Customer Reviews

O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When a British friend asked what I knew of classic British composer, R. Vaughan Williams, I blinked. That would be ... nothing. Although, as it turned out, when he speedily sent me a two-and-a-half-hour video to educate me, I did know more than nothing. I just didn't know that I knew. But as the documentary unfolded, my ear picked up a string of symphonies and a few sweeter melodies that I had known quite well. Only, shame on me, without giving due credit.

So this is R. Vaughan Williams. With gorgeous scenery that made me want to book a ticket to the United Kingdom, but now, as backdrop, a kind of mix of biography and history and imagined perception (the composer's) unfolded. This is the place and time that formed the musician that created the music. Indeed, to know and see all of this enriches understanding and appreciation of the music. Williams is often called a composer of folk melodies with a classical slant, but the documentary, interspersing soaring orchestras with crashing waves--the Sea Symphonies were easily my favorite--and gruesome war scenes and interview snippets with doddering, elderly British ladies, speaking of the composer's bushy eyebrows and tormented marriage (he loved his wife, but soon after marriage, her failing health became a primary issue), proves the point most eloquently that Williams is far more than folk tune composer. He is a composer on a grand scale. He has written scores for movies in his time, music that climbs mountains and builds suspense and melts into romance. He has composed symphonies that are complex and gorgeous. He can write the sweet melody that resonates in your mind all day long, but he can also write the sweep of crashing symphony that shakes the listener to the core ... as only powerful music can.

The video is long and highly detailed, but a visual treat as well as informative. I now know not only the music, but the man and the history behind it. The British are welcome here.

Tony Palmer's film biography of Vaughan Williams presents the composer as a complicated genius and noble spirit who endured much frustration, disappointment, and tragedy in his life and expressed it in his music...a far cry from the popular image of RVW as sentimental folk tune recycler. The narrative is put forward using interviews and file voiceovers (most notably from RVW himself, his widow Ursula, and biographer Michael Kennedy, but including a wide, and sometimes surprising, group of talking heads). Beautifully filmed and leisurely paced, the film helps confirm Vaughan Williams as one of Europe's (not just England's) greatest 20th century composers. Excerpts from musical performances--newly recorded as well as file footage--give strong implicit evidence that Vaughan Williams was also a great symphonist. Palmer makes a mistake with the use of graphic late 20th- and 21st-century war and famine footage in an attempt to reinforce his otherwise well-founded argument that RVW's music is tragically pessimistic and relevant in the modern world; however, these few moments are only a small blemish on a highly successful and personal portrait. Highly recommended.

This is really a well-made and important piece on one of my favorite composers. I was going to have my eight-year old son watch it with me. I'm glad I didn't. The film maker included very graphic and disturbing film images of dead and dying children to emphasize the horrors of war. I really believe this hurt the film. The horrors of war could have been depicted in a way that did not draw us too far away from the subject matter, which is a great composer and his music. At the end, it was the gruesome images of tragedy and destruction that stayed with me, not the man and his transcendent music. I'm not against powerful images and shaking things up when necessary, but the film maker, for all of his good work, crossed the line to the point where his creation left me angry and disturbed, not enlightened and inspired. A few substituted scenes could have made the point and still kept the focus on the composer and his work. I would have given it 5 stars otherwise.

O Thou Transcendent is lush movie with great video and audio of RVW's music and performances of the music. Wonderful history of the man and events that shaped his musical psyche. This video will make you want to go and buy more of his music.

Mostly interesting documentary nearly ruined by the sporadic and utterly unnecessary use of exceedingly disturbing current-day images of dead, battered babies and emaciated children with flies crawling inside their sores. The filmmaker is making the point that RVW's music often reflects the harrowing human condition. Fine. But we don't need a sledgehammer to the head--swung several times--to comprehend this!

A great fan of RVW's music, and excitedly looked forward to viewing this piece......sadly disappointed in the result.

