Talk:A Sea Symphony

Huge rewrite of whole article
I have augmented and rewritten this article. Please feel free to correct things I got wrong and leave feedback. I know there's currently no citations - all the info is from the books listed in References. I will try to add some specific citations soon.

There are times when I sense it getting a little too POV. Any advice or help there is welcome also. Best wishes! --MarkBuckles 00:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Image
Added an image of the Spano recording. I'd rather have one of the score since one recording doesn't define the work, but it is an excellent recording and adds some color to the page. Any thoughts? --MarkBuckles 02:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the cover of the score or a page of the music? I would think there are copyright issues for the latter; I can certainly scan either when I get home and upload to the page but will wait for an opinion regarding fair use. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure either the cover or the score or a scan of the opening page is fair use. I'd rather see the actual music myself! MarkBuckles (talk) 05:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I have uploaded scans of the cover as SeaSym.jpg and the first page as SeaSymOpening.jpg. I am not enough of a wiki-type to know how to insert the images with all the nice formatting, so feel free... --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 21:12, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

First "choral symphony"?
Perhaps the first true "choral symphony": If you look at the first performances, Mahler's 8th predates it by a month, as far as I can figure out. Of course RVW's had a longer gestation. Is it worth qualifying the statement? David Brooks 01:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps worth qualifying in a footnote. I'll research this a bit to make sure I get the facts straight and then update it. -- MarkBuckles 03:12, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The first true choral symphony that has survived into the modern repertoire. (Symphonies in which the chorus had a role practically throughout but which were not oratorios precisely- though perhaps close to- were composed fairly often well before that, for instance; look up some 1860s issues of Dwight's Journal of Music, for example, using Google Books where they can be downloaded as PDFs or viewed in full; or other sources. I may be failing to make an important distinction here. But yes- the VW is the earliest one to make its way into the repertoire and stay there, so far.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 04:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

The article currently reads "One of the first true 'choral symphonies'....". The real problem here (now and then) is not the term first; it's the term true. Beethoven's ninth symphony has certainly "survived into the modern repertoire", and it's commonly called the choral symphony, much more commonly than Vaughan Williams's symphony is called a choral symphony, for the simple and obvious reason that it's much more famous than the Vaughan Williams symphony. Presumably the editors above don't consider Beethoven's "true" because it uses a chorus only for its last movement. That may be a legitimate point of view, but point of view it certainly is, and point of view is proscribed here.TheScotch (talk) 09:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've just reworded the passage such that all actual information is retained, I think, but without the POV term "true". TheScotch (talk) 08:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting point. I think I got the "true" language from Steinberg. I think your rewrite works fine, and succeeds in removing the POV. MarkBuckles (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If it can be sourced, then it doesn't matter if it's point of view, so long as we ascribe taht point of view to someone in particular. It was certainly a point made by the condcutor of the choir I performed it with before Christmas, and (a college friend of his) the conductor of the East German Radio Choir who we were fortunate enough to have take one of the rehearsals.  David Underdown (talk) 10:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You can have the article attest that so-and-so said it, but 1) so-and-so has to be someone more notable than your choir conductor, for example (depending who your choir conductor is, I suppose), and his saying it has to be notable as well and 2) even so this would still be information about so-and-so's opinion rather than information about the actual piece--the article should be written in such a way that this is made clear. TheScotch (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:15, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well Grove says "a fully choral symphony" (no mention of first though), and I was really think of Mark's original mention of Steinberg in any case. David Underdown (talk) 10:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

If Steinberg said it (MarkBuckles wasn't sure, and I haven't checked), then the article can so attest (that Steinberg said it). "Fully choral" is (mildly) interesting, I suppose, but not very much like "truly choral". TheScotch (talk) 00:16, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Now I've checked, and, unfortunately for "true" enthusiasts, Steinberg does not call this work a "true choral symphony". He calls it, in fact, "more a cantata than a symphony in the ordinary sense" (p. 655). (Hard for a piece to be a "true choral symphony" if it's not even a "true" symphony.) There is evidence that Vaughan Williams would have agreed with Steinberg and was using the term symphony in the title more or less figuratively, roughly in the manner that Stravinsky later used it in his Symphony of Psalms. From Ursula's biography, p. 95: "One of my [Ralph Vaughan Williams's] most grateful memories of George [Butterworth] is connected with my London Symphony....he [Butterworth] said in his characteristically abrupt way: 'You ought to write a symphony.' From that moment [a "moment" well past the composition and first performances of A Sea Symphony] the idea of a symphony--a thing which I had always declared I would never attempt--dominated my mind." TheScotch (talk) 22:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

