EXPLORATORY VISIT TO DOWN AMPNEY
24th of May, 2023
When we first arrived in the Cotswolds in 2021 I had noted that Down Ampney was one of the fairly local villages, and I knew that that had been the birthplace of one of my musical heroes, Ralph Vaughan Williams, under whose direction I had taken part in choral performances of his Sea Symphony and of Bach's St Matthew Passion in my late school days. I would visit the village to see if that origin was commemorated. Having extended my e-bike explorations to the far side of South Cerney I resolved to select a fine day for a further extension - necessarily avoiding the A419 dual carriageway. Mid-May held some promise, but the start of the final week was unmissable.
Setting off while the morning still had a slight chill about it, my route took me to the edge of Siddington, through familiar South Cerney and crossing the Cotswold Water Park's Spine Road East into virgin territory, winding almost single-track into Cerney Wick.
Turning left by The Crown Inn led onto two hump-backs, one for the ex-canal now Thames and Severn Way and a more ambitious one flying across the A419. A minor wiggle at the next junction (crossing the pre-dualling main road) led onto the final 1¼-mile approach to the village. And there was the answer to my query about commemoration!
Turning right to follow the sign up the no-through road to the church, the first significant property I found was Down Ampney House, a residence with the church apparently hiding behind. Then past that private entrance, next to the church's lych gate, I found an information board. It included -
So then through that lych gate and into a tidy churchyard which, thanks to not having been mown for a week or two, was displaying some unusually coloured orange hawkweed, also listed as "fox and cubs", (Pilosella aurantiaca). In the porch a notice stated that the church was unlocked daily from 10 am, but on trying the door it proved to be open a good few minutes early.
Inside, it was immediately clear that much was made of the Vaughan Williams connection.
The font bore a notice, and the wide range of individually crafted kneelers included commemorations of the life of Vaughan Williams and of the late Queen's platinum anniversary.
But more major features consisted of stored display boards remaining from "An Exhibition of his Life and Works". Although no longer easy to view, two of the four detailed biography boards could be photographed.
My photos were detailed enough to reveal the text, but transriptions are easier to read. They are set down at the end of this web page. Meanwhile -
Having completed my tour of the church I explored other parts of the community. The village information board had shown that Down Ampney was the site of an important RAF base during the war. Although long returned to agriculture, some access roads and a memorial stone remain.
Further explorations revealed a fairly compact up-market Cotswold village complete with primary school and village hall: www.downampneyvillage.co.uk reports on a community-run shop and café, though I didn't come across it. Less welcome to some is a fenced-off development of "2, 3, 4 and 5 bedroom homes coming soon".
A slightly different route home took me back to South Cerney via Wickwater Lane and Broadway Lane. Coming across a long-distance conveyor belt bridged by the road provided evidence of the fact that extraction industries are still active in the area. But more welcome on the route was a stop in South Cerney for coffee - the first I've ever had served in a Post Office.
So that was my completed micro-tour, measured by my recently installed 'bike computer' (electronic cyclometer) as 16.4 miles.
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THE EARLY YEARS :: 1872 to 1914
"Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in The Vicarage, here in Down Ampney, on December 12th, 1872. He was the third child of Arthur and Margaret Vaughan Williams.
"Arthur was ordained vicar of this church in Down Ampney in 1868. Previously, he had posts at Bemerton - coincidentally in the same parish where the poet George Herbert had been vicar around 100 years earlier - and at Halsall in Lancashire. Ralph's father was the third son of Sir Edward Vaughan Williams, a lawyer and judge, who had married Margaret Wedgwood in February 1868.
"Margaret, Ralph's mother, was one of three daughters to Josiah Wedgwood III and Caroline Darwin. The Wedgwood and Darwin families had often intermarried. Ralph had on his mother's side two famous great-great-grandfathers: Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95), the founder of the pottery at Stoke-on-Trent, and Erasmus Darwin, the physician, poet and grandfather of Charles Darwin.
"In 1847, the Wedgwood family had purchased Leith Hill Place in Surrey and it was in this family home that Margaret Vaughan Williams and her three children returned when Ralph's father died suddenly in early 1875; Ralph was just over two years old.
"Ralph flourished amongst the rhododendrons and azaleas of Leith Hill Place. Settling into the old style of the house, he had an excellent nurse, Sarah Wagner. He had learnt to read by the spring of 1879.
"Music was important to the family. His Aunt Sophy (his mother's sister) gave Ralph his early music lessons. He wrote his first piano piece called The Robin's Nest when he was six. Ralph played duets with his brother Hervey and his sister Meggie. His mother would read aloud - adventure stories as well as the classics. His admiration for Shakespeare began at this time. The practice of reading aloud was something Ralph enjoyed all his life including re-reading the complete works of Shakespeare with his second wife, Ursula, in the early 1950s.
