Lark Ascending

Imagine yourself sitting at the top of the hill. It is late in the afternoon and everything is quiet. As you look out you see a single lark ascending from the ground cover. It flies up, catches the wind for no apparent reason other than to feel it under its wings. It glides in place for a minute then lets the wind take it away as it stalls and begins a free fall descent. This view draws your attention further as the lark shows you the beauty of the vista with its village and pasture lands and mostly its cerulean sky. This is the imagery of The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Its peaceful, simple melody unquestionably and beautifully describes this view through uses orchestral voices, imagery tactics, and skilled usage of modernistic effects mixed with a twist of folk music.
I loved the music performed by the symphony orchestra at BYU where I first heard this piece all the way through. Williams did an excellent job of depicting a beautiful scene using the lines from a poem by George Meredith as his guide:
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

The listener can quickly understand the violin to be the instrumental voice used for the movement of the lark. In its introductory few measures it trills and slides through a graceful melody and grows throughout to its highest trill. The image is a lark landing on branches with each cadence takes short little flights up in the air and then back down, landing again on this branch or another. As the tonal center changes so do the branches he lands on giving a sense of the natural. It seems random yet there is structure in the chaos. The bird in the vision is seen ascending to a stalled position as the wind holds it steadily gliding in place until it falls to back to the branch once again. This is clear through the natural speed ascension of the melody to a trill which then falls quickly back to the current tonal center. Natural trills and swells then continue the depiction of the simple rise and fall of his flight.
The second voice is that of the rest of the orchestra. The orchestra shows a beautiful view of the pastoral landscape with its villages and fields, hills and trees, and that ever present blue of the sky. “‘Tis love of earth that he instills” shown through the passing of the melody here. The orchestra comes in at the times when the lark seems to disappear, yet really our focus has just changed. We now see the beauty of the scene because of the larks influence. We watch the lark fly high into the sky through the 8va trills on the violin and then are pleased to view the rest of the scene. One time we see the sky and hills and trees through a broad open melody from the orchestra and a second time we see the village and pastoral lands through a folk sounding melody using the same orchestral voices. Each time though we are brought back to the lark as the soloist violin comes in midway through the orchestra’s melody and builds until the listener’s focus is back on its flight.
This effect is an impressive one to pay attention to. Williams was able through his music not only depict a scene, but take that scene and zoom our focus in and out as if he were using a computer. The main focus is on the lark, but at times that lark’s melody is used to show the scenery behind. The times the soloist is playing alone on stage are when sole focus is on the lark, and the view is zoomed in to just his flight. Other times a general idea of the backdrop is in our minds through a gentle hum from the orchestra, and finally the music takes and zooms out of the scene completely to show a full view of the valley, yet in doing this the view nearly loses the lark until attention is brought back to it.
Williams wrote this piece just before the First World War. It was a time in music when things were supposed to be different and you were not to follow the prescribed plan laid out by prior musicians. Williams followed this advice from his contemporaries to a certain extent. He did not keep a strict tonal center throughout the piece, but as mentioned before, this was for the purpose of depicting the natural randomness that happens. He did not keep a normal meter either, but was able to still put a beautiful, peaceful, and most importantly for the topic, easy to listen to melody together. This is due to his melody choice, but also to his use of these effects correctly. He borrowed themes from English folk music as well as their pentatonic scale giving the piece a naturally peaceful feel. He also was able to blend the orchestra in such a way as to bring this peace to its listeners.