Ralph Vaughan Williams and fenland music
Robert Macfarlane, Alyson Tapp and Caroline Davison talk to poet and 麻豆社 New Generation Thinker Jade Cuttle about the musical inspiration Ralph Vaughan Williams found in the fens
In The Fen Country from 1904 is Ralph Vaughan Williams鈥� earliest acknowledged composition. As a student he would travel out into the fens, even ice skating to Ely Cathedral, and collecting local folk songs which would inspire his later work.
Poet and nature writer Jade Cuttle, who like the composer fell in love with this flat landscape whilst studying at Cambridge University, retraces his footsteps in this artistically-fertile but overlooked part of the country.
Joining this journey into Vaughan Williams' fenland soundscape are Robert Macfarlane, whose books include Underland and Is a River Alive; researcher and gardener Alyson Tapp and Caroline Davison, author of a study of Vaughan Williams and folk music called The Captain's Apprentice.
Producer Ciaran Bermingham
Jade Cuttle is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the 麻豆社 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio.
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