"Back in the early 1880s Ralph was passionate about architecture. He read books about Norman and Gothic buildings and in 1883 received a much treasured Christmas present from his mother - The Pictorial Architecture of the British Isles.
"Ralph followed his brother to a preparatory school at Rottingdean near Brighton in 1881. He described the music teaching as very good. He was introduced to the music of JS Bach and was good enough on the violin to play Raff's Cavatina by heart.
"In January 1887 the fourteen-year-old boy became a pupil at Charterhouse school near Godalming in Surrey where he remained until 1890. Here he organised concerts and felt that he had the makings of a fine viola player. His family disagreed, believing that the organ was the right instrument for him.
"Having left Charterhouse in July 1890, Ralph entered the Royal College of Music in September. After two terms of hard study he became a pupil of Sir Hubert Parry. Parry insisted that Ralph learn more Beethoven, especially the later Quartets. Parry widened Ralph's musical knowledge, but also provided him with a sense of the nobility and greatness of the English choral tradition. Ralph had found something 'peculiarly English' in Parry's music, awakening a consciousness of the national composer that was to flourish over a decade later.
"In 1892 Ralph went to Trinity College, Cambridge to study both history and music. He continued to have weekly lessons with Parry in London. At Cambridge he studied with Charles Wood who Ralph described as 'the finest technical instructor I had ever known'. As his cousin Ralph Wedgwood and many Darwin relations were at Cambridge Ralph was introduced to a wide circle of friends including GE Moore the philosopher, George Trevelyan the historian, and Hugh Allen who was later to become Director of the Royal College of Music.
"Ralph had taken his B.Mus. in 1894 and his History degree the following year. He returned to the RCM in 1895 where he became a close friend of Gustav Holst. Ralph was to speak of him as 'the greatest influence on my music' and their close companionship was to last until Holst's death in 1934. With Parry as Director of the RCM, Ralph now went to Sir Charles Villiers Stanford for lessons.
"Ralph meanwhile had met Adeline Fisher, a talented cellist and pianist with a lively intelligence and delicate pre-Raphaelite good looks. She was a first cousin of Virginia Woolf. Ralph and Adeline became engaged in 1896 and the couple married on 9th October 1897 at All Saints Church, Hove. It was three days before Ralph's 25th birthday.
"Following a brief period of study with Max Bruch in Berlin, Ralph returned to his post of organist at St Barnabas, South Lambeth in London which had begun in 1895. Ralph disliked the job although he recognised that it gave him an insight into good and bad church music which would stand him in good stead a few years later. He resigned as organist in 1899.
"Ralph's first published work was written in 1901. It is a lovely setting of William Barnes poem Linden Lea for voice and piano. Vaughan Williams songs at this time, including settings of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Tennyson are noteworthy if not yet fully characteristic. Silent Noon is, perhaps, his most successful song from this period, with perfect matching of words and melody.
"Of vital importance to the development of Vaughan Williams' style was the discovery of an English folksong at Ingrave near Brentwood in late 1903. The song was Bushes and Briars. Its impact, and the mark of other folksongs he quickly collected, was profound and permanent, influencing the texture, contours and melodies of his work. His orchestral works written shortly after hearing Bushes and Briars, In the Fen Country and the Norfolk Rhapsodies, for example, are wonderfully atmospheric. The inclusion of The Captain's Apprentice in the Norfolk Rhapsody is quite beautiful.
"Vaughan Williams' style was early shaped by his involvement with hymn tunes from 1904-06 as Musical Editor for the English Hymnal. He ranged far and wide in his search for appropriate material and studied closely the work of Tudor and Elizabethan composers including Thomas Tallis whose Psalm tune Why Fum'th in Sight was soon to form the basis of one of Vaughan Williams' greatest works, the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
"Vaughan Williams contributed four original hymns to the English Hymnal including the well known Sine Nomine (For all the Saints) as well as one of the most beautiful of all, Come Down, O Love Divine. This was named after his birthplace here in Down Ampney.
"Influenced by folk songs, hymn tunes, the philosophy and music of Sir Hubert Parry and the glories of Tudor and Elizabethan choral music, the mature Vaughan Williams was about to emerge from his long apprenticeship. The poetry of Walt Whitman was another catalyst. Whitman's structural and metrical freedom, his open-air style and spiritual intensity liberated Vaughan Williams' musical imagination. He began work on what was to become A Sea Symphony in 1903 and Toward the Unknown Region was first performed in 1907. Both set Whitman at his most visionary and inspired.
