An Oxford Elegy

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An Oxford Elegy

An Oxford Elegy is a choral work by Ralph Vaughan Williams written between 1947 and 1949 for a narrator, a small mixed choir and a small orchestra. It uses passages from two Matthew Arnold poems, "The Scholar Gipsy" and "Thyrsis." The private world premiere happened soon after the work was completed, with the public premiere in Oxford in June 1952, featuring Steuart Wilson as the speaker and Bernard Rose conducting. Vaughan Williams had long hoped to turn Arnold's Scholar Gipsy into an opera, and he had even sketched a tune for it as early as 1901. In this piece, a narrator speaks the text while the choir mostly sings without words, only occasionally declaiming phrases to echo the speaker. The music moves from melancholy nostalgia to moments of resignation and acceptance toward the end. The work is a loving, reflective evocation of Arnold's time and place, often described as pastoral. Some critics say it is Vaughan Williams paying homage to his friend Gustav Holst, with a sound similar to Holst's Flos Campi. A typical performance lasts about 20–25 minutes.