“When you write and draw in pencil, your eraser is your best friend.” 
― Anthony T. Hincks

There are several different versions of this quote, “two ends to a pencil and the rubber is most useful” I seem to recall is attributed to Schoenberg. When I first came across the sentiment I took it to mean that we make errors and need to remove them, later on it evolved into a process of reconsidering the direction of the music and sometimes a retracing of our musical intentions or lines of thought. I had never given time to the notion that to lose whole sections of music (sacrifice hours, days, and weeks of work) to get to the core of an idea might be appropriate.

Before getting into why the action of performing surgery on a well-known symphony has been considered and executed a short diversion is required regarding our views on disregarding a composer’s written plan in relation to the overall form and structure of his or her music.

Making formal adjustments in one’s own works is one thing but doing so in another composer’s music is another matter altogether. Repetitions which may have been appropriate in works before the advent of recorded sound may or may not be vital to the delivery of a satisfactory performance, such a conundrum played through Glen Gould’s mind in his different recordings of the Goldberg Variations. Why would one slavishly follow the design of repeats in the variations – to assist the listener with problems of insomnia hardly seems a convincing musical answer. Even when accepting the notion that no repeated passages are played exactly the same (though in the recording studio they are frequently very similar), some repeats add little to the music. In some recordings of Baroque works we introduce more elaborate ornamentation on repeating, sometimes played to the point of submerging the original. Each period requires a different argument for repetition of sections, but let us not labour that particular point, it has been touched on in previous blogs.

The advent of classical music stations has resulted in many listeners having a “pick and mix” view of art music and if they are satisfied with that format one cannot deny them the right to their enjoyment. Even the more discerning listener may think twice about listening to the complete cycle of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues from book 1 or two (even more so in combination). Pick and mix is not new, operatic arias lifted out of context are common, arrangers select favoured bits, the Ring cycle has its bleeding chunks, and ballets similarly have their concert versions.  So we cut and reassemble our listening experiences to suit our pleasure, but there are times when the discerning listener may question the composer’s intentions to explore, follow a connection or simply isolate a particular feature which attracts the attention. Let us return to the matter of surgery on an old friend.

The origins of the desire to run the first movement into the fourth in the 9^th symphony has its roots in my great admiration of two symphonies by Sibelius, the 5^th and the 7^th. In both questions regarding structure concern the composer, and the nature of the questions concern reviewing the conventional multi movement symphony and how the movements can be forged into a continuous composition. Reading through a number of analytical papers on the matter certain phrases constantly reappear, continual development, 2 movements in one, combined development and recapitulation, cohesion through rhythm, contour and detailed articulations. On the matter of rhythm I particularly like Tom Service’s commentary in the Guardian:

…the Seventh Symphony crystallises a conspectus of a compositional technique that later composers like Elliott Carter, George Benjamin, and countless others, would employ: so–called ”metric modulation”, in which you use a common unit of musical time to elide from one speed to another. …the effect is even more subtle than simply shifting through the gears: the final appearance of the trombone theme, whose three-fold appearances are the symphony’s most obvious landmark, is achieved by a musical time-warp. What I mean is that Sibelius has sped up the music so much that time slows down … so that the hectic crotchets of the symphony’s last scherzoid music become the undulating accompanying bed of sound for the trombone’s theme. That’s a moment of musical magic; a truly Sibelian sleight of symphonic structure.

In my two piano version of the first and fourth movements of Ralph Vaughan Williams 9^th symphony I deliberately reduced the symphony from four movements to two to explore a question of design, are the two movements connected to the point where they can function as one, and might RVW have been influenced by the Sibelius model? I could have been satisfied by leaping through the tracks on a CD or ripping the appropriate parts into an MP3 file, but I wanted to spend time working through the details and hearing the parts at the sort of speed the composer might have worked to catch at least some of the relationships between themes, rhythms and scales. Furthermore I had a strong sense of affinity between the two movements but I needed to see if the intuition had basis in fact.

There is no lack of respect in this action, and I admire RVW’s symphonies, the regard for his work dates back to my school days where the Wasps and Sea Symphony were studied for examination purposes (enough said). For me one movement stood out from the others, the final movement of the sixth which paired well with the final section of Holst’s Planets, the reason for the link did not become apparent for a number of years until I examined both pieces in respect to modes of limited transposition. This style of this subdued, unearthly music was not returned to in later symphonic movements and I felt that the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th symphonies had great character but were less musically fascinating. This view may have been partly informed from reading others who describe the 7^th as an inferior symphony (being an adaptation of film music), and the 8^th and 9^th as a late revisit of his earlier style – including quotations in the 9^th - and technique, as “appropriate” to an older man.

