The Story of a Flemish Farm
The Story of a Flemish Farm is an orchestral suite by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on the score for the 1943 film The Flemish Farm - a wartime drama set in occupied Europe, and written when Vaughan Williams was 70.
The score comprises seven movements, which follow the flow of the story:
- The Flag Flutters In The Wind.
- Night By The Sea, Farewell To The Flag.
- Dawn In The Old Barn, The Parting Of The Lovers.
- In The Café.
- The Major Goes To Face His Fate.
- The Dead Man's Kit.
- The Wanderings Of The Flag.
The music takes themes from a number of folk tunes, along with references to A Sea Symphony of 1909 and his 6th Symphony, which followed in 1947.[1]
Vaughan Williams conducted the suite himself at a Promenade concert in July 1945, though he remarked that to call anything a suite was 'to damn it to extinction'.[2] Christopher Thomas, writing in a record review, commented: "The bold strength of the melodic writing is highly idiomatic and reflects VW at the height of his creative powers shortly before the works that were to form the symphonic "Indian Summer" of his later years."[3]
The film score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Muir Mathieson[4] and the suite has also been recorded by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Andrew Penny, and by the BBC Philharmonic under Rumon Gamba.
Notes
External links
- IMDB entry for The Flemish Farm
- Excerpts from the film score, by Ralph Vaughan Williams
- v
- t
- e
- Hugh the Drover
- Sir John in Love
- The Poisoned Kiss
- Riders to the Sea
- The Pilgrim's Progress
- Job: A Masque for Dancing
- A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1)
- A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2)
- Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3)
- Symphony No. 4 in F minor
- Symphony No. 5 in D major
- Symphony No. 6 in E minor
- Sinfonia antartica (Symphony No. 7)
- Symphony No. 8 in D minor
- Symphony No. 9 in E minor
- In the Fen Country
- Norfolk Rhapsodies
- Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
- Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus
- The Story of a Flemish Farm
- Concerto Grosso
- The Lark Ascending
- Flos Campi
- Piano Concerto
- Suite for Viola and Orchestra
- Oboe Concerto
- Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra
- Tuba Concerto
- Romance for viola and piano
- Six Studies in English Folk Song
- A Cambridge Mass
- Five Mystical Songs
- Fantasia on Christmas Carols
- O clap your hands
- Mass in G minor
- Sancta Civitas
- Magnificat
- Five Tudor Portraits
- Dona nobis pacem
- Serenade to Music
- An Oxford Elegy
- Folk Songs of the Four Seasons
- Three Shakespeare Songs
- O taste and see
- Hodie
- Songs of Travel
- On Wenlock Edge
- Four Hymns
- Ten Blake Songs
- Four Last Songs
- The Wasps
- The First Nowell
- 49th Parallel (1940 drama film)
- Coastal Command (1942 film)
- The Flemish Farm (1943 war film)
- Stricken Peninsula (1945 propaganda film)
- The Loves of Joanna Godden (1946 historical drama film)
- Scott of the Antarctic (1948 film)
- Bitter Springs (1950 film)
- The England of Elizabeth (1955 documentary)