by If I forget to mention it over the coming months, the Ralph Vaughan Williams piece I’m working on, A Sea Symphony? It’s Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis all over again. This thing moves like a freaking bat out of hell, and in this case the bat is also on meth and being chased by much scarier bats. Not only is it impossibly fast, the time signature changes constantly. 3/2, no, 4/2, no 3/2, okay, I’m just messing with you, it’s really 4/2. No, 3/2! He’s like Lucy with a time signature football.
I need … puppies! Here boys! In truth, the combination of this lush, exciting Ralph Vaughan Williams music and text from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is thrilling. Robert Shaw called it “the most beautiful piece of choral music written in the 20th century.”