"Sir" Adrian Boult
I'm afraid I'm a bit confused as to why the conductor of the first recording is suddenly deprived of his knighthood. Is there some WP policy about this? Boult was knighted in 1937, well before the recording was made. Wspencer11 13:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Haha. Hey, I didn't mean to deprive Boult of his knighthood. Naming conventions (names and titles) has a little information on this. The general guideline seems to be that we should not use "Sir" in the title of an article, and that we should go easy on it in the main text. When olden times are at issue, it should certainly be mentioned, but in this case, with just a passing reference on a list, it didn't seem appropriate IMHO. It's really a minor point though. What do you think? MarkBuckles 21:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Latest edit
This got added lately: "The symphony is written in D Minor, although it opens with the powerful brass fanfare in B Flat Minor." Unfortunately, it is not true. The symphony is not in D minor, and there's a reason RVW didn't assign it a key, even though it is perfectly tonal. The first movement is more or less in D Major, the second movement wanders around some, the third movement is more or less in G minor, and the finale, after much wandering, ends up in E-Flat Major, sort of. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 21:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Although the B-flat minor brass fanfare is notable relevant to the first movement being in D Major. I'm not sure if it's notable enough to dwell on in this article though. Regarding the Finale. . . weird final chord and orchestration, huh? MarkBuckles (talk) 05:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

New motivic material
I dunno, I'm not certain this will mean much to non-musicians. I'm also not at all sure it's right, but I don't have time right now to check for the other motives that my failing memory tells me are there. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 12:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

"There is only one A Sea Symphony"
In the sense that one needs to say "I mean Howard Hanson's "A Sea Symphony", not Vaughan Williams'", yes. True. Not quite what I ordinarily mean by disambiguation myself - Hanson is not _quite_ that obscure, not on the level of Gosta Nystroem (Sinfonia del Mare being a different kettle of fish, I agree- the Hanson symphony 7 is not.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 04:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:SeaSymOpening.jpg
Image:SeaSymOpening.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Symphony numbering
Re: "the composer referred to his symphonies only by name or key until the appearance of the Ninth [my emphasis], in the same key as the Sixth, prompted him to assign numbers (beginning with No. 4 in F minor) in order to avoid confusion.":

This remark contradicts what I've read in various more reputable (than wikipedia) sources. I'll cite just one for now:

Michael Steinberg, The Symphony, 1995, Oxford University Press, page 654 (paperback edition): "The Eighth [my emphasis] was the first symphony that Vaughn Williams numbered himself. His first three symphonies went by their names. The next three he called simply Symphony in F minor, Symphony in D major, and Symphony in E minor, but beginning with the D major his publisher intervened and added numbers to the titles [my emphasis]."

I'm changing the article accordingly. TheScotch (talk) 08:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Wellllllllll, for starters the Eighth is not in D Major but D minor, and Michael Steinberg, for all his good qualities and high profile, is not always the most reliable sorce for this kind of thing. If you could please note a couple of other sources I for one would feel a lot better about this change, which I have never heard except for this comment. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 12:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see the point about the Eighth being in D minor: if VW called it the Eighth, then so he did, even though its name as "Symphony in D minor" was not ambiguous with the Symphony (no. 5) in D major. But equally I'm not convinced about the publisher thing, simply from the highly oblique piece of evidence that the 1950 reprint of the score of the Sixth didn't have the number on, according to the dealer's listing at http://www.antiqbook.co.uk/boox/pete/19098.shtml —Preceding unsigned comment added by Myopic Bookworm (talk • contribs) 16:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: "Wellllllllll, for starters the Eighth is not in D Major but D minor....":

Since in the passage quoted, Steinberg makes no reference at all to the key of the Eighth, this seems a non-sequitur.

