The Lark Ascending

The Lark Ascending is a work by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, inspired by George Meredith's 122-line poem of the same name about the skylark. The work was written in two versions: violin and piano, written in 1914; and violin and orchestra, written in 1920. The orchestral version is the one that is almost always heard now. It is one of the most popular pieces in the Classical repertoire among British listeners.

Vaughan Williams sketched the work while watching troop ships cross the English Channel at the outbreak of the First World War. A small boy observed him making the sketches and, thinking he was jotting down a secret code, informed a police officer, who subsequently arrested the composer.^{[citation needed]} The war halted his compositional activities, but the work was revised in 1920 with the help of the English violinist Marie Hall, during their stay at Kings Weston House near Bristol.

The Lark Ascending was dedicated to Marie Hall, who premiered both versions. The piano-accompanied premiere was in December 1920, in conjunction with the Avonmouth and Shirehampton Choral Society. This was followed by the first London performance, and first orchestral performance, on 14 June 1921, under conductor Adrian Boult. The critic from The Times said of that performance, "It showed supreme disregard for the ways of today or yesterday. It dreamed itself along".

The use of pentatonic scale patterns frees the violin from a strong tonal centre, and shows the impressionistic side of Vaughan Williams' style. This liberty also extends to the metre. The cadenzas for solo violin are written without bar lines, lending them a sense of meditational release.

In 2011 it was chosen as Britain's all-time favourite 'Desert Island Disc' in a poll of listeners to chose the nation's Desert Island Discs.

From 2007 to 2010, the piece was voted number one in the Classic FM annual Hall of Fame poll, over Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and another work of Vaughan Williams', the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. In 2011 it was usurped by Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. In 2011, in a poll to find what music New Yorkers would like to hear on the radio for the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, The Lark Ascending came second.

In popular culture

• The Lark Ascending inspired some of the violin parts in the latter half of the track "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One" on the album Larks' Tongues in Aspic by King Crimson (1973).
• The piece was used as the main theme for the 1987 Australian film The Year My Voice Broke.
• This piece was used by David Crowder Band on "The Lark Ascending or (Perhaps More Accurately, I'm Trying to Make You Sing)", the last song on their album A Collision (or 3 + 4 = 7).
• Dreadzone's homage to the beauty of the English countryside, "A Canterbury Tale", uses the initial solo violin theme from The Lark Ascending as a recurring melody.
• The Jez Butterworth play Jerusalem (premiered 2009) used this piece as its preset music.
• The piece is referred to constantly in the book Cricket Kings by William McInness

External links

• The Lark Ascending: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.
• George Meredith's Poem "The Lark Ascending"
• Video of performance by Michael Bochmann (violin) with the English Symphony Orchestra