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The poetry of Walt Whitman was a strong influence on Ralph Vaughan Williams in his early career. During the period when he was working on A Sea Symphony, he wrote Toward The Unknown Region as a “Song for Chorus and Orchestra”.
The words are from the poem Darest Thou Now O Soul, from
Whitman’s long-running collection Leaves of Grass (from where the Sea Symphony’s text was also taken.) Vaughan Williams had held a private competition with his friend Gustav Holst to set the poem to music, and between them they declared Vaughan Williams’s version the winner, having its premiere
at the Leeds Festival in 1907.
The poem is a secular interpretation of the concept of purgatory, the journey of the soul from death to eternal life. The musical setting reflects this, with the home key never really established until the bass entry of “Then we burst forth”, in a tune with a strong echo of the composer’s well-known hymn tune Sine Nomine (For All The Saints).
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