
- Walt whitman sail forth steer for the deep waters only series#
- Walt whitman sail forth steer for the deep waters only free#
See, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port, See, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green and blue, Movement 1: “ Song of the Exposition” and “ Song for all Seas, all Ships"Īnd on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships.Vaughan Williams sets sections from the following poems in A Sea Symphony:
Walt whitman sail forth steer for the deep waters only free#
Whitman's use of free verse was also beginning to make waves in the compositional world, where fluidity of structure was beginning to be more attractive than traditional, metrical settings of text. Vaughan Williams was attracted to them for their ability to transcend both metaphysical and humanist perspectives. Though Whitman's poems were little known in England at the time, Vaughan Williams was introduced to them by Bertrand Russell, a family friend. The text of A Sea Symphony comes from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The first movement lasts roughly twenty minutes the inner movements approximately eleven and eight minutes, and the finale lasts roughly thirty minutes. The Explorers (baritone, soprano, semi-chorus, and chorus).


Although it represents a departure from the traditional Germanic symphonic tradition of the time, it follows a fairly standard symphonic outline: fast introductory movement, slow movement, scherzo, and finale. Like Brahms, Vaughan Williams delayed a long time before composing his first symphony, but remained prolific throughout the end of his life: his final symphony was composed from 1956 to 1958, and completed when he was 85 years of age.Īt approximately 70 minutes, A Sea Symphony is the longest of all Vaughan Williams's symphonies. Nevertheless, Vaughan Williams had never before attempted a work of quite this duration, or for such large forces, and it was his first of what would eventually be nine symphonies. This is generally cited as his first large-scale work although Grove lists some 16 other orchestral works composed by Vaughan Williams before he completed A Sea Symphony, including two with chorus, the vast majority of those are juvenilia or apprentice works that have never been published and are long since withdrawn from circulation. Originally titled The Ocean, A Sea Symphony was first performed in 1910 at the Leeds Festival on the composer's 38th birthday.
Walt whitman sail forth steer for the deep waters only series#
From 1903 to 1909, Ralph Vaughan Williams worked intermittently on a series of songs for chorus and orchestra that were to become his most lengthy project to date and his first true symphony.
