Choreography: James Kudelka

Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Costume Deign: Claudia Lynch

Lighting Design: Howell Binkley

These notes compiled by Gerard Charles,BalletMet Columbus, February 1998

Having worked with BalletMet on its presentation of his In Paradisum in 1988, James Kudelka’s felt confident of accepting then artistic director John McFall’s request to create a new work for the company in 1989. Having selected Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis as the music for this new ballet, Mr. Kudelka set about familiarizing himself completely with the music before he began to work with the dancers in the studio. Although the ballet is a series of pas de deux, Mr. Kudelka began by working with the entire company, developing and learning together the material that would make up the finished ballet. It was an amazing period of creative activity that led to the finished choreography for There, below in a matter of 16 hours - a very fast pace indeed. The rehearsal needed to perfect the technical and artistic demands of the piece may never be fully complete. With the choreography of Mr. Kudelka there is always something new to discover, a nuance of musical or physical phrasing, often some challenge that has lain hidden until a deeper understanding of the work is reached.

There, below creates a mysterious, private world. Using a limited movement vocabulary, the ballet’s sparseness is sometimes in marked contrast to the often very dense music by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Barbara Zuck in the Columbus Dispatch wrote of the premiere, "Kudelka has deftly crafted a choreographic understatement that speaks volumes...The couples, each with their own movement motifs, move effortlessly and silently, as though removed by some great distance from the weight of worldly concerns. Each pair engages in remarkable pas de deux, sometimes expressing in detail the phrasing of the music, sometimes barely moving as the music pulses."

The ballet was an instant success for BalletMet and has been enthusiastically received wherever the company has performed it. There, below has also been staged for the Houston Ballet, Ballet British Columbia in Vancouver and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal.

With the first performance in 1910 of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Vaughan Williams severed the close ties which until then had bound English music to that of Germany and set it in a more nationalistic, British direction. The theme of the Fantasia is based on one of nine tunes which Tallis had contributed to Archbishop Parker’s Metrical Psalter of 1576 and of which Vaughan Williams had already made use a year or two earlier in his edition of the English Hymnal. Written for string quartet and double string orchestra, the Fantasia was revised in 1913 & 1919. The use of the strings, broken into three sections, is often likened to the use of the three different keyboards on the organ. Thus the Fantasia becomes a realization of the organ as played by a string orchestra.

British critic Robert Henderson wrote "There is about the Tallis Fantasia a feeling of intense deliberation, its dynamics are as restrained as its harmonies, its design as simple as the harmonic scheme of Tallis’ original setting. As the music unfolds, the orchestra, sometimes in ten or more real parts, is pared down to solo quartet or a single instrument pondering gently on the modal outlines of the theme: intimate reflection, passages of closely worked polyphony, massive chords and antiphonal exchanges between the various groups..... With the Tallis Fantasia Vaughan Williams had finally established his English roots challenging, as has been suggested, the Tudor composers on their own ground in the model part-writing of its antiphons."

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, England on October 12, 1872. Arriving on the British musical scene fifteen years after Edward Elgar, he was already in print at age nineteen. As a boy he said he was taught "the pianoforte, which I never could play, and the violin, which was my musical salvation." He studied with Parry and Stanford at the Royal College of Music (1890 - 92, 1895), gaining from Parry "the great English choral tradition which Tallis passed on to Byrd, Byrd to Gibbons, Gibbons to Purcell....and they in turn through the Wesleys to Parry. He has passed the torch to us, and it is our duty to keep it alight." Vaughan Williams continued his studies at Cambridge University from 1892-95.

Despite a dislike of German music, Vaughan Williams went to Berlin to take lessons from Max Bruch. In 1902 he joined the English Folk Music Society and from then on Vaughan Williams was to draw on his national music, going out into the field to collect folk music in its most pure state. In 1906 he edited the English Hymnal.

His search for traditional music not withstanding, Vaughan Williams was also considered to be an aggressive modernist. "In 1908 I came to the conclusion that I was bumpy and stodgy, had come to a dead end, and that a little French polish would be of use to me" he wrote. As a result he went to Paris to study with Ravel, after which he considered his musical education complete.

With the first performance in 1910 of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Vaughan Williams severed the close ties which until then had bound English music to that of Germany.

Vaughan Williams served in the 1914-18 war, although he was over the military age, and became professor of composition at the Royal College of Music from 1919-39. He was conductor of Bach Choir, London from 1920-27.

In 1953 he married Ursula Valletta, poet and librettist, who wrote texts for his The Bridal Day (1938) Hymn for St. Margaret (1948)and many others. That same year he moved back to London having lived in Dorking for twenty four years. It was just after finishing his Ninth Symphony that Vaughan Williams died in London, August 26, 1958 at age eighty-six.

Vaughan Williams wrote music for several ballets, the most well known of which is probably Job, a Masque for Dancing (1931) which was choreographed by the founder of England’s Royal Ballet, Dame Ninette de Valois. Others include: Old King Cole (1923); On Christmas Night (1925-6); and The Bridal Day (1938-39). Besides James Kudelka, John Clifford also used his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis for Fantasies in 1969.

Mr. Binkley's Broadway production credits include London, Toronto, Vienna and the national tour of Kiss of the Spiderwoman, the musical directed by Harold Prince. He also has created lighting designs for Tommy Tune's Grease and How to Succeed in Business, directed by Des McAnuff. He has worked with such theater companies as Alley Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Asolo Theatre, McCarter Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse and Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. Dance companies such as American Ballet Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, Paris Opera Ballet, Lyon Opera, Hubbard Street Dance Company, Parsons Dance, Peter Pucci Plus and the Joffrey Ballet have commissioned his talents. In addition he has worked with the Metropolitan Opera and the Dallas Opera. Mr. Binkley also has been the recipient of a 1993 Tony nomination, the Sir Laurence Olivier Award, the Canadian Dora Award (for Kiss of the Spiderwoman), and two Helen Hayes awards.

A sampling of the many recordings available of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

Christopher Warren-Green/London Chamber orchestra. Virgin VGC C-61126

Hickox/City of London Sinfonia. EMI C-54407

Frühbeck do Burgos/London Symphony Orchestra. Pickwick PCD-930

Bryden Thomson/London Philharmonic Orchestra. Chandos CHAN 8502

Sir Neville Marriner/ Academy of St. Martin-in-the- Fields. Argo 414 595-2