Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending. Iona Brown & Sir Neville Marriner/ASMF. 4K UHD
Views: 1
0
0
4K UHD (my photos only - the opening image lacks that native resolution).
Background
When I was a very young boy, I used to lie down in my local meadows in Derbyshire and listen to skylarks as they hovered high above in full song. It was a perfect reverie - a transcendent experience which has stayed with me my whole life. I wanted to recall those experiences here in low, ultra-wide angle photography. I regret very much their decline in numbers at the hands of hostile agriculture (see below).
Like Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, this is a pastoral work of transcendent beauty and power. The Lark Ascending was inspired by George Meredith's 122-line poem of the same name about the skylark (Alauda arvensis). He included this portion of Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work:
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,