Sea Songs is an arrangement of three British sea-songs by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. It is based on the songs "Princess Royal", "Admiral Benbow" and "Portsmouth". The work is a march of roughly four minutes duration. It follows a ternary structure, with opening material based on "Princess Royal" and "Admiral Benbow", with "Portsmouth" forming the central section before a return to the opening material featuring the first two songs.
The march was originally arranged for military band in 1923 as the second movement of English Folk Song Suite, and the world premiere of the suite was given at Kneller Hall on July 4, 1923. As a single work, its first performance was given at Wembley during the British Empire Exhibition in April 1924. This work, as well as the English Folk Song Suite, stemmed from Vaughan Williams' admiration for the band of the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall. The work was subsequently re-arranged for full orchestra in 1942 by the composer.
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Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or songs:
“All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires,
Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness
With a note or two to indicate it isn’t lost,
On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world
And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)