Tony Palmer does an interesting take on RVW's creative motivation....namely that it was to express in his music the various sufferings and tragedies of his own life and of his times. That may be so, it may not be. After all it was RVW himself who responded (I paraphrase): "....a man wants to write a piece of music for the sake of the music itself" when critics and reviewers wanted to interpret first his 4th, then his 6th symphony as about WWII and the turmoils of that era. Undoubtedly every artist in any media is of his times and influenced by the pleasures and pains of his own experience, but that does not necessarily mean that he is writing programmatic music to literally depict those times or events.

As another reviewer here has said, for Tony Palmer to repeatedly show brutal, horrible and tragic images from recent times (now 50 years after RVW's death) as a means to illustrate his own interpretation of the great motivational force in RVW's output, was a mistake. That did ruin this film.

And on a technical note, the repeated footage of mostly only two orchestras playing chopped up and mixed up excerpts from the several symphonies got to be confusing (and I do know the music) and uninteresting visually. For example, there is only one second symphony, yet it was identified in three separate ways as if there were three separate symphonies in question.

Also this film would have greatly benefited from sub-titles, remaining visible always in my opinion, but at least with the option to turn them on. Many of the interviews were unintelligible due to poor diction or fast speaking or the age of the person being interviewed.

And finally, the RVW voiceover is not identified as to source. When and why was this recorded, if it was actually RVW telling his life story? If not, who?

In the end, if you are a fan of RVW, you will want to see and probably own this DVD for your own reference collection, but it certainly was more of a disappointment to this RVW devotee than it should have been.

This is a fascinating insight into the life and work of this composer. I ordered it specifically as preparation for an essay I was preparing on the composer, and found it to be both interesting and useful. Highly recommended for anyone interested in 20th century composition in England.

This is another excellent bio film from Tony Palmer. Today Vaughan Williams seems to be a forgotten composer in North America. This film rekindled my interest in him and I am currently returning to his music by listening to his symphonies and his Masque Job. Much of the symphonic music is played brilliantly by the National youth Orchestra of Great Britain, an orchestra which Vaughan Williams helped to start.I found the film very touching and I would recommend it to anyone interested in British music in the first half of the 20th century.

There are good things about this documentary. Some of the interviews are great. The music and musicians are well-integrated into the film. The musical selections provide a good balance between the well-known pastoral works and lesser-known pieces. The later symphonies show that Vaughan Williams's creativity never flagged and I'm glad that this documentary featured them.

But the film is marred by a lack of focus and a heavy-handed opinionated approach. A disproportionate amount of screen time goes to a revisionist biographer whose name escapes me. Some of it was interesting but I'd have preferred more meat and less fluff.

The low point, and the reason for the 2-star review, is the montage of horrific scenes illustrating man's inhumanity to man. The idea is relevant: Vaughan Williams was marked by his experiences as an ambulance driver in WWI and by the friends who didn't come back from it, like George Butterworth. The execution of this idea though is brutally and amateurishly clumsy. I get that the 6th Symphony is bleak, I don't need to be hit over the head with it. And I'd like to be able to listen to it without having it tainted by the filmmaker's vision of it.

Unlike other viewers, I don't want the 2+ hours back. I want my joy in Vaughan Williams's music back.

I read the biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, RVW, written by his widow, Ursula, to present to a book club to which I belong. The book was long, full of musical minutia, and if I hadn't been obligated to discuss it, I would not have finished the book. After slogging through 400 pages of details that made my eyes cross, but compeletly skipped over the main story, I was left with not much interesting information to discuss with my group so I began researching more about the man.

I found this film to be very helpful. It includes footage of Ralph Vaughan Williams himself, Ursula, and several people who knew them well and revealed more of their fascinating story than Ursula was willing to tell.

The music is breathtaking, the English landscapes are beautiful, and this film gives more insight into this giant of 20th century music than any other single source that I found during the course of my research.