The Lark Ascending, Ralph Vaughan William’s sweeping romance for violin and orchestra, overflows with the joy and freedom of the natural world. Vaughan Williams was inspired by a poem of the same name by Victorian-era writer, George Meredith, a literary work in and of itself filled with musical language. This episode also includes Maurice Ravel’s Three Poems of Mallarmé, setting poetry by Symbolist writer Stéphane Mallarmé. In this piece, Ravel conceived of an unusual instrumental ensemble of flutes, clarinets, string quartet, and piano to accompany the sung text. Similarly inspired by the poetry of Mallarmé was Claude Debussy in his evocative symphonic poem, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Capturing the post-sleep monologue of a faun and his imagined sensual encounters in a forest, the listener is left wondering whether it was a dream after all. Lastly, we’ll experience Lili Boulanger’s sun-drenched Of a Spring Morning, one of the last works the composer wrote before her untimely death at the age of 24.
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