Ralph Vaughan Williams' first musical foray into Greek plays was his incidental music to Aristophanes' The Wasps, presented by Cambridge University in 1909. The production was in the original Greek, as is still the tradition there, but English translations of the plays were becoming popular at the time, amongst them those by Gilbert Murray, the Oxford University Professor of Greek.
In 1911 Murray was asked by the dancer Isadora Duncan for permission to mount three of his versions of Greek plays with her brother Augustin directing. Murray had been advised by his friend Herbert Fisher that "my brother-in-law Ralph Vaughan Williams (who is a musical composer and therefore prejudiced) would like to see a big orchestra and some frankly modern music". Vaughan Williams in his late thirties had actually previously written to Murray: "May I say how much it has distressed me to hear those wonderful lines in Elektra [sic] and your other plays mauled about by (as it seems to me) quite the wrong kind of musical setting." The musicologist Henry Hadow had also recommended Vaughan Williams: "a very good musician - also keen on poetry and full of understanding". When Isadora Duncan finally met Vaughan Williams and danced for him, he immediately found "the melting beauty of her phrasing'" exactly the sort of movement for which he could write.
As he began work on the plays, Vaughan Williams wrote to Murray, stating:
"there is nothing I should like better than to be associated in such a production as you foreshadow - however problematical it may be. I have had several shots at some Electra music and have found the task much harder than I thought - I cannot make up my mind what sort of music would be best and naturally until I can do that the music itself refuses to come. However your letter has excited me so that I believe my imagination is beginning to work."
In a later letter he becomes more specific:
"...the problem gets more insoluble the more I work at it. I tried setting them in the way I suggested to you - a sort of chant without any accompaniment - but it did not seem to work altogether - I have tried other parts in a more operatic method - the result is rather a mixture - the only way I think will be a sort of trial performance of some of the music when it is ready. I can't hope to satisfy you and Miss Duncan and Augustin (who wants the choruses spoken!). I want to ask you a lot about the Bacchae choruses - whether all the big choruses should be sung throughout - or whether parts spoken - and what bits should be murmured and what parts declaimed."
The trial performance of the three scores finally happened, on 5 December 1911, and a public concert performance of the music subsequently took place at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on Friday 31 May 1912. Previewing this, The Globe, a British newspaper, included in its 'Musical Gossip' columns on 25 May 1912 the following prescient remarks:
In connection with Mr Vaughan Williams' musical setting of choruses from Euripedes, to be given at the Court Theatre next Friday, we are informed that 'they are an attempt at something new, and something which is neither German nor French. This music is no experiment in style. It would seem rather as though the composer had disclaimed all styles and all schools, and found direct inspiration in the material of the poet's inspiration, and the result is something of undeniable beauty.' A chorus from 'The Electra' and from 'The Bacchae' and four from 'Iphigenia in Tauris' should make up a programme of interest.
In The Bacchae the choruses mentioned in his letters have more continuous musical accompaniment and are highly danceable, with compelling rhythms. The first, For his kingdom it is there, is set as a unison chorus line, very occasionally breaking out into three-part harmony at a cadence. The other chorus, Where is the home for me?, is set mostly against a quieter background, occasionally the chanting of the chorus being offset by a lyrical woodwind solo. Vaughan Williams later arranged this tuneful chorus as a song for two voices and piano in 1922, which seems to have enjoyed success.
There are signs that the work did have a trial performance. Orchestral parts exist, in a different hand, and handwritten suggestions for the numbers of string players. These numbers are quite large, and it is no wonder that Murray found that "it completely drowned the words." Vaughan Williams also writes a separate violin part ('Violin 3') with cues for occasions when there would be no woodwind available, maybe indeed the trial performance. Also, in thick blue pencil, the conductor, Vaughan Williams himself, has written various instructions over the score - for example, the number of beats in the bar and the various rallentandi.
The project was a challenge: two pages of the score of The Bacchae were missing, but at least I had a set of orchestral parts from which to reconstruct the music. However, as we were preparing this score for publication a manuscript turned up amongst the papers of the composer Rebecca Clarke, who had been a pupil of Vaughan Williams. The autograph manuscript is a piano part "for use with string orchestra", perhaps written out for the trial performance in the event of no wind instruments being available.
—Alan Tongue, Editor
