 4:19/259s 2:09/129s 2:07/127s 2s early = 0.7% 49% + 51% Williams 4:02/242s 2:01/121s 2:02/122s 1s late = 0.4% 50% + 50% Song 3 Allen 5:22/322s 2:41/161s 2:49/169s 8s late = 2.4% 52% + 48% Luxon 4:24/264s 2:12/132s 2:21/141s 9s late = 3.4% 53% + 47% Williams 5:13/313s 2:37/157s 3:03/183s 26s late = 8.3% 58% + 42% Song 4 Allen 4:14/254s 2:07/127s 2:06/126s 1s early = 0.4% 50% + 50% Luxon 2:46/166s 1:23/83s 1:11/71s 12s early = 7.2% 43% + 57% Williams 3:40/220s 1:50/110s 1:45/105s 5s early = 2.2% 48% + 52% Total duration ½-way mark Arrival at line 9 Misses true Octave/Sestet split (= line 1 of sestet) ½-way mark Song 5 Allen 4:50/290s 2:25/145s 2:15/135s 10s early = 3.4% 47% + 53% Luxon 3:58/238s 1:59/119s 1:46/106s 13s early = 5.4% 45% + 55% Williams 4:21/261s 2:11/131s 1:57/117s 14s early = 5.3% 45% + 55% Song 6 Allen 4:54/294s 2:27/147s 2:11/131s 16s early = 8.2% 45% + 55%


Luxon 3:45/225s 1:54/114s 1:39/99s 15s early = 6.7% 44% + 56% Williams 4:08/248s 2:04/124s 1:44/104s 20s early = 8.0% 42% + 58%

What comes as a surprise, perhaps (over and above the notably wide

discrepancies with respect to total duration from one performance of a song to

another, especially those by Allen and Luxon), is this: with the exception of (1) that

reading of Song 1 in which one hears measures (as I do not) measures 1-11 as

falling within the frame of Song 1 proper (see above for a discussion of measures

1-11 as the introduction to the cycle as a whole, with the introduction to Song 1

proper beginning at measure 12), (2) Thomas Allen’s rendition of Song 1 even

when measures 1-11 are not heard as falling within the frame of the song proper,

and (3) Song 3, which always goes its own way, Vaughan Williams rather

consistently either approximates a reversal of the structural-poetic proportions of

the sonnet—making the octave the shorter of the two sections—or comes close to

a 50/50 split.

There is another proportional relationship that appears rather consistently, at

least through Songs 1 – 4; it concerns the relationship—in each performance—

between the music for lines 1 – 4 and that for lines 9 – 11 (Table 4).

Table 4. House of Life: proportional relationship between the music for lines 1—4 and 9–11; timings for the total duration are given first in minutes and seconds


and then, after the slash, in seconds only; timings for lines 1–4 and 9–11 are given in seconds only; percentages are rounded off to the nearest whole number. Total duration lines 1–4 lines 9–11 duration/% of whole duration/% of whole Song 1 (with measures 1–11 heard as part of Song 1 proper) Allen 5:31/331s 57s/17% 56s/17% Luxon 3:28/208s 36s/17% 40s/19% Williams 4:10/250s 45s/18% 46s/18% Alternate reading: with measures 1-11 heard as not falling within the frame of Song 1 proper Allen 5:13/313s 57s/18% 56s/18% Luxon 3:04/184s 36s/20% 40s/22% Williams 3:39/219s 45s/21% 46s/21% Song 2 Allen 4:44/284s 60s/21% 57s/20% Luxon 4:19/259s 57s/22% 51s/20% Williams 4:02/242s 57s/24% 49s/20% Song 3 Allen 5:22/322s 56s/17% 58s/18% Luxon 4:24/264s 41s/16% 42s/16% Williams 5:13/313s 61s/19% 42s/13% Song 4 Allen 4:14/254s 59s/23% 62s/24% Luxon 2:46/166s 35s/24% 37s/25% Williams 3:40/220s 49s/22% 57s/26% Song 5 Allen 4:50/290s 42s/14% 86s/30% Luxon 3:58/238s 32s/13% 77s/32% Williams 4:21/261s 36s/14% 82s/31%


Total duration lines 1–4 lines 9–11 duration/% of whole duration/% of whole Song 6 Allen 4:54/294s 51s/17% 98s/33% Luxon 3:45/225s 32s/14% 76s/34% Williams 408/248s 37s/15% 88s/35% Through Songs 1 – 4, then, each of our three recordings allots approximately the

same proportion of the its total duration to lines 1–4 as is does to lines 9–11, with

no more than a six-percent difference in one instance and four percent in two

others (all in the recording by Roderick Williams), and with each of the two

sections hovering around the twenty-percent mark (with some leeway in either

direction). Things are quite different in Songs 5 and 6: here each of the

recordings takes approximately twice as long to get through lines 9–11 than it does

for lines 1–4, something that clearly goes hand in hand with the greater harmonic,

metric, and rhythmic (that is, surface rhythm) expansiveness in the sestet of these

two songs (see above and Table 1).

Still another proportional constant—and perhaps the most fascinating of all—

occurs in connection with melodic recollections in Songs 2, 4, and 6 (Table 5), each

of which, towards the end, recalls the melodic material with which it started.21

21 See Atlas, “Vaughan Williams’s ‘Silent Noon’,” 80-82; the very slight discrepancies of a second or two in the total duration of one or another of the recordings as cited in that article’s Figure 4 and this article’s Table 5 are the result of the differences in my own “exhalation time” at the end of each song.


