Instrumentation
3(III=picc).2.ca.3(III=bcl).2 – 4331 – timp – perc(2): tgl/cyms/BD – harp – cel – strings – soprano or tenor voice (ossia cl 1) Reduced Orch: 2(II=picc).1.ca.2.2 – 4231 - timp – perc(2): tgl/BD/cyms – harp – strings
Availability
Score 0571537413 on sale, parts for hire.
Available from Faber Music in the following territories: UK, Eire, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Jamaica, Hong Kong and South Africa.
Reviews
'...there will always be admirers of Vaughan Williams who find the Pastoral the most moving and personal of his works. In its pages, the emotions of war are recollected in tranquillity free from complacency.'
Michael Kennedy - The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams
'It's really war-time music - a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night with the ambulance waggon at Ecoivres and we went up a steep hill and there was a wonderful Carol-like landscape in the sunset - it's not really lambkins frisking as most people take for granted.'
From a letter to Ursula Vaughan Williams, 1938
'In its unassertiveness, the Pastoral stands with the Tallis Fantasia, Job and the Fifth Symphony as one of the composer's master-works, and as one of the great symphonies of the twentieth century.'
Wilfrid Mellers - Vaughan Williams & the vision of Albion
'There exists already at least one really important achievement which owes its existence directly to the influence of folk-song, and that is the supremely beautiful Pastoral Symphony of Vaughan Williams. I have an unbounded admiration for this work...'E J Moeran to the Musical Times, March 1931