Welcome to my blog!
So. My friend Katy said I should have a blog. She does ‘Comtemporary SEO & Marketing’ so she should know. She said I should gather all my thoughts, links I post on FB and twitter and my general musical ramblings to the world in one place. If this doesn’t sound like something you’d like, I suggest you go and open a nice bottle of rose and go and watch Neighbours instead.
I’ll write about all kinds of musical related goodness, but right now I’m going to talk about Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of my favourite British classical composers.
I’m studying a piece of RVW with one of my grown up students at the moment and she said she didn’t know much about him, so I emailed her this listening list:
“I would suggest you start with Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; it’s a beautiful piece of music and you’ll probably recognise large chunks of it. If you haven’t listened all the way through, then do listen to The Lark Ascending, it’s one of my favourite pieces of classical music and I often find myself listening to it when I can’t sleep.
Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus is beautiful and you’ll probably recognise it from an old English Hymn (I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say), in fact RVW arranged a load of hymns and his harmonies are second to none. In terms of heavier weightier orchestral pieces, his fourth symphony is explosive and intense. The London Symphony (2) is good. Like all good classical composers he wrote 9 Symphonies so you have a lot to choose from!”
I hope you enjoy listening to a bit of Ralph, let me know how you got on!