The argument for the four movement symphony seems based in literature, reflecting RVW’s lifelong admiration of Hardy’s landscape and its characters, and in the case of the 9thTess in particular. I understand that Michael Kennedy and Alain Frogley both expound on the literary and geographic imagery, the latter writer particularly expounding connections in the second movement with Tess at Stonehenge. While mentioning Frogley there is a lengthy account on the working methods of RVW and the 9^th, in general terms it seems that the four movements were composed in sequential order, the first almost certainly followed by the second.

As the transcription to two pianos evolved is was aware of the loss of musical colour, it seems that more has been written about the orchestration of the 9^th than anything regarding its structure. However the reduction to two pianos reveals just how astringent the harmony can be. The musical spellings show that the key structures have bitonal elements and the chords are at times as shocking in their starkness as those in “Job”. Another aspect of the 2 piano arrangement is an opportunity to place the focus directly onto the thematic and rhythmic changes, I certainly heard the two movements as consisting of a large number of related paragraphs in a continual evolution, whether this view is shared is a matter for the reader and listener.

In the blog on age and creativity the phases of artistic endeavour were presented, and given RVW’s age we must assume that he was at the time of composing the 9^th either in transition between the two final phases or in the final phase. Here they are again:

“Summing-up” phase. Looking at the events of one’s past and creating a narrative from these 
events. 

“Encore” phase: reaffirming beliefs and opinions and exploring variations on those opinions.

Both have their possibilities in the composer’s approach to the last two symphonies, (their composition overlaps) but in my opinion there are new elements or at least progressions from previous composing interests that demonstrate fresh approaches.

If we are going to compare the ideas of a formal unification of parts with Sibelius let us remind ourselves that Sibelius’s 7th symphony was a product of the mid 1920’s and RVW’s 9^th the 1950’s. Thirty years is a long time in musical history of the 20^th century but the effect of Sibelius’s symphonic music has been profoundly influential, even on composers of the 21^st century (e.g. Maxwell Davies and Per Norgard). Earlier it was stated that in his 7^th symphony Sibelius gives equal weight to the variation of material with tempo, rhythmic design and articulations alongside key relationships, (albeit in a different and more chromatic manner to earlier symphonies).  RVW’s 9^th also shows these characteristics but retains frequent key signature changes, and with the arrival of these changes of key we consistently get new variants on thematic and rhythmic characters. Williams’ use of tempo change is less adventurous than Sibelius but the outcomes are similar with gradual alterations to the rhythmic cells over the course of the music. (One may note the feature of a distinct musical figure being followed by a string of successive running quavers, triplets or semiquavers then a new distinctive figure as the various paragraphs are worked through).

The following examples trace through the evolution of the main rhythmic motifs of the first movement.

While the thematic relationships within the first movement are strong in the final movement the rhythmic design is less dramatic, a 6/8 pulse dominates with forays in 4/4, but there is still an evolution of rhythmic ideas, and the closing figures bring us back to the most characteristic figure of the symphony the rise and fall three note figure on saxophones. We must also recall the long triplet sections (e.g. after the contrapuntal opening) in which the ambiguity of being in 4 beats or 6 is played out and now hear it as a precursor of the final movement.

At the bottom of the blog is the thematic comparisons between the movements used on an earlier blog, the black ink refers to the first movement and the blue the final.

I have not spent a great deal of time on a close harmonic analysis and key structure of the two movements, this task would take far more space and time than a blog permits. However, as I came to finish writing this account I came across a thesis covering this topic and I include the link:

https://orca.cf.ac.uk/96565/1/2003ManningDJPhD.pdf

In this (very informative) document David Manning makes reference to an article by Alain Frogley which I have not read where the idea is proposed that the final movement of the 9^th is two movements in one! However we read the score we must realise that the harmonic design is complex, there are 10 changes of key signature in the first movement, with the music becoming a little more stable in relation to the key signatures from the D minor section (bar 112). The last movement has 15 key signature changes and presents us towards the close with a movement towards major tonality, (C and E). These key signatures are not the conventional signals provided in symphonic music of earlier periods and the degree of ambiguity is high.

How do I now read the symphony? I take it as a win – win situation, we have one and a half symphonies, one full somewhat conventional 4 movement work, and half a symphony that poses as a single movement work that is far more radical. I post the link to the 2 piano arrangement

https://youtu.be/DHYfCUVmVJM