# Confusion concerning Vaughan Williams Three Welsh Tunes



## Castleman (May 2, 2011)

Greetings to everyone,

As my first post here I was wondering if anyone might be able to clear up some confusion I have concerning Vaughan Williams Three Welsh Tunes.

On the one hand they appear as chamber music under the name Household Music and do in fact have three movements.

On the other hand, it appears that Hickox only performed the last two on this release:
http://www.amazon.com/Conducts-Vaug...=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1304346593&sr=1-1

So what is the exact correlation between the Household Music and the Welsh Tunes? Is one chamber and the other orchestral?


----------



## Castleman (May 2, 2011)

........bump


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I have not heard these pieces so I am excited about tracking them down. RWV is among my favorite composers. I looked under the Allmusic guide and it seems he wrote two different sets of Welsh tunes, so this may be part of the confusion. As the Allmusic guide has become All-but-unusable due to pop-up flash ads that won't go away and obscure the rest of the pages, I have quoted the entry below for Household Music. (The bolded text is my emphasis):



Allmusic said:


> Vaughan Williams' work with the music of his native Britain included the editing of several important books of hymns, most notably The English Hymnal and Songs of Praise. He was particularly attracted to the warm, richly melodic tradition of Welsh hymns, and *in 1920 he composed a set of Preludes on Welsh Hymn-Tunes for organ. It has been arranged for string orchestra as well. In 1941 he wrote this highly attractive work, which is really another set of three Welsh hymn-tune preludes; perhaps he gave the work its homely name in order to avoid confusion with the other set.*
> 
> The title also relates to its intended use, however. It was planned as a practical solution to the problem of making music during a time of war, when neither orchestras nor regular chamber ensembles might be available. Vaughan Williams left the scoring open, suggesting only that one way to play it might be with string quartet and optional horn. It has, however, been done professionally most often with string orchestra. It is a lovely piece, and at 17 minutes in length much more substantial than its too-plain name suggests.


----------