"In late 1907 and into 1908 Vaughan Williams decided to have lessons from Maurice Ravel in Paris. These were a success, with the English composer learning, as he put it, 'to orchestrate in points of colour rather than lines'. Vaughan Williams returned with what he called 'a bad attack of French fever' which produced the memorable song-cycle On Wenlock Edge to words by AE Housman.
"1910 was a remarkable year for the composer. The grave splendour of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis was first heard on 6 September at the Three Choirs Festival and made an immediate and lasting impact. Then A Sea Symphony was given its premiere at the Leeds Festival on 12 October. The scale, eloquence and nobility of this moving work showed that an English composer of originality and power had emerged from this Gloucestershire village.
"The success of the Tallis Fantasia had led to a new commission from the Three Choirs Festival, this time in Worcester in 1911. Vaughan Williams chose poems from George Herbert for his Five Mystical Songs for baritone, chorus and orchestra.
"George Butterworth had suggested to Vaughan Williams the idea of writing an orchestral symphony and A London Symphony began to take shape. Vaughan Williams described it as a Symphony by a Londoner, evoking the contrasting sights and sounds of Edwardian London, including the influence of the Thames and the chimes of Big Ben. The symphony was first performed on 27 March 1914.
"Meanwhile in 1912, Vaughan Williams was introduced to Sir Frank Benson who was looking for a musician to arrange music and conduct the small orchestra at the 1913 season at Stratford-on-Avon. Ralph was already knowledgeable about Shakespeare and was delighted with this first-hand insight into the theatre world. This was to prove advantageous when Vaughan Williams came to compose his own Shakespeare opera, Sir John in Love, ten years later.
"The Lark Ascending, for violin and orchestra, was composed in 1914. In its gentle, untroubled lyricism, it seems to capture the tranquillity of those languid summer days before the outbreak of war on 5th of August 1914. Vaughan Williams' world was to change dramatically."
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THE YEARS OF MATURITY AND RECOGNITION :: 1930 to 1945
"Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Blake scholar and eminent surgeon, had acquired a copy of Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job in 1927. A ballet enthusiast as well as an expert on Blake, he saw in the groupings and gestures of the Blake Illustrations the potential for staging with dramatic music. Keynes turned to his sister-in-law, Gwen Raverat, who was also Vaughan Williams' cousin, for design help. Next, they chose RVW as composer since he was felt to be sympathetic to Blake's symbolism and individuality. As a family friend, he was also accessible. Vaughan Williams was fired by enthusiasm for a ballet on Job although he had a great dislike for dancing 'on points'. Job became a Masque for Dancing rather than a ballet.
"The work was first performed in a full orchestral version at the Norwich Festival in 1930. Geoffrey Keynes remained hopeful of a staging and a toy mock-up had been designed by Gwen Raverat to illustrate the dramatic possibilities. Ninette de Valois and Lilian Baylis were impressed and with the help of newly formed Camargo Society, Job was produced at the Cambridge Theatre in London in July 1931. By all accounts Anton Dolin as Satan and Stanley Judson as Elihu were both superb. Job unites the different aspects of Vaughan Williams' musical style: dramatic, lyrical, visionary and pastoral to brilliant effect.
"By 1930 Ralph and Adeline had moved to White Gates near Dorking, a house that suited Adeline whose arthritis was becoming more of a problem.
"For that year's Leith Hill Festival Ralph composed three new pieces - Benedicite, Three Choral Hymns and the Hundredth Psalm. 1931 saw the opening of the Dorking Halls, providing, at last, a fitting home for the Festival.
"By New Year's Day 1931 Vaughan Williams was thoroughly absorbed by a new symphony - his fourth. When the work was first performed on 10 April 1935, it was revealed as a symphony of remarkable power and intensity. Its ferocity can startle even today, familiar as we may now be with those clashing semi-tones of the opening Allegro. Why did Vaughan Williams write in this way? The composer consistently rejected any suggestion that the work was related to external events. He said: 'I wrote it not as a definite picture of anything external, for example, the state of Europe, but simply because it occurred to me like this. I can't explain why ...' No composer can be totally immune from outside influences, especially someone with Vaughan Williams' sensitivity. Ursula Vaughan Williams sees the work as characteristic of the man who wrote it: 'The towering furies of which he was capable, his fire, pride and strength are all revealed and so are his imagination and lyricism.' The symphony, combining concentration, symphonic cohesiveness and logic, certainly succeeds on its own merits.
"In 1934, before the first performance of the symphony, his close friend Gustav Holst had died. Vaughan Williams said:
'My only thought is now that whichever way I turn what are we to do without him - everything seems to have turned back to him - what would Gustav think or advise to do.'
"In May 1935 Vaughan Williams received a letter from Buckingham Palace conferring on him the Order of Merit in the Birthday Honours for services to music. This is a very special award, held by only twenty-four people at any time. Vaughan Williams disliked status symbols but on this occasion decided to accept. His family and friends were delighted.
