In The Fen Country
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''In the Fen Country'' is an orchestral
tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...
written by the
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...
. Vaughan Williams had completed the first version of the work in April 1904. He subsequently revised the work in 1905 and 1907. It is Vaughan Williams' earliest composition not to be withdrawn. Whilst various 1920 reports indicated that the score was lost at that time, with one saying "perhaps irretrievably" and another "temporarily lost", Alain Frogley commented in 1991 that the manuscript score is in the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
. Described by Vaughan Williams as a "symphonic impression", it received its premiere under the conductor
Thomas Beecham Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (29 April 18798 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic and the Roya ...
on 22 February 1909.Conducting RVW
Journal of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, No.24 June 2002, p. 3 The piece is meant to evoke feelings of traversing
East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
's often bleak Fen landscape, illustrated by the solo opening melody, then wide open spaces as portrayed by sweeping string orchestral textures, with a melodic language strongly reminiscent of English folksong, and a harmonic language closely aligned with that of
Frederick Delius Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted atte ...
in his idyllic idiom. The orchestration was altered in 1935 and perhaps earlier as well. ''In the Fen Country'' received its first publication from
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, posthumously, in 1969.


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* * * * * 1904 compositions 1905 compositions 1907 compositions Compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphonic poems {{UK-music-stub