Table 5. House of Life: melodic recollections in Songs 2, 4, and 6; timings show total duration, time of arrival at the point of recollection; amount of time from the beginning of the recollection to the end of song, and the percentage of the total duration from the point of recollection to the end. Total duration Arrival at recollection Time to end Percentage of end of song total duration Song 2: recollection = meas. 61-69/lines 12-14, “O clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,/This close companion’d inarticulate hour,/When two fold silence was the song”; initial statement = meas. 3-11/

lines 1-3, “Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,/The finger points look through like rosy blooms:/Your eyes smile peace.”

Allen 4:44/284s 3:23/203s 1:21/81s 28% Luxon 4:19/259s 3:15/195s 1:04/64s 25% Williams 4:02/242s 3:03/183s 0:59/59s 24% Song 4: recollection = meas. 42-44/line 13, “And as soft waters warble to the moon”; initial statement = meas. 3-5, “Sometimes she is a child within mine arms.” Allen 4:14/254s 3:12/192s 1:02/62s 24% Luxon 2:46/166s 1:53/113s 0:53/53s 32% Williams 3:40/220s 2:43/163s 0:57/57s 26%


Song 6: fragmentary and varied recollection = meas. 80-87/line 14, “Take my last gift”; initial statement = meas. 6-10, “Love to his singer held a glistening leaf” (an earlier recollection, more complete and precise, had already occurred at meas. 54-63/lines 9-10, “All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love/To thee I gave while spring and summer sang.” Allen 4:54/294s 3:40/220s 1:14/74s 25% Luxon 3:45/225s 2:52/172s 0:53/53s 24% Williams 4:08/248s 3:09/189s 0:59/59s 24% Thus whether the recollection begins at line 12 (Song 2), line 13 (Song 4), or line 14

(Song 6), and whether it runs for three lines (Song 2) or just one line (Songs 4 and

6), the distance from the point at which the recollection begins to the end of the

song is, in each recording of each song (save Luxon’s performance of Song 4),

equal to either precisely or very nearly precisely one-quarter of the total duration

of the recording/song.

Finally, there is a proportional value that binds together Songs 1 and 5 in

particular. As noted above, both of these songs reach their climactic moment on

an e’ flat sung fortissimo on the words “Death’s” and “Death,” respectively. Table 6

shows where these climaxes occur in terms of their proportional placement.

Table 6. House of Life: proportional placement of the climactic moments in Songs 1 and 5, marked by the fortissimo e’ flat on “Death’s” (Song 1)/“Death” (Song 5);


the percentages are calculated to the nearest whole number. Total duration Arrival at climax Percentage of total duration Song 1 Allen 5:31/331s 4:13/253s 76% Luxon 3:28/208s 2:39/159s 76% Williams 4:10/250s 3:06/186s 74% Song 5 Allen 4:50/290s 3:54/234s 81%` Luxon 3:58/238s 3:03/183s 77% Williams 4:21/261s 3:18/198s 76% Once again, then—and with the only exception being the rather sluggish

performance of Song 5 by Thomas Allen—the dramatic “Death’s” and “Death”

seem drawn as if by a magnet to the three-quarter mark of its respective song.

And when we add to this the tendency in Songs 2, 4, and 6 to begin their thematic

recollections at almost precisely that same proportional point, it seems clear that

Vaughan Williams has intuitively established that point as one of major import, both

musically and verbally. Moreover, that he does so in five of the six songs (as it

often does, Song 3 sets a course of its own) adds still another level of unity to the

cycle as a whole.

To sum up: I would argue that Vaughan Williams unifies the six songs of

House of Life at four levels, and that these differ from one another in terms of

their perceptibility (especially upon hearing the cycle for the first time or even the

first few times): (1) the most immediately audible and memorable—not to mention


customary—means of unification is through the use of motivic recollection and

allusion, this consisting of two elements: the recurrence of motives x and y

(x and y in Songs 1 and 6, y alone in Songs 1, 5, and 6), and the passionate, high e’

flat in Songs 1 and 5 on “Death’s” and “Death,” respectively; (2) the dramatic (and

initially unexpected, though then followed by: will it happen again?) use of

recitative-like passages in all the songs save Song 4; (3) the cross references

between a pitch-class in one song and the tonality of the song that follows it

(except in the progression from Song 4 to Song 5); and (4) the consistency of

certain internal proportions in terms of where in the various songs important

gestures occur. Indeed, Vaughan Williams has furnished the six rooms of his

House with care. Not only is the dark—often gloomy22— hue constant from

beginning to end, but the specific furnishings of one room often show up in one or

more of the others, sometimes immediately perceptible and almost unchanged,

other times less apparent and somewhat modified. I would end by recalling Riede’s

view of the whole-vs.-parts relationship in Rossetti’s cycle; he writes that the cycle

as a whole “exhibits a tension in which sequentiality suggests narrative, logical

rational development, but the parts [of which], the individual sonnets resist it” (see

notes 10 and 12). In Vaughan Williams’s cycle, on the other hand, I would argue

22 In a letter to E.J. Dent from January 1910 (so dated by Hugh Cobbe), Vaughan Williams writes: “As for songs Francis Harford sings H. of Life—but we oughtn’t to make the programme too depressing. . .”; see Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 66, No. 57.


that the relationship works differently: rather than “resist” the “logical rational

development,” each song embraces and contributes to it in its own way, and we, as

listeners, then organize those contributions as we “hear fit.” And I would like to

think that my own way of organizing them overlaps at least to a small extent with

what Vaughan Williams may have had in mind.

unity in house of life - graduate center, cuny · vaughan williams, 2nd ed. (oxford: oxford...

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