What is the nation's favourite piece of classical music? Beethoven's Fifth? Mozart's Requiem? That one in Platoon which makes you cry? Classic FM's latest poll has deemed it Ralph Vaughan William's The Lark Ascending; they also think he's possibly the greatest composer of all time.
It seems a typically English choice – as English as cricket, cream teas, queuing and saying "sorry" when you don't need to. It's worth pointing out that the main reason this has booted Rachmaninov off the top spot is because it was used to accompany a teary recent death scene in Coronation Street.
I love Vaughan Williams. I'm a sucker for his pastoral whimsy because he does it extremely well; I am just as likely to be found sobbing to his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis for the umpteenth time as the next person. I especially admire his work as a folk collector and the invaluable contribution he made in co-compiling the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. He and other collectors and composers such as Percy Grainger and Cecil Sharp wanted to catch up with the European romantics who heartily stirred in traditional music from their own homelands.
It's easy to sneer at The Lark Ascending, but there's nothing wrong with liking this piece, or indeed loving it. It has heartsoaring moments, from the shimmering solo violin lines to the open chords moving in parallel which harbour just a hint of darkness, rainclouds in the distance. The bucolic violin trills and florid noodlings evoke a bird's-eye swoop over long swaths of cornfields on a glorious English summer's morn.
At a fundamental level, all birds represent freedom in flight; in mythology and literature the skylark more specifically denotes daybreak and a sense of spiritual aspiration, embodied in the George Meredith poem that Vaughan Williams used as a starting point. My debut album as You Are Wolf explores the folklore of British birds, so I know they will probably always provide rich and evocative imagery. The lark also lets rip a particularly florid song, something Vaughan Williams would have undoubtedly been inspired by. The dwindling, stratospheric heights that the solo violin reaches at the end of the 15-minute work speaks as much of our own transcendence as it does the eponymous bird's.
So what does it say about us as a nation? That we like the cosy, armchair favourites? That we all want to go for a cream tea after a day tilling the fields? Perhaps, but if listeners are making "safe" choices it is because programmers are too. This is, after all, a Classic FM poll – hardly the forum for playing Stockhausen's pioneering electronic works or Renaissance composer Gesualdo's astringent microtonal nuances on a regular basis. If the poll had been conducted with listeners to BBC Radio 3's Late Junction or the broad-ranging classical website Sinfini the results would have undoubtedly been different.
There is much exciting, broadly classical music – and music programming – in the UK which lovers of intelligent music are engaging with, whether it be watching The Rite of Spring in a Peckham car park, or the Aurora Orchestra who throw together Rameau, Gershwin and swing dancing. There is plenty more to get your teeth into if you look for it. If you like the birdsong-inspired vibe, or indeed just want some gorgeously sumptuous music, play Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time or Kaija Saariaho's L'Aile du Songe a bit more often.
So congratulations to Ralph Vaughan Williams, and if you're one of the Classic FM listeners who voted for it I can see your point. I'd just like to see an episode of Corrie close with Gavin Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet – granted, that would be a long end credits – and watch the poll results next year. Then I am sure we would see that classical music can be experimental, modern, challenging and popular.
