http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/16/arts/ralph.php
[International Heral Tribune] 15 Jul 2008--Awell-placed barb can affect an artist's reputation forever, even when credit for the insult is uncertain. Philip Heseltine, an English critic who composed under the name Peter Warlock, is said to have likened "A Pastoral Symphony" (Symphony No. 3), by his countryman Ralph Vaughan Williams, to a cow staring over a fence.
Google Vaughan Williams and that epithet, and you will also find it attributed to Constant Lambert, a composer acquainted with both men. The bovine imagery appears in other variations: Aaron Copland is supposed to have said that listening to Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 5 was like staring at a cow for 45 minutes. Elisabeth Lutyens, an English modernist composer, dismissed the British pastoral school, of which Vaughan Williams was the most prominent figure, with the withering term "cow-pat music."
The Lutyens pronouncement is better remembered than any of her compositions. Vaughan Williams's music, on the other hand, continues to flourish, at least in the land of his birth. In April his "Lark Ascending," a thrice-familiar reverie for violin and orchestra, took the top spot in a listener poll of the Top 300 classical works, sponsored by Classic FM in London, for the second straight year. His "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis" moved up to third place from 10th.
This year the 50th anniversary of Vaughan Williams's death is being commemorated with a bounty of British performances, including several concerts featuring his works in the BBC Proms festival, which opens Friday. A complete symphony cycle by the Philharmonia Orchestra culminates in early November, and a new English National Opera production of "Riders to the Sea," directed by the actress Fiona Shaw, opens at the end of that month.
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