User:Hydronium Hydroxide/sandbox/Folk Songs of the Four Seasons

Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, subtitled "A Cantata for Women's Voices", is a song cycle by Ralph Vaughan Williams consisting of a prologue and four seasonal movements using fifteen songs. It was scored for accompaniment by orchestra or piano-forte.

xxxx orchestral version

xxx coverage in "Working with Vaughan Williams: the correspondence of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Roy Douglas"

History

Folk Songs of the Four Seasons

Almost all of Vaughan Williams's arrangements between World War II and his death in 1958 were choral. Twenty-two of a total thirty-seven arrangements appear in two large-scale song cycles, the 1949 Folk Songs of the Four Seasons and the 1958 The First Nowell.

Commissioned by the National Federation of Women's Institutes for their 1950 inaugural Singing Festival.

Structure

xxx range of instrumentation -- full chorus and orchestration to two voice unaccompanied xxx modal xxxx add Roud numbers? https://rvwsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Folk-Songs-booklet.pdf

Prologue

• To the Ploughboy (202)

Spring

• Early in the Spring (23254)
• The Lark in the Morning (151)
• May Song (305)

Summer

• Summer is a-coming in (-) and The Cuckoo (413) in medley
• The Sprig of Thyme (3)
• The Sheep Shearing (812)
• The Green Meadow (922)

Autumn

• John Barleycorn (164)
• The Unquiet Grave (51)
• An Acre of Land (21093)

Winter

• Children’s Christmas Song (-)
• Wassail Song (209)
• In Bethlehem City (1374)
• God Bless the Master (1066)

Instrumentation

Original Version

xxxx

Orchestral Version

Roy Douglas, Vaughan Williams's musical assistant, arranged an orchestral suite XXX1952 published ?1958? recorded ?2012?

"I feel that you have put such a lot of work into it that the chief credit ought to be yours - so I am proposing to the OUP the title Roy Douglas / Folk songs of the four seasons / Suite for orchestra / founded on the Cantata of the same name by / R. Vaughan Williams"

It consists of five movements:

1. To the Ploughboy and May Song
2. The Green Meadow and An Acre of Land
3. The Sprig of Thyme and The Lark in the Morning
4. The Cuckoo
5. Wassail Song and Children's Christmas Song

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/folk-songs-of-the-four-seasons-suite-9780193691407?cc=au&lang=en&

XXX premiere recording on Ralph Vaughan Williams: Early and Late Works World Premiere Recordings (2012?) conducted by Sir David Willcocks and sung by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, and with orchestral accompaniment by the Dmitri Ensemble.