Whenever the topic of British music comes up, we think of that quintessentially English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Although he was born in Down Ampney in Gloucestershire in 1872, he invariably mentioned the year of 1903 as being a critical time in his life. It was to the county of Essex that he was drawn in the spring of that year.
The Young Composer Meets his Destiny
The 30-year-old musician, was not happy with the English music of his day. He was searching for a musical form that resonated with his deep feelings for England, something born out of being English. He was alienated by the pervasive German influence in the English music of that time. From his days as a student a decade earlier, he had been attracted to the traditional music and song of the common people. He was one of the first to use the term Folk Song. He probably would never have me Charles Potiphar, a local shepherd in ordinary life as Vaughan Williams was born into the top stratum of English society. He was a grandson of a High Court Judge whose mother was a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood III of the pottery dynasty, and a niece of Charles Darwin.
Potiphar was from the lowest family, whose life was a daily struggle to put food on the table. He lived quietly in a tiny cottage in the small village of Ingrave near Brentwood, Essex. A yawning social chasm divided the two men.
1903 - An Iconic Year For Vaughan Williams
The year of 1903 was difficult for Vaughan Williams. However, fate chose two middle aged spinsters, Kate Bryan a headmistress of a local girls’ school and Georgiana Heatley, daughter of the Ingrave Rector to intervene. Kate Bryan sent Vaughan Williams an invitation to give a lecture at Brentwood Public School on the subject of folk song. Georgina invited the maestro to visit the vicarage. Here, Vaughan Williams was introduced to Charles Potiphar whom he knew was interested in Essex folksong.
Vaughan Williams' second wife, Ursula, in her biography R.V.W. wrote: Yet another of his courses of lectures on folksong took Ralph to Brentwood in Essex during the autumn (1903). After one talk, two middle-aged ladies told him that their father, the vicar of Ingrave, was giving a tea-party for old people of the village and some of them possibly might know country songs...
Visiting Charles Potiphar in Ingrave
However, due to the risqué nature of the words, Potiphar refused to sing, but invited the composer to meet him the next day at his tiny cottage in Ingrave. The old man, dressed in his best smock, was leaning against the timber doorframe of his cottage in Rectory Lane (now 43 Middle Road) waiting for his important visitor. Immediately he launched into his favourite song Bushes and Briars. The composer was overwhelmed by the beauty of this sad, but beautiful country love song. The thought that such words and melodies could be lost forever turned him instantly into an enthusiastic collector. Vaughan Williams always maintained in his biography and essays that this moment – on 4 December 1903 - was the most influential in his early musical career. That day marked the true beginning of his new direction and the rest is musical history.
Source:
The Ingrave Secret – Ralph’s People. Dineen, Frank published by Albion Music Limited (2001)
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