Categories: random
Tags: music, Vaughan Williams
Date: 02 January 2011 13:55:46
We are currently away having a (very sedate, it has to be said) adventure, photos of which will be posted when we're back in a couple of days when the location will be revealed. I did however want to note something here in case I forget it later.
The hotel where we're staying has Classic FM on the radio in the dining room, so breakfast is a very pleasant and refined affair. Classic FM are currently doing a countdown of sorts (I'm not a regular listener so am not sure exactly what it's of - most popular, most requested, or something more random, I don't know) and yesterday they played (as number two hundred and something) the 3rd movement of Vaughan Williams' 5th Symphony. I'm a sucker for Vaughan Williams at the best of times, but I am particularly fond of this symphony as it was on the very first vinyl record I ever bought (I'd been buying pop stuff on cassette before, but it took till my late teens to persuade my parents that having a record player would be a good thing). I actually bought the record as it also had, as a filler, "Serenade to Music" which is a shortish choral piece by RVW which I was studying as one of my A'level music set works, but the symphony grabbed me immediately - it is emotionally raw, astonishing, and just transports me to another level. I'd not listened to it for years (my record player was broken in my last London burglary and I've not replaced it, and I'd not listened to that record for a long time before that), but sitting there at breakfast yesterday listening to it on a tinny stereo I just shut my eyes and felt my soul soar.
I think a belated new year's resolution will be to buy and listen to more classical music this year. I had forgotten that soul connection, but it's still there.