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Ralph Vaugh­an William’s first crit­i­cal and pop­u­lar suc­cess came fair­ly late, when he was 33. This was the remark­able song for cho­rus and orches­tra Toward the Unknown Region, based on Walt Whitman’s poem from the “Whis­pers of Heav­enly Death” sec­tion of Leaves of Grass :

Darest thou now, O Soul, 
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, 
Where nei­ther ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow? 

No map, there, nor guide, 
Nor voice sound­ing, nor touch of human hand, 
Nor face with bloom­ing flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. 

I know it not, O Soul, 
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits, undream’d of, in that region, that inac­ces­si­ble land. 

Till, when the ties loosen, 10 All but the ties eter­nal, Time and Space, Nor dark­ness, grav­i­ta­tion, sense, nor any bounds, bound us. 

Then we burst forth,we float, 
In Time and Space, O Soul, pre­pared for them, 
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to ful­fil, O Soul.

This piece has sub­se­quently been set to music many times, by com­posers as diverse as Hen­ryk Górec­ki, William Schu­man, and Philip Glass. But when Vaugh­an Williams pre­sented his ver­sion in 1907, it drew atten­tion to him as part of a tech­ni­cal and aes­thetic van­guard that would soon trans­form Eng­lish music. Vaugh­an Williams had been hand­ed the book by an old school friend, Bertrand Rus­sell. It was cir­cu­lat­ing among young trou­ble­mak­ers. While we can’t recap­ture the feel­ing of rad­i­cal­ism that was sensed in RVW’s music, we can appre­ci­ate the fact that it is com­posed with a fine bal­ance of emo­tional impact and tech­ni­cal pre­ci­sion. I’m no musi­cian, but I can fol­low a score while lis­ten­ing, and Vaugh­an Williams’ artistry as a young com­poser leaps from the page.

Fast for­ward to 1934, and Vaugh­an Williams was still quest­ing, still inno­vat­ing, still search­ing for new ways to express him­self. His fourth sym­phony, which I also lis­tened to with the score in hand, is a star­tling con­trast to the pleas­ant pro­gram­matic style of the sec­ond and third sym­phonies. In fact, it’s rather severe, and dis­turb­ing. It’s intend­ed to be “pure” com­po­si­tion, sug­gest­ing no extra-musi­cal imagery. Vaugh­an Williams was even quot­ed as say­ing of it, “I don’t know whether I like it, but it’s what I meant.” I don’t think it appeals to the aver­age Vaugh­an Williams fan, who prob­a­bly prefers the larks and fens and drift­ing clouds and oth­er Wind in the Wil­lows ele­ments that are usu­ally asso­ci­ated with the com­poser. But I real­ly like this sym­phony, and think it shows why his more impres­sion­ist works have an under­ly­ing depth that gives them vigour. I have only one record­ing, an ancient vinyl con­ducted by Adri­an Boult. It’s the only Vaugh­an Williams sym­phony I don’t have on CD. A bit of triv­ia: The Klin­gon theme, used in near­ly every ver­sion of Star Trek since the orig­i­nal, is lift­ed from the 3rd movement.

The sec­ond pho­to, show­ing a mature Vaugh­an Williams, is of course by the incom­pa­ra­ble por­trait pho­tog­ra­ph­er Yousuf Karsh, of Ottawa.