From Pub to Pulpit: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ epiphany
English Dance and Song Summer 2022
This article appears in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts.
John Palmer, project director of From Pub to Pulpit, explains why the Devil doesn’t have all the best tunes.
When 74-year-old Essex labourer Charles Potipher sang Bushes and Briars for Ralph Vaughan Williams, the renowned song collector and composer proclaimed: “I felt it was something I had known all my life.”
Vaughan Williams asked Charles about the origins of his songs and he replied: “If you can get the words, the Almighty will send you the tune.”
That so-called ‘Ingrave Epiphany’ in 1903 influenced Vaughan Williams’ compositions for the rest of his career. And it’s the inspiration for an imaginative concert tour called From Pub to Pulpit, marking Vaughan Williams’ 150th birthday this year. Vaughan Williams went on to collect 800 folk songs, many of which he recycled for classical, brass and choral arrangements. Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, was his appropriation of several folk songs for the tunes of some of our most popular hymns.
In 1904, he received the prestigious commission to edit a new and defining English Hymnal, which took two years to complete and contains 700 hymns and tunes. When published in 1906, it was met with criticism and dismay amongst the upper echelons of buttoned-up society as being ‘too secular’.
For Vaughan Williams, it was a confirmation of his fundamental view that church music should not be as constricted as the Victorians had made it. He said: “Hard-working men and women should be given bracing and stimulating music, not the unhealthy outcome of theatrical and hysterical sentiment.
National music should represent the people. Music is the expression of the soul of the nation… the same circumstances that produced our beautiful folk songs also produced our history, our customs, our incomparable landscapes.”
This was as important on a Sunday morning in the church as it was on a Saturday night in the pub, and needed to be encouraged, as Vaughan Williams proclaimed: “In this country, the old tunes, which had served our forefathers so well, lasted well into the last century. The village band which, with all its shortcomings, was a definite artistic nucleus in the parish, was superseded by a wheezing harmonium played by an incompetent amateur; or in more ambitious churches, a new organ was set up where the organist had usually developed his technique at the expense of his musicianship.”
It’s that spirit of communal togetherness that From Pub to Pulpit will recreate in 20 cathedrals, as a flagship event of the RVW150 celebrations.
The From Pub to Pulpit musical transformations start with the original folk song being sung unaccompanied, just like in the pub. It then goes up a musical stepladder, with instrumental variations moving the tune through folk to classical before concluding with the cathedral’s organ, choir and concert audience raising the roof with a full-blooded rendition of the hymn.
Among the transforming folk songs is the grisly The Murder of Maria Marten, collected by Vaughan Williams from Mr Booker in Sussex, which becomes I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. Cautionary song The Ploughboy’s Dream, collected from Henry Garman of Forest Green, is transformed into O Little Town of Bethlehem; while the rousing Our Captain Calls, collected from Mrs Verrall in Sussex, becomes To Be A Pilgrim.
The RVW150 celebrations, coordinated by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust, includes orchestral, choral and sacred music concerts, regional festivals and special radio and TV events.
Hugh Cobbe, of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust, says: “From Pub to Pulpit is an extremely imaginative and unique contribution to RVW150 as it crosses the boundaries between the different genres of Vaughan Williams’ music in a way that no other event will.”
From Pub to Pulpit has been a pilgrimage of discovery and enjoyment for those who are collaborating to present it with cathedral organists and choirs. Broomdasher, an acapella group whose recordings in the British Sound Archive are described as “an outstanding example of grassroots folk today”, have an almost direct link with Vaughan Williams through Josephine Swinhoe, who was classically trained by his protégé, John Carol Case. Josephine says: “Four of us – Margaret Moore, Deena Marcus-Jedamzik, Chris Hayes and myself – met at the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s Cecil Sharp House Choir and our arranger Richard Cryan joined later. We have a lot of Ralph Vaughan Williams in our repertoire and we’ve found that many people seem to know only one aspect of his work, so we’re excited about crossing those musical boundaries with From Pub to Pulpit.”
Belshazzar’s Feast accordionist Paul Hutchinson has composed the instrumental sections, linking folk song to hymn, with a new group, Coracle, featuring clarinettist Karen Wimhurst and multi-instrumentalist Anna Tam. Paul says: “I was an organist in my youth and so church music has been in my blood, influencing the way I play accordion. I love Vaughan Williams and was keen to be part of this project. Karen and I have performed as Pagoda Project since 2014. During lockdown, I heard Anna Tam play my version of I Have a Wife of my Ain. From Pub to Pulpit was coming together and we asked Anna to join us in the pit orchestra.”
It ends at the July 2023 Gloucester Cathedral Three Choirs Festival. Other venues this year include Chester, Derby, Newcastle, Exeter, Lincoln, Wells, Carlisle, Broadstairs and Ledbury,
with 10 more in 2023.
Every performance will be different, as the host organist will add their own influence and there will also be pre-show workshops for the local communities to practice singing.
The musical arrangements, scores and tour brochure are also being posted free online, so that anyone, anywhere, can adapt them.
For more information, visit broomdasher.com or coracleband.co.uk
