ABSTRACT
Vaughan William's chamber work for speaker, small mixed chorus and small orchestra, entitled An Oxford Elegy, received its first public performance at Queens College, Oxford University. An author closer than Whitman to Vaughan Williams was Matthew Arnold, "who rejected theological dogma, valuing Christianity instead for its ethical code and social utility". As early as April 1899 the composer finished a setting of Dover Beach, which did not satisfy him and has not survived, while about 1908 he drafted a setting of The Future, which remained incomplete and unpublished. Vaughan Williams used selected lines from The Scholar-Gipsy and Thyrsis to create his composite text for An Oxford Elegy. Musically, the dream-vision of the poet is signified by a new, fourth motif (d) introduced by an unaccompanied instrument at the conclusion of the narrator's fourth stanza. The complex of musical paragraphs in which these lines are distributed is among the most ravishing of the work.