Re: "....Michael Steinberg for all his good qualities and high profile, is not always the most reliable sorce for this kind of thing. If you could please note a couple of other sources I for one would feel a lot better about this change, which I have never heard except for this comment.":

The change I made removes unsourced material which contradicts the source cited; it does not introduce new material. If you want the article to read as it did before my edit, the onus is on you to provide sources that trump Steinberg. (The Steinberg quote is only the most recent of the sources to which I referred, and I was able easily to cite it only because the matter had already come up at the Vaughan Williams page--I was for this reason alert at the time I happened to come across it and jotted it down.) TheScotch (talk) 02:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Despite what I say above, I've now done a bit of digging (a bit of digging I was in no way obliged to undertake), and I've come across more about Vaughan Williams's decision to call his eighth symphony his Eighth symphony (so to speak) in Roy Douglas's Working with R. V. W. (a book I had read before, long ago). Douglas (Vaughan Williams's assistant since a little before the sixth symphony) corroborates Steinberg on this point, but it gets slightly messy: In the first place, according to Douglas, Vaughan Williams had to be persuaded to title the symphony thus--persuaded by Douglas himself and something he calls O.U.P., which I'm guessing was Vaughan Williams's publisher. Steinberg's distinction between composer and publisher still logically holds, but the distinction is not quite as distinct (so to speak) as might have been supposed. In the second place, Douglas actually did (or so he says) argue that the eighth might be confused with the fifth because they are both in D, and Vaughan Williams actually did (apparently) argue--at first--that the difference in mode should be enough to distinguish them--which may be some consolation to Wspencer11--(or if not, Vaughan Williams went on, there wouldn't be so much harm in them not being distinguished). Douglas points out, by the way, that in this very speech Vaughan Williams had to use numbers in order to distinguish the symphonies so as to make his argument and supposes awareness of the irony was likely the thing that caused Vaughan Williams to back down. TheScotch (talk) 01:02, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * OUP is usually Oxford University Press, so almost certainly the publisher. David Underdown (talk) 10:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. My Edition Eulenburg copies of the fifth and sixth symphony scores say on their first pages SYMPHONY No. 5 and SYMPHONY No. 6 respectively--with no key designations (although key designations do appear in smaller print beneath these titles on the covers). They are "copyright 1946 Oxford University Press" and "copyright 1948 Oxford University Press" respectively. Until evidence is brought forth demonstrating they were not originally published this way, I'm afraid this (sort of thing) will have to constitute prima facie evidence.

More about the eighth's title from the liner notes to Andre Previn's recording of the fifth with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Telarc: "The symphony in D major (always known as No. 5 [my emphasis], though Vaughan Williams did not give numbers to any of this symphonies except the last two [my emphasis] of his nine)...." TheScotch (talk) 22:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation: Howard Hanson's seventh symphony
I'm not sure Hanson's work is given the correct title in the disambiguation note at the beginning of this article. Grove lists it thus: "Sym. no.7 ‘The Sea’ (Whitman), chorus, orch, 1977". The double quotation marks above are mine; the single quotation marks are Grove's (and presumably Hanson's as well). Grove lists Vaughan Williams's piece as "A Sea Symphony (no.1) (W. Whitman), S, Bar, SATB, orch, 1903–9, last rev. 1923". Again, the double quotation marks are mine. TheScotch (talk) 16:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * []
 * []
 * I have another CD on Citadel, which gives again this title (I can send you a scanned image, if you tell me an email address where I can write). All of them are wrong? --Mahlerite (talk) 16:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Neither of the two links you've furnished gives this piece the title you've assigned it. TheScotch (talk) 16:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've now corrected title here and elsewhere based on your links and title given in "Howard Hanson" article (but not on Grove--this is still pending). TheScotch (talk) 17:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Influences...
In addition to the various influences already listed, perhaps some mention should be made of baroque influences - has anyone written about this with respect to V-W's music?. Very often the choral writing, especially (and perhaps this is simply indicative of choral writing in general), makes use of contrapuntal textures with cliché harmonic sequences reminiscent of Handel, Bach, et al. Remember, it was less than a decade earlier the the venerable Ebenezer Prout re-edited and (over-)orchestrated Handel's Messiah, having had published many theoretical works on counterpoint and fugue in the late 19th c. Perhaps the seeds of the more obvious "back to baroque" and neo-classical trends of the 1920s (Holst's Fugal Concerto, Stravinsky's Pulcinella, etc.) were already becoming apparent before the war, and are in evidence in A Sea Symphony. Perhaps these influences were filtered through V-W's studies with Parry and Stanford. (And it is probably no coincidence that the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, with its references to even earlier music, was written around the time of the symphony...)

