Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.

Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.

Essay 1: Clare Shaw – poet/dramatist

Clare considers the role that Vaughan Williams’ setting to music of the Welsh hymn Rhosymedre has played in their life. They first played it as a teenager on the viola, for the Burnley Youth Orchestra. It symbolised an expression of beauty, love and hope, a sense of voice and connection to place and possibility... It is also that rare moment in music where the viola gets to carry the melody. Then, in Clare’s fifties, when their mother (a cellist) died, the piece became a conduit for overwhelming grief, a way of holding the horrific and sublime experience of being present at the moment of death. Clare came home after their mother had died and played Rhosymedre, then wrote this poem about her and the music.

Clare Shaw is a poet and performer, tutor and trainer.

Writer and reader Clare Shaw

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