Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Editorial Conventions
- Abbreviations
- Prologue
- 1 First Encounters and A Sea Symphony
- 2 A London Symphony
- 3 A Pastoral Symphony and Boult on Conducting in the 1920s
- 4 Job: ‘To Adrian Boult’
- 5 Symphony No. 4 in F Minor
- 6 Wartime Tensions
- 7 Symphony No. 5 in D Major
- 8 Symphony No. 6 in E Minor
- 9 Sinfonia antartica and the Last Two Symphonies
- 10 Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Other Orchestral Works
- 11 Choral and Vocal Works
- 12 Vaughan Williams, Boult and The Pilgrim’s Progress
- Appendix 1 Annotations on Boult’s Working Scores
- Appendix 2 Boult’s Vaughan Williams Performances – A Chronology
- Appendix 3 Discography
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Job: ‘To Adrian Boult’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Editorial Conventions
- Abbreviations
- Prologue
- 1 First Encounters and A Sea Symphony
- 2 A London Symphony
- 3 A Pastoral Symphony and Boult on Conducting in the 1920s
- 4 Job: ‘To Adrian Boult’
- 5 Symphony No. 4 in F Minor
- 6 Wartime Tensions
- 7 Symphony No. 5 in D Major
- 8 Symphony No. 6 in E Minor
- 9 Sinfonia antartica and the Last Two Symphonies
- 10 Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Other Orchestral Works
- 11 Choral and Vocal Works
- 12 Vaughan Williams, Boult and The Pilgrim’s Progress
- Appendix 1 Annotations on Boult’s Working Scores
- Appendix 2 Boult’s Vaughan Williams Performances – A Chronology
- Appendix 3 Discography
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Vaughan Williams’s closest musical friend for four decades was Gustav Holst: over the years they spent many ‘field days’ together going through their new pieces, criticising them and making suggestions about improvements. It was a remarkable friendship and Vaughan Williams came to rely on Holst, trusting him completely. ‘Field days’ on Job were particularly intensive, and Vaughan Williams must have been delighted that Holst considered it to be his friend’s finest work to date. Holst wrote to his daughter Imogen on 16 February 1931 (after hearing the broadcast premiere on 13 February conducted by Vaughan Williams in a concert that also included Boult’s performance of Sāvitri): ‘I had two rehearsals and performance of RVW’s Job on Friday. It’s one of his best things.’ A year later (4 January 1932), Holst wrote to Fritz Hart, an old friend and former classmate at the RCM who moved to Australia in 1908, enclosing a copy of the piano score of ‘the most important work of any composer I know in the last 18 months – Job. It is probably his masterpiece.’ In his ‘Musical Autobiography’ Vaughan Williams emphasised how valuable Holst’s advice had been:
I should like to place on record all that he did for me when I wrote Job. I should be alarmed to say how many ‘field days’ we spent over it. Then he came to all the orchestral rehearsals, including a special journey to Norwich, and finally he insisted on the Camargo Society’s performing it. Thus I owe the life of Job to Holst … I remember after the first orchestral rehearsal of Job his almost going on his knees to beg me to cut out some of the percussion with which my inferiority complex had led me to overload the score.
The first performance of Job was conducted by Vaughan Williams at the Norwich Festival on 23 October 1930 (as part of a concert that began with the British premiere of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, conducted by Henry Wood), given by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich. On that occasion Job was described in the programme as ‘a pageant for dancing’, and the end of the note stated that ‘Job was originally intended for stage representation.
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- Ralph Vaughan Williams and Adrian Boult , pp. 55 - 70Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022