Formatting issue
Is there a way to hide the wikisource "s:" prefixes without manual piping every time? They look rather distracting... Pcap ping  23:22, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Recordings...
Sigh...here I am again with my habitual whine about "Notable/selected/etc. recordings" sections. What makes them notable? Why are they selected for this? Why is Paul Daniel's more notable than Andre Previn's? Without some reason given for including a recording the list automatically becomes POV (from my POV). Is there some page out there in WP-land that lays out criteria for this? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 15:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You may have noticed that the section title is simply "Recordings", and the words notable and selected do not appear anywhere in this section. I believe bringing up the unending discussion concerning notability of recordings is irrelevant here, as this listing does not claim to contain all notable recordings. Since WikiPedia is an encyclopedia anyone can edit, anyone should feel free to add any recording they think should be in the list. I personally prefer all mentioned recordings to be referenced (either to the record company's on-line catalogue, or to an on-line review from reliable sources like Gramophone, MusicWeb Int or ClassicsToday to name but a few, or in the worst case to an entry on a commercial site like PrestoClassical or Amazon), but this referencing model seems to be too idealistic (see Four Last Songs discography or L'Orfeo discography for examples of my ideal referencing model for recordings). Regards. --Francesco Malipiero (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It actually said "Notable recordings" until I changed it earlier today...and I suppose anyone can delete a recording that s/he does not think is notable. My point is not that my personal favorite was not included (it is), but rather that such a section is by its very nature POV unless every recording is included, which is simply not feasible much of the time. And I just don't see WP's function to be discographic. I also know that I will never win this one. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 17:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand your point of view. However, please consider that for many people recordings are the only way of getting to know classical music. Most people do not have the good fortune to live in the vicinity of a concert hall or an opera house, or have the financial or logistic means to get there. Do you not think it is part of the task the WikiPedia Project has set itself to provide some guidance for these people? I haven't been around WP very long, so I never participated in the debate about notability of recordings, but as far as I am concerned there is a very simple way to define whether or not a recording is notable: if one or more of the parties involved in the recording (be it the record company, the conductor, the orchestra, the ensemble or any of the vocal and/or instrumental soloists) are notable enough to have an article dedicated to them in WikiPedia, then the recording is notable in my view, regardless of its artistic merrit and/or historic significance. Regards. --Francesco Malipiero (talk) 20:18, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I've read the foregoing comments about recordings of the Sea Symphony but because there have been only about a dozen made over the years, I think they could all be listed under the Recordings heading without disturbing the article itself. This would be impossible with the Beethoven 5th, of course, which has been recorded hundreds of times, but for RVW's 1st I think things are different. In any case, here's what I think are the remainder ... ie: those not shown at the foot of the article ... but if I've missed any, please add them on!

In no particular order: (1) Sir Adrian Boult / LPO (stereo remake for EMI); (2) Andre Previn / LSO (RCA); (3) Bryden Thomson / LSO (Chandos); (4) Leonard Slatkin / Philharmonia (BMG); (5) Richard Hickox / LSO (Chandos); (6) Sir Malcom Sargent / BBC Symphony Orchestra ('live' broadcast: BBC Radio Classics); (7) Gennady Rozhdestvensky / USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra, with Leningrad Musical Society Choir & Rimsky-Korsakov Musical School Choir ('live' recording on Melodya); and (8) Kazuyoshi Akiyama / Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus ('live' recording on Nippon Columbia). Philipson55 (talk) 12:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I see I overlooked an earlier Richard Hickox version, recorded for Virgin Classics with the Philharmonia Orchestra and reviewed in 1990. Philipson55 (talk) 09:55, 23 August 2011 (UTC)