The Lark Ascending

Dear Music Lover,
I have had a lot of fun researching this one. I love Vaughan Williams' music to start with, but seeing Martin Beaver play this in Roy Thomson Hall a few years ago was absolutely riveting. We were seated way up in the gods, and he looked so small on the stage. But the sound floated up in total clarity and I was transported.

I didn't know that Vaughan Williams sketched this out while watching troop ships crossing the channel during WWI. And I also didn't know that the lark or "Common"(!) Skylark is one of the few birds that sings in flight. There are a few recordings of larks singing on You Tube - they really are quite thrilling -  check them out. So it is understandable that RVW, sitting on the white cliffs of Dover, was inspired by George Meredith's poem "The Lark Ascending" and included a portion of it on the flyleaf of his finished work:

He rises and begins to round,
 He drops the silver chain of sound, 
Of many links without a break,
 In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

 For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
 And ever winging up and up,
 Our valley is his golden cup
 And he the wine which overflows
 to lift us with him as he goes.

 Till lost on his aerial rings 
In light, and then the fancy sings.


And now it makes sense to me why the lark is associated with wartime - those wonderful lines from John McCrae from "In Flanders' Field" where he says that the lark was "scarce heard among the guns below". When the guns were silent, the bird song must have represented everything good about freedom, hope and delicate beauty. Did you know that this piece is the second most requested piece of music on anniversaries of 911?

Anyway, here is what I made:

You might wonder why the stripes of colour. I found out that this piece was based on a pentatonic scale, but not the usual one. I may be wrong about this, but I think the lark's song uses only 5 notes, in several octaves, of course. RVW began his scale with a D and then added 5 notes (A) and then another 5 notes (E), then another 5 (B), and then ended on F#. How cool is that! So that's why there are 5 stripes. 

The green is the edge of the cliff where Vaughan Williams was sitting, the light green is the chalky bits from the cliffs of Dover (or the beach), then the channel, then the angry red sky of war, and then the blue sky of freedom.

Let me know what you think!

Susan