November | American in Paris

Serenade to Music, Ralph Vaughan Williams

By 1938 Sir Henry Wood (1869-1944) had enjoyed an illustrious career – an impressive fifty years of conducting orchestras in the finest concert halls that the United Kingdom could offer. To celebrate the milestone, a special concert was planned to honor him.

Ralph (pronounced Rafe) Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), a friend and collaborator, was asked to compose a piece for orchestra and singers for the Golden Jubilee concert. He had, for some time, wanted to write a piece using text from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Act V scene I. The scene takes place in a serene, moonlit garden, with Jessica and Lorenzo musing about the magical power of music. So impactful is it, Lorenzo surmises, that anyone who does not recognize the significance of music cannot be trusted.

Vaughan Williams carefully merged dialogue from four different characters, creating a unified whole: 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,

And draw her home with music.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

The reason is, your spirits are attentive:

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

Music! hark! It is your music of the house.

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

Silence bestows that virtue on it.

How many things by season season’d are

To their right praise and true perfection!

Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion

And would not be awaked.

Soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

— William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

Diana – ancient Roman goddess of the hunt, the moon, wild animals, and the wilderness

Erebus – In Greek mythology he is the personification of darkness and the offspring of Chaos.

Endymion – mythological Greek character, variously described as a shepherd, hunter, king of Elis, or astronomer. 

At the request of Selene, goddess of the moon, Zeus granted him eternal youth and an everlasting sleep.

Written for sixteen solo voices and orchestra, Serenade to Music is a sublimely beautiful orchestral concert work featuring a violin soloist and intentionally written for the talents of each of the sixteen vocal soloists, all of whom had special significance to Sir Henry. To this day, the soloists’ initials are printed beside their designated parts in the choral and conductor’s full score. It was somewhat later that Vaughan Williams composed an arrangement for choir and orchestra.

Serenade to Music premiered on October 5, 1938, with Sir Henry Wood conducting. The first half of the program was devoted to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the composer himself at the piano. After intermission Rachmaninoff found his seat in the audience to listen to the second half of the concert. He was so moved by Vaughan Williams’ music that he wept.