Music what I like

I'm going through my collection in order, so it's lumpy: sometimes there'll be one type of music for days, sometimes different things every day. Yesterday was weird modernist American stuff, today is rather traditional English music from the same period.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was a funny onion. Liberal and atheist, he collected the hymns which form the backbone of the main Anglican hymnbook. Sometimes he dived into lost folk music (think Greensleeves, on which he based a Fantasia), at others he wrote symphonies reflecting the trauma and loss of World War One which sounded as modern as Stravinsky and the other continental experimentalists.

Today's CD is on the traditional side: some of VW's folk song arrangements. No, wait, come back, they're brilliant. Classical music doesn't often do folk very well: it sucks the life out of it and puts silly posh voices on. It depends on the recording as much as the composer. VW usually treats his sources with respect.

These are from 'On Wenlock Edge', which is a beautiful place near Wolverhampton, and 'Five Mystical Songs'. There's a version on Youtube including an interview with the singer of my recording, but he will singlehandedly put you off classical music for ever by fulfilling every stereotype. Try to listen past the 'operatic' voice: it's thankfully going out of fashion.

The second track is Full Fathom Five, one of his Shakespearean songs which I think is creepily wonderful.