Sunday Feature: Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

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Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

Simon Heffer explores what lies behind the Sixth Symphony by Vaughan Williams.

Simon Heffer journeys through the landscape of the Sixth Symphony by Vaughan Williams to uncover the impact of the period in which the work was composed.

When the Sixth Symphony by Vaughan Williams was premiered in 1948 at the Royal Albert Hall, it had an immediate impact upon those who heard it. The audience were visibly shocked, and for some they couldn’t even applaud, so stunned by what they’d heard and experienced. Here was a composer now in his seventies, presenting them with something quite different. A symphony that was violent, aggressive, and little like anything that had preceded it. Yet, within two years the symphony clocked up at least one hundred performances. The public took this symphony, and its composer, deeper to their hearts.

So what was the Sixth Symphony by Vaughan Williams about? Many who heard it in the late 1940s, firmly believed it had arisen from the composer's experiences during World War Two, and some called it his War Symphony. Vaughan Williams himself didn’t like this title, and during one interview when he was asked what the symphony was about, referenced Prospero’s “Such stuff as dreams are made on” from The Tempest by Shakespeare. Vaughan Williams was being vague about any meaning behind his symphony, and yet when you look at the period in which is was composed, from the latter part of the Second World War onwards, and at the experiences for the composer himself during this period, the symphony begins to make sense.

Simon Heffer believes that the Sixth Symphony is the composer’s greatest symphonic work. To lift the veil on this masterpiece, he invites the conductor Martyn Brabbins into studio to discuss the symphony, delving into its possible meanings and undercurrents movement by movement. Also joining Heffer is Stephen Connock, vice chairman of the Vaughan Williams Society, and Kathy Atherton, historian and chairman of the Dorking Museum and Heritage Centre. Through conversations with Connock and Atherton, Heffer explores a little-researched area of the composer's life: his involvement helping refugees. Vaughan Williams was involved in supporting refugees before World War Two began, and was highly active, too, on the Dorking and District Refugee Committee. Here was a man who was hearing about the atrocities taking place in Europe, long before they became more widely known.

There were other events which took place during the period in which the composer was beginning to map out his sixth symphony. His wife Adeline was increasingly ill, while at the same time he began a relationship with Ursula Wood, who would in due course become his second wife. There were all the bombings near to his home in Dorking and also the death of a girl he considered his daughter, in an air-raid on London. The death of the bandleader Ken 'Snakehips' Johnson by a bomb hitting the Cafe de Paris, it is believed, also had an impact upon Vaughan Williams and his decision to include a saxophone in this symphony. Professor Catherine Tackley joins Heffer to talk more about Johnson, whilst Sir Erich Reich tells his unique story about being personally rescued by Vaughan Williams, as a boy refugee arriving in London from Vienna.

People who heard the Sixth Symphony in the late 1940s immediately felt a connection with it. Having gone through the war years themselves, they recognised the feelings, emotions and events they too had experienced in this work. They took it to their hearts, and, in Simon Heffer’s opinion, out of this period of personal and musical crisis Vaughan Williams created an unmistakable masterpiece of the 20th century.

Produced by Luke Whitlock

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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