Prelude from "Phantasy Quintet" (1912)

Ralph Vaughan Williams was been one of the most renowned and important English composers. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.
The Phantasy Quintet, composed in 1912, arose under the auspices of Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passion was chamber music and music of the Elizabethan period. He was particularly interested in the instrumental ‘fantasy’ form (or, in his preferred spelling, ‘phantasy’) where several unrelated but varied sections formed the basis for an extended work. In 1905 he established a prize for chamber works in one movement which resulted in many compositions adopting this form by composers such as Bridge, Ireland and Howells. He also commissioned works in his favoured form, among them Vaughan Williams’s Phantasy Quintet where the composer added a second viola to the standard string quartet. Its four movements are played attacca and share a thematic idea introduced by the first viola in its arching pentatonic solo that begins the first section, Prelude. The transcription of Lo Muscio well suited to the colors of the organ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfY4KBZd6qQ

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