"During the spring and summer of 1935 Vaughan Williams was absorbed by a new work - his 'Skelton oratorio', Five Tudor Portraits. John Skelton's verse is ironic, humorous and earthy, yet with a wonderful vein of tenderness and beauty. They certainly appealed to Vaughan Williams who thoroughly enjoyed setting the poems. The work was completed in June 1935, Vaughan Williams having abandoned a sixth portrait, of Margery Wentworth. Scored for contralto, baritone, chorus and orchestra, it was first performed \t the Norwich Festival in September 1936. This choral suite conveys a wide range of emotions whilst portraying the vitality of Skelton's Tudor England.
"Another work of 1935 brought out rather different emotions. This was the Dona Nobis Pacem to words by Walt Whitman, material from the Bible and other sources. This work was related to events in Europe. The cantata explores the horror of war as both Whitman and Vaughan Williams had experienced it. The soprano's imploring refrain - Dona Nobis Pacem - gives the work unity and purpose.
"In 1937 Vaughan Williams received the first award of the Shakespeare Prize from the University of Hamburg. RVW, having taken advice, accepted the award. By February 1939, however, his music had been banned in Germany over its alleged anti-Nazi 'propaganda'. No one quite knew why.
"Both 1936 and 1937 saw first performances of new RVW operas. First, on 12 May 1936 at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge there was a premiere for The Poisoned Kiss, subtitled The Empress and the Necromancer. This 'romantic extravaganza' was written by Evelyn Sharp, sister of Cecil Sharp the folksong collector, and is founded on incidents taken from The Poisoned Maid by Richard Garnett. It is another humorous, high-spirited and romantic work, following on from Sir John in Love. It provided immense enjoyment to the composer who told Hubert Foss that he was writing music he really liked.
"The second opera of this period is very different in style. Riders to the Sea is an almost verbatim setting of a short play by the Irishman JM Synge. Composed in 1926-27, it was first performed publicly at the Royal College of Music on 1 December 1937, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.
"The opera is centred around Maurya who has lost her father, husband and four of six sons at sea. One of her remaining sons, Michael, has been missing for some days. Her youngest son then leaves to take some horses across the water to Galway Fair. Maurya realises her sons will never return. Her poignant final lament beginning 'They are all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me ...' is one of Vaughan Williams' most inspired passages. In its concentration, subtlety and tenderness, Riders to the Sea is a masterpiece.
"To cap a year of operatic achievement, Hugh the Drover was revived at Sadler's Wells in 1937.
"In 1938 Vaughan Williams met Ursula Wood, a writer and poet, who was to become his second wife in 1953. Ursula had seen Job in the 1932-33 season while a student at the Old Vic. She was overcome by the music and resolved to contact the composer. Marriage to a Gunnery instructor took her away, however, and it was not until early 1938 that she contacted RVW regarding her idea for a ballet. They met on 31 March 1938 and established from the beginning a close artistic and personal rapport. Ursula's husband died in 1942.
"Soon after meeting Ursula Vaughan Williams received a request from Henry Wood for a work to celebrate his Jubilee concert. Wood wanted something for sixteen soloists and RVW, utilising his deep knowledge of Shakespeare, chose the text from the beautiful scene between Jessica and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice. The resulting Serenade to Music is one of the composer's most gorgeous and timeless works.
"With the outbreak of war in early September 1939 Vaughan Williams became involved in many wartime activities - helping refugees, salvaging war materials, and fire watching as well as contributing music to wartime films, including Coastal Command and 49th Parallel. Towards the end of the war the BBC commissioned a Thanksgiving for the victory that was by then expected. This became A Song of Thanksgiving.
"As we have seen, Vaughan Williams became involved in a setting of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress in the first decade of the 20th century, and composed his one act opera, The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains in 1922. By 1938 Vaughan Williams was working on a full scale dramatisation. Believing that the Morality (as he later called it) might never be performed, he channelled some of the music into a new symphony - his Fifth. To sharpen the association with Bunyan's memorable allegory, the third movement Romanza originally bore the following quotation:
Upon this land stood a cross, and a little below a sepulchre. Then he said: 'He hath given me rest by His sorrows and life by His death'.
"The new symphony was first performed at a Promenade Concert in London on 14 June 1943, with the composer conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Following the calculated violence of the Fourth Symphony this deeply contemplative and radiant music seemed to many communicators at the time as presaging an end to the war.
"The symphony is suffused with that visionary, luminous quality which distinguished all Vaughan Williams' writing inspired by The Pilgrim's Progress. Other commentators at the time of its first performance saw the work as a serene benediction from a composer turned seventy. How wrong they were: RVW would write four more symphonies and live another